The Trump administration's efforts to quash free speech on college campuses have led to a wave of compliance from universities, but students and faculty are fighting back. In recent weeks, elite universities such as Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and others have responded to the administration's attacks on diversity programs and student protesters by complying with demands, firing professors, and announcing their refusal to intervene in immigration arrests on campus.

The administration has warned that it will pull federal funding from institutions that it claims have engaged in racial discrimination through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and enabled antisemitism by not being hard enough on pro-Palestine protesters. This is not an empty threat, as the administration has already rescinded $400 million in funding from Columbia and frozen $175 million slated for the University of Pennsylvania over the school's policies on transgender athletes.

In response, universities are largely preemptively cracking down on free speech. The Rhode Island School of Design shut down an art exhibition put on by the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, while New York University canceled a talk on USAID cuts over concerns that the topic could be seen as "anti-governmental." Yale Law School suspended, and later fired, an international law scholar after an "AI-powered" right-wing news site falsely accused her of being linked to a Palestinian group under US sanctions.

However, students and faculty are pushing back against the administration's attacks on academic freedom. A coalition of labor unions has sued the Trump administration, alleging that its revocation of Columbia's funding violated the First Amendment. The suit claims that the administration's actions are an "unprecedented effort to overpower a university's autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students."

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is also suing the Trump administration for using an "ideological-deportation policy" to chill speech on college campuses. The suit alleges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) recent arrests of student protesters violate the First Amendment. ICE has arrested at least five students over their alleged involvement in pro-Palestine activism on campus, using an obscure provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to initiate deportation proceedings.

The administration's efforts to arrest student protesters have created a climate of repression and fear on college campuses, according to the AAUP lawsuit. Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy.

Right-wing groups have also been involved in the administration's efforts to eradicate DEI and crack down on pro-Palestine protesters. Several pro-Israel groups have taken credit for ICE's arrests of student activists, and a coalition of right-wing groups has been tracking pro-Palestine student activists and sharing their information with the Trump administration.

Despite the challenges, some universities are pushing back against the administration's assaults on higher education. The Rutgers University Senate passed a resolution last week calling for a "Mutual Defense Compact" in defense of "Academic Freedom, Institutional Integrity, and the Research Enterprise." The alliance would include the universities in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, a consortium of 18 institutions.

The battle for free speech on college campuses is far from over. As the Trump administration continues to crack down on diversity programs and student protests, students and faculty will continue to fight back, citing First Amendment violations and pushing for academic freedom. The outcome of this battle will have far-reaching implications for the future of higher education in the United States.