University leaders sparred over the direction of higher education in the era of the second Trump administration at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference on Tuesday, largely agreeing that universities have not done enough to maintain freedom of expression but differing over ways to address it.

Speaking on a panel titled “Hurdles and Hopes in American Higher Education,” Yeshiva University President Ari Berman argued that universities and their formal bodies, including the American Association of Universities, need to more clearly denounce antisemitism in the name of academic freedom. 

“There’s certainly no place in the academy [for antisemitism], because the core of the academy is academic freedom. … And that needs to be said. Tenured professors need to know it. The presidents need to say it: that antisemitism is hate, and that hate attacks the foundation of the university, which is academic freedom,” Berman said.

Sian Beilock, president of Dartmouth, agreed that antisemitism is anathema to the university environment: “You can’t have free expression that robs someone else of free expression. That means not shouting down speakers. That means not spewing hate that doesn’t make other people feel like they can be on campus. And it certainly means not setting up encampments with one shared ideological view that don’t let other people walk across campus there.”

She said that universities broadly “lost sight of what our mission is. We are education institutions. We’re not political institutions. We’re not social activist institutions. Our goal as an institution is to foster views on both sides of ideological debates, and when the institution itself is taking political positions, it’s very hard to do that.” 

Jonathan Levin, the president of Stanford University, said that the problems facing the “so-called ‘elite universities’” are “more challenges of politics and values and universities in that category need to be aspirational places that anyone in the country would want to send their children to.”

The speakers differed in how they believe universities and the administration should rectify the issue of pervasive campus antisemitism, though, with Pradeep Khosla, chancellor of the University of California San Diego, saying that the Trump administration’s rescinding of federal funds is using “the social agenda and the civil rights issues” to “penalize our competitive spirit. I think both are important. … And I think the universities might have gone a little bit too far, so we need to focus on that, but punishing you by taking your research away? I don’t know. It’s punishing the country. It’s not punishing the universities.”

Berman suggested that AAU, which has filed lawsuits challenging the administration’s cutting of research grants, should be similarly responsive to the ideological climate of universities. “It’s not just the students that are suffering, it’s professors, and that’s core for academic freedom, and that’s what the AAU needs to be focused on as well. And when you have that petition to sign, not just against the government, but when you have the petition to sign against hate, right? That’s when we know that American universities have gotten the message,” he said. 

Berman referred to a statement from university presidents that he led shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks condemning the attacks and standing with Israel. Berman said that some presidents told him they would not join the more than 100 signatories because they feared their participation in the letter could harm the Jewish professors working for their institutions. They told him they were “‘afraid for the safety of their Jewish professors.’ That is actually what is happening on campus. And the AAU and the presidents looking at what’s going on on campus is really essential to move America forward.”

Khosla pushed back on Berman’s criticism of AAU, arguing that “there is a whole lot of — 30, 40 years — of progressive thinking in higher education that needs to be undone. It cannot be undone overnight. But I can tell you, the commitment from AAU and from senior leadership of public and private [institutions] is strong.”

Beilock suggested that such activities are outside of a university’s mandate, saying to Berman, “I think we have to go back to our mission here. Our mission is educating our leaders in an area that — and in an environment that — does not include hate, where people can speak, where we are welcoming everyone, that requires every university leader to stand up and focus on that mission, and that is how you actually move forward. Whether or not signing a petition is the best way to do that, we can have an argument about that.”

When pressed on the impact of campus protests on students and parents deciding where to pursue higher education, Levin said he “completely agree[s]” it’s a problem “on some campuses. But if you look at the number of campuses where there were protests last year, concentrated in a relatively small number of schools, the schools where those types of things happened, [they] have to address those problems … that is a problem, basically, of defining culture on campus.”