Larry Jameson, president of the University of Pennsylvania — the alma mater of President Donald Trump — has joined a growing chorus of academic leaders condemning the White House’s treatment of educational institutions.
On Tuesday, the American Association of Colleges and Universities published a letter signed by more than 200 leaders of colleges and universities — including Jameson — that denounced the administration’s actions towards higher education institutions as “unprecedented” federal outreach.
“As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” the letter stated.
The Trump administration has suspended billions in federal funding to multiple universities in attempts to strong-arm the schools into bending to the will of the White House. The government has cited demonstrations critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza as grounds for the cuts, and in some cases has also taken aim at schools’ diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
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Trump graduated from Penn’s Wharton School of Business in 1968.
In March, Jameson disclosed that federal authorities had issued “stop work orders” due to the university allowing Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete, to compete on the women’s swim team in 2022. In a statement, Jameson said the school followed NCAA policy and continues to do so.
The orders affected $175 million in government-funded research at Penn — a decision Jameson warned could undermine “lifesaving and life-improving research, the loss of which will be felt by society and individuals far beyond our campus for years to come.”
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On Monday, Harvard University sued the Trump administration for freezing billions of dollars in federal grants. In a statement, Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, said that the government’s “overreach” will have “severe and long-lasting” repercussions.
“Research that the government has put in jeopardy includes efforts to improve the prospects of children who survive cancer, to understand at the molecular level how cancer spreads throughout the body, to predict the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, and to ease the pain of soldiers wounded on the battlefield,” Garber said.