For Immediate Release: October 14, 2025

Ideological Extortion: Civil Liberties Groups Challenge the Government’s Political War on ’Thought Crimes’

NEW YORK, NY — In an unprecedented move that strikes at the heart of academic freedom, the federal government is attempting to turn private universities into mouthpieces for state-approved ideology—using research dollars as a cudgel.

The Rutherford Institute has joined a coalition of civil liberties organizations—including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its NYCLU affiliate, the Cato Institute, and the National Coalition Against Censorship—in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit defending the academic freedom and free speech rights of university faculty.

The brief in American Association of University Professors v. U.S. Department of Justice supports a lawsuit brought by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to compel universities into changing their ideological makeup and viewpoints to align with the government’s preferred political ideology. The lawsuit was filed in response to the Trump administration’s cancellation of nearly $400 million in federal research grants to Columbia University in an effort to alter its programs and policies to reflect the government’s preferred political ideology.

“This is nothing less than ideological extortion—a political war on thought-crimes,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “By punishing a private university for refusing to adopt the government’s ideology, the Trump administration is turning Orwell’s 1984 into official policy. If the government can dictate what is taught in a private university’s classroom, it won’t stop there—it will dictate what is preached in the pulpit, printed in the press, and spoken in the streets.”

AAUP, a labor union representing college faculty and academic professionals, filed suit after the federal government canceled approximately $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University in March 2025 and threatened more than $5 billion in additional funding unless the University adopted sweeping programmatic and structural changes. The lawsuit contends that the government’s actions chilled faculty members’ free speech and academic freedom in violation of the First Amendment and the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, which bars the government from placing a condition on the receipt of a benefit or subsidy that infringes upon the recipient’s constitutionally protected rights.

Although Columbia University reached a settlement with the government restoring $1.3 billion in funding, the agreement did not restore all terminated funding, address compensatory and nonmonetary harms suffered by AAUP members, or prevent the government from restricting funding and speech in the same manner again. The appeal to the Second Circuit seeks to ensure that the federal government cannot wield research funding as a weapon to silence dissenting viewpoints or compel ideological conformity.

This case comes amid a broader campaign by the Trump administration to punish dissenting viewpoints. Just recently, in a separate AAUP lawsuit involving the threat of deportation of noncitizen faculty who express pro-Palestinian views , U.S. District Judge William Young rejected the administration’s overreach with a reminder that “No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike.”

Vera Eidelman, Brian Hauss, Arthur Eisenberg, and Molly Biklen at ACLU advanced the arguments in the amicus brief in American Association of University Professors v. U.S. Department of Justice.

The Rutherford Institute is a nonprofit civil liberties organization dedicated to making the government play by the rules of the Constitution. To this end, the Institute defends individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a broad range of issues affecting their freedoms.

This press release is also available at www.rutherford.org.

Source: https://tinyurl.com/yc2n65rm

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