Opinion: Colorado’s colleges and universities need collective action to fight Trump administration policies

As Colorado universities open their doors and classes resume, the normal rhythms of campus life are abnormal.  While students review new syllabi and go about locating assigned course materials, their campuses remain under siege.  

International students are losing their visas, hard won diversity, equity and inclusion programs supporting minority and at-risk students have been canceled or relabeled, and faculty, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students are cut adrift as grants and fellowships are canceled.

All this done by a rogue federal administration that has virtually declared war on American higher education.

Seven months into this unprecedented assault on one of the very pillars of opportunity, upward mobility and scientific discovery in our state, Colorado colleges and universities still have no coherent or unified strategy to respond. This despite the fact that longstanding academic norms and practices including campus free speech, academic freedom and university shared governance are at risk. 

Instead, each of our state universities, public and private, is left to defend itself against federal encroachment and legal attacks by the U.S. Department of Education and private parties. 

And the pummeling is well underway.  

Colorado State University is the object of a federal civil rights complaint by a radical right-wing legal outfit, America First Legal, for alleged noncompliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order to scrub all DEI practices and DEI references from university operations. CSU acknowledged the complaint but has yet to assure faculty and students it will not alter its practices.  

Or consider the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, which bent over backward to comply in advance with Trump directives and still saw nearly $20 million in federal funds stripped from its budget. 

Or take Denver University. Facing neither legal attacks nor cuts to federal funding, DU preemptively complied anyway, wiping DEI from its programs and eliminating fellowships for minoritized populations. 

This is what comes from standing alone. Repelling this unwarranted attack on our higher ed institutions demands solidarity.  

This is why the Colorado Conference of the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, is asking our state colleges and universities to join in a Mutual Defense Pact, joining financial, legal and lobbying resources to challenge this federal blitz on the practices that make American higher education the envy of the world. 

Consider it a schoolhouse NATO Article 5: An attack on one is an attack on all. At minimum such an accord should:

• Treat any federal threat to any Colorado higher ed institution as a threat to all.
• Require Colorado institutions to create a mutual defense fund to support necessary legal and lobbying work opposing adverse federal and other assaults on lawful institutional practices.

This call for a mutual defense pact among Colorado’s colleges and universities is  officially endorsed by Colorado State University’s Fort Collins Faculty Council. More faculty assemblies at Colorado colleges are considering similar endorsements.

There are, of course, challenges to a mutual defense approach to resisting the assault on the academy. Colorado statutes and administrative rules applicable to state colleges and universities are largely designed to finance and serve each institution or institutional system independently.  Any sharing of resources may need legislative approval. 

Further, both public and private universities face a collective action problem — no university wants to contribute if it can free ride on the contributions of others. But statutes and administrative rules can be changed in the 2026 legislative session if Colorado educators mount a common front in favor of a state higher ed mutual defense agreement.  And collective action problems can and should be overcome — united we stand; divided we fall. 

At stake is no less than the loss of more than $1 billion in federal research funds for Colorado universities, diminished student financial aid (think Pell grants) and the potential loss of federal funding for Hispanic-serving and Indigenous-serving colleges — CSU Pueblo, Adams State University, and Fort Lewis College come to mind. 

Acquiescing to federal threats and anticipatory compliance with the Trump administration’s ideologically driven punitive attacks on our universities and colleges is sure to retard scientific discovery, impair state and national economic competitiveness, adversely impact Colorado’s college embedded communities, and slow the march of decency and progress to which higher education at its best contributes.

Against this unprecedented assault, Colorado’s AAUP faculty believe it is time to pursue the path of institutional cooperation and mutual defense. The barrage mounted against our universities has just begun and more threats from government and private actors are sure to come.  

There is only one sensible response to this onslaught on Colorado’s fine bastions of higher learning: interinstitutional solidarity and mutual defense.

Aaron Schneider, of Denver, is Leo Block chair and professor of International Studies at Denver University and copresident of the Colorado Conference of the AAUP.

Steve Mumme, of Fort Collins, is an emeritus professor in the Colorado State University Department of Political Science copresident of the Colorado Conference of the AAUP.

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