The assault on academic freedom has reached our doorstep - Incite at Columbia University

The assault on academic freedom has reached our doorstep.

This month, our NEH-funded River of Memories project in the Rio Grande Valley was abruptly canceled. Our oral history project documenting Afghan lives affected by U.S. occupation couldn’t move forward. Our staff has received explicit warnings from a government agency not to discuss the environment, gender, or diversity in proposed work. Our peers at Columbia University have been silenced, threatened, arrested, and disappeared.

The Trump administration is using every tool at its disposal against higher education to suppress knowledge that threatens its power—research that exposes inequality, amplifies marginalized voices, documents environmental destruction, and reveals state violence. 

They fear our work because it works.

Our Labor Lab strengthens worker organizations. Our oral history projects amplify perspectives the administration is attempting to erase. Our Trust Collaboratory sponsors listening tables where over a thousand Columbians have gathered to talk and learn about others’ opinions. Our partnerships build shared knowledge and power. And our training programs empower others to do the same.

These results are why our work is so threatening to the Trump administration—and exactly why we must not only continue but expand.

Through our Assembling Voices, Global Change, and Bundles Scholars programs, we are investing $350,000 in dozens of visionaries, learning from their efforts to transform their communities, from our home in Harlem to Hungary and beyond. As grants to Columbia scholars are cut, we're providing over $500,000 in critical support through our Hard Questions Grant, Social Difference working groups, and Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We have committed $1,250,000 to advance the understanding of cell death and its implications for health inequality, to deal with the challenges facing Syrian refugees, and to fight Ethiopia’s crisis of maternal mortality, now exacerbated by cruel USAID cuts. And this summer, our Oral History Summer Institute will train around the theme "Standing Up for Democracy," because the stories we capture today shape the world we build tomorrow.

The cost of standing firm is substantial. The cost of silence is even greater.

Our resistance is sustained by a community of committed scholars, changemakers, and supporters like you. Every contribution—whether $1 or $100,000—directly funds our scholars and community partners as they conduct vital research, amplify marginalized voices, build democratic capacities, and challenge authoritarianism.
We are determined to strengthen—not diminish—our commitment to academic freedom. Your support makes this possible at a moment when it matters most, which is why we are asking for your help at this time.

Donate Today

If you are interested in supporting a specific Incite Institute program, get in touch at incite@columbia.edu.

When future generations look back at this pivotal time, let them see that when freedom was threatened, we stood firm—and you stood with us.