Students and staff urge the university to be more transparent in its decisions about institutional speech and immigrant protections.
For student activists like Tommy Schmidt, a co-chair of the university’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, the crackdown on campus protests last year was just motivation to protest more.
“We’ve only grown as an organization. We’ve only done more organizing, more protests, more petitions, more campaigns,” Schmidt said. “It only drives us, it gives us a reason to keep organizing.”
But for many students who do not commit themselves to activism with the same fervor as Schmidt, the opposite is true: Overt acts of political expression have quietly waned since the university imposed restrictions on institutional speech and on the size of protests on campus.
In August, the university limited all protests to fewer than 100 people and restricted those events to certain areas on campus with carrying signs smaller than 14 inches by 22 inches. In March, the Board of Regents created an institutional speech policy that limits faculty units from making statements without prior approval from the university.
Today, more than three months into a presidential administration that is imposing new pressures on the university to crack down on protests, many students and faculty say they do not believe the university would protect their freedom of expression.
“I will give (UMN) the credit where they are balancing what the Trump administration wants them to do, and I do think they’re trying to balance that with what’s best for the students. But I just don’t think they’re in my corner,” university student Anika Tripathi said.
Student responses to an AccessU: Born to Immigrants survey show a lack of trust. Fewer than 20% of 268 respondents said they had some confidence that the university would do everything in its power to protect freedom of expression on campus. Nearly two in three respondents said they were probably not or definitely not confident when asked the same question.
The survey, sent to 5,000 randomized degree-seeking undergraduate emails, had a 5.3% response rate, which is just within the acceptable range of providing generalized insights about student attitudes. Additionally, survey results have been reinforced with student and faculty interviews.
Chair of the university’s Cultural Studies and Literature Studies department, Michael Gallope, said the university needs to be a place where students and researchers can speak without fear.
“Universities have to conduct research and discovery of the truth in a way that is free from political interference,” Gallope said. “Granting the federal government ideological control of Universities is something out of an authoritarian’s playbook.”
In an email statement to AccessU, university spokesperson Jake Ricker said the university is committed to ensuring its campus stays a place where freedom of expression is protected.
“The University of Minnesota maintains unwavering support for free expression on our campuses, an idea we all support as fundamental to the University’s mission. Respectful disagreement and debate are welcome at the University of Minnesota,” Ricker said in the email statement. “We are firmly committed to the rights of students, faculty, staff and visitors to our campus to freely express their views through open and respectful dialogue, regardless of viewpoint.”
Higher education challenged
The university finds itself in a challenging environment for all U.S. higher education as the Trump administration seeks ways to crack down on immigration and DEI programs.
The University of Minnesota is one of five universities — alongside Northwestern University, Columbia University, Portland State University and University of California, Berkeley — currently under investigation by President Donald Trump’s administration on charges of failing to properly address antisemitism concerns on campus. Millions of dollars in federal funding for research is at risk for these universities.
In response to the Trump administration’s threats to revoke around $400 million in federal funding, Columbia University has, among other actions, barred protests inside academic buildings, banned the use of masks on campus to conceal one’s identity and reviewed its disciplinary process for protesters.
Other major universities have also imposed restrictions on protestors. The University of Chicago, UCLA, USC and New York University have collectively suspended or arrested dozens of students for participating in pro-Palestine campus protests.
Harvard University has refused to adhere to the White House’s demands that the school reform its curriculum, change its admission programs and remove any diversity policies. It is now facing the potential loss of its tax-exempt status and around $2.2 billion in federal funding as the college battles the Trump administration over its diversity policies and response to pro-Palestine protests.
On April 22, Harvard announced it was filing suit against the administration to halt the freezing of federal funding.
U not fighting back
Around 200 college presidents, including several Big Ten presidents, have signed onto a national petition opposing “undue governmental intrusion” on college campuses. Some Big Ten universities are joining a Big Ten “mutual defense compact” to defend academic freedom, a move recently endorsed by the University Senate on the Twin Cities campus.
So far, university President Rebecca Cunningham has not signed onto either effort.
Some students and faculty say the university is failing to show a willingness to fight back against the Trump administration.
Although some students said in interviews that they understood the tough financial situation the university is under, more students said they want the university to fight for them even when money is at risk.
University student Cadence Berger said it is fair for the university to think about the financial impact, but it is not fair for the administration to not take a stand against international students’ visas being revoked.
The potential for immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents on campus is unacceptable, Berger said.
“I would blame the university,” Berger said. “I think, yet again, with money, it’s a tough situation. But I don’t like having people come onto our campus, detain somebody, put them through all of that.”
The institutional speech policy is a particular concern among many faculty.
Media ethics and law professor Jane Kirtley said at an April 18 forum on academic freedom that the decision to remove faculty statements goes against the idea of free speech.
“You’re allowed to speak presumptively, and the government cannot stop you from speaking. That principle has been completely turned on its head here at the University of Minnesota,” Kirtley said in the panel. “I’m simply appalled by it.”
Lack of transparency is one problem
Many students who reported lacking confidence in the university said the actions the university has taken lack any meaningful impact.
“You can tell through their rhetoric and the connotation with the words that they say. They aren’t showing any actions, they are being performative,” university student Tessa Ewer said.
If the university were to make real changes and not just hollow statements, Ewer said her attitude would change.
Among the complaints is the university’s lack of transparency and accountability in its communication, students and faculty say.
Fourth-year university student Nora Thompson said the university is not publicly trying to provide anything which leaves students in the dark and hurts trust.
Since October 2023, university officials have relegated their responses about the Israel-Palestine conflict and ICE to about 10 emails sent directly to students.
One email in October 2023, before Cunningham became university president, called for a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Another email nearly a year later from Cunningham said she would not comment on any “global issues.”
Following a Minnesota Daily article, university officials in January clarified the university’s policies around ICE. Shortly after a graduate student was detained in March, university officials said in an email they were looking to gather more information about the “deeply concerning situation.”
“(The university) is hiding behind these emails,” university student Lottie Madson said. “They have no transparency with how they come to these decisions. It’s just hard to know how they’re involving students, if they’re involving students.”
All other emails either directly addressed student protests on campus or overviewed how the university would combat antisemitism after they were placed under investigation by the Trump administration.
The choice not to comment on global affairs has frustrated some students. University student Noemi Rosas said as the university president, Cunningham should be speaking on issues that matter to students.
“I feel like every time we get an email from the president, she says it’s her role to not step into these topics and not comment on them,” Rosas said. “ I don’t think that’s how it should be at all.”
Pathway to trust still possible, faculty and students say
Students and faculty who doubt the university’s willingness to protect their freedom of expression also said trust can be rebuilt — if the university takes meaningful action.
Gallope said the university needs to take a principled stance in defense of academic freedom and free speech to show they care about freedom of expression.
“That’s how they win back trust, is by taking principled stands and being willing to defend the institution even when it might put them at political risk with outside constituencies,” Gallope said.
University professor Eric Van Wyk, also the chair of the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, said if the university wants to prove it cares about academic freedom for everyone, it should expand the guarantee of academic freedom beyond just tenured faculty.
“As long as we have a system in which so many people don’t actually have protection, they don’t actually have academic freedom,” Van Wyk said. “Anything this institution can do to broaden those sets of protections is something we have to look into.”
Some students concerned about free speech on campus say the university needs to take real action and not just make empty statements.
University student Sebastian Crea said trust comes down to showing up, specifically to protests.
“If the administrators are willing to make some kind of personal sacrifice or actually attend the protests, if it’s something that they believed in, that would show the students that the administration and faculty here stands with the students,” Crea said. “That they’re here for the students, and they’re not just here to collect a paycheck.”
Although the university needs to consider the actions of the federal government as a public university, capitulating to the Trump administration will only erode trust in university officials, student Diya Hariharan said.
For the campus to be a place where freedom of expression is respected, the university needs to show it will fight to protect it, Hariharan added.
“As much as they like to say, ‘We’re pro-freedom of speech,’ it certainly does not feel like it these days,” Hariharan said. “I understand that losing grant money is a huge, huge issue for a lot of universities, but I think at the end of the day we are an institution that believes in research and bettering ourselves and bettering our students and our community. I think freedom of speech is really integral to that.”
This story was reported by Jack O’Connor (Editor-In-Chief), Kathryn Gage (Writer), Henry Stafford (Multimedia Editor) and Sam Hill (Web Editor).