State Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Pa.) speaks at an AAUP rally on March 20.
Credit: Ebunoluwa AdesidaSeveral elected officials expressed disapproval towards both the Trump administration’s decision to freeze $175 million in federal funds to Penn and the University’s response in interviews with The Daily Pennsylvanian.
As federal actions continue to target higher education institutions — including Penn — local politicians urged the University to take legal action to protect its community members. The funding freeze was announced last week as the federal government claimed Penn was in violation of NCAA policies for allowing the “participation of a transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team in 2022.”
“The University should be uplifting the voices of its community and following their lead. Instead, Penn’s leaders are falling over themselves to comply with Trump’s racist, sexist, tyrannical proclamations,” State Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Pa.) wrote in a statement to the DP.
Philadelphia City Councilmember and 2004 Stuart Weitzman School of Design graduate Jamie Gauthier — who represents the district including Penn — similarly called for the University to “stand up to this assault on their academic freedom.”
“While I wish Trump did not put them in this position, Penn needs to stand up and fight back. Taking Trump's attacks lying down will not work, it will only encourage him to keep going,” Gauthier wrote in a statement to the DP.
Gauthier emphasized the importance of maintaining academic freedom at schools like Penn amid attacks on higher education.
“University campuses are supposed to be centers of exploration, study, and healthy debate. President Trump turned them into political battlegrounds,” Gauthier added. “This is what fascists do: force centers of thought to bend the knee and do their bidding.”
2013 Engineering graduate and Pennsylvania state Rep. Rick Krajewski (D-Pa.) shared a similar perspective on recent orders from the Trump administration at a rally on campus last week.
“Trump has his crosshairs on university campuses,” Krajewski said at the demonstration. “One of the first steps of authoritarianism is eliminating places of independent, free thought.”
On March 19, the White House announced that it would be freezing over $175 million in federal funding to Penn, resulting in faculty members across seven of Penn’s schools receiving “stop work orders” for their federally contracted research. Additionally, the University has estimated that it stands to lose $240 million due to the National Institutes of Health “indirect costs” cap.
Krajewski encouraged Penn to utilize its financial resources to support community members impacted by these cuts at the rally and called on Penn to provide “stopgap funding for workers impacted by federal cuts.”
“Situations like this one are why endowments exist,” Gauthier similarly wrote. “I remind Penn that as a nonprofit, their primary goal is supposed to be providing a public benefit, not making money.”
Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) wrote in a statement to the DP that Penn may need to pursue legal action to reclaim some of their lost funding.
“Cases like this have required court action to get the funding released and Penn may have to take that route,” Evans added.
Saval also praised the activism of Penn students, faculty, and workers. In the past few months, Penn has seen a wave of protests from community members in response to national policies regarding federal funding cuts — and the University’s response.
“Penn’s students and workers are showing unwavering bravery and solidarity in the face of the Trump administration’s relentless and infuriating onslaughts on our rights and freedoms,” Saval added.
Gauthier also urged Penn to defend immigrant and non-citizen students and faculty.
“Other universities have shown us that lawsuits successfully counter Trump’s hateful, cruel, and legally questionable actions,” Gauthier wrote. “I urge Penn to do the right thing by holding the line, taking Trump to court, and not cooperating with ICE.”
Several Penn faculty and student groups recently called on the University to clarify and reaffirm its policies and commitments to these groups, first in a letter and later in a petition sponsored by six campus unions and signed by more than a thousand Penn employees.
Earlier this month, Penn issued guidance to community members about potential travel bans, on-campus Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, and visa revocations in a March 18 email from Provost John Jackson Jr. and Vice Provost for Global Initiatives Ezekiel Emanuel.
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