The president’s much-anticipated directive doesn’t do much.
President Donald Trump had not yet been in office for one month when he took to Twitter to scold a college. “If U. C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view,” he wrote, “NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” The tweet was in response to protests at the institution, and it worried college leaders—not least because as a candidate, Trump was rather reserved in higher-education-policy specifics.
On Thursday, Trump took action along the lines he set out in that early tweet, signing an executive order directing federal agencies to “take appropriate steps” to make sure that colleges receiving research funding from the federal government are promoting “free inquiry.” But the order essentially asks colleges to do what they’re already required by law to do, and it is still unclear whether there will be any enhanced policing of colleges by federal agencies as a result. The order does not have any impact on federal student-aid programs.
Read: Is free-speech really challenged on campus?
“Taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti–First Amendment institutions,” President Trump said Thursday afternoon during a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech,” he said, adding that “if a college or university does not let you speak, we will not give them money.
