In 1672, Charles II unilaterally suspended repayment of 1.2 million pounds to London’s private bankers. Having run up this debt, and unable to finance a flotilla of ships to fight the Dutch, Charles became neither the first nor the last absolute monarch to break his word. James II, his sibling successor, went further, claiming royal prerogative to bypass laws and purge Protestant judges, generals and functionaries. The solemn oaths he made at his coronation, to respect Parliament and the Church of England, wound up being worth not very much.
James ruled for less than four years, deserting after the Glorious Revolution began the era of parliamentary supremacy. Parliament would approve only those loans it would be willing to pay back with taxes, enabling deals with creditors now willing to lend. By restraining the monarch’s power, it enabled the crown to make deals it couldn’t otherwise get.
In economic history, we teach the 1688 creation of parliamentary supremacy as a solution to what economists call “commitment problems.” In the absence of a third party sufficiently strong to make sure all sides stick to their promises, the powerful can renege on the powerless. The powerless, seeing this, wisely choose to not contract with the powerful. Absolutist rulers are victims of their own lack of restraints; a sovereign who is too powerful cannot get inexpensive credit, because nothing stops the ruler from defaulting on any bond. President Trump, by smashing checks on his authority, has wound up undermining his own ability to make credible deals, including the one just reached with Columbia University, where I teach.
The entities that have been striking deals with Mr. Trump, my own employer included, have not learned the lessons of the Glorious Revolution. Trade negotiators from longtime partner countries, government contractors, law firms, federal employees, permanent residents, the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, even the Transportation Security Administration labor union are all experiencing contractual vertigo, finding out that the administration will not honor previous agreements.
The first Trump administration renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement to get the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, but Mr. Trump has imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada in violation of even that agreement. Parties thinking they can wheedle their way into a bargain with a capricious administration are bringing intuitions from the world of private deals, backstopped by the rule of law, into the very different realm of political bargains with absolutism-adjacent executive branches.
I understand the desire for a deal. My colleagues and I have eagerly clicked on every news story hinting that Columbia’s leaders might have secured the hundreds of millions of dollars the Trump administration has frozen or cut. Our community has borne devastating cuts, with researchers and administrative staff members laid off and participants in medical research losing access to treatment midcourse. On top of that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained a number of our students, and there have been endless leaks, doxxing attacks, campus lockdowns and computer hacks. All of this manifests as a never-ending stream of anxiety — financial, physical, moral — that narrows whatever intellectual horizons the research university is supposed to foster.
But this deal is unlikely to end the attacks. The federal government, and this administration, is simply too powerful and too arbitrary to be credibly bargained with. Do we really think this arrangement, however destructive of academic autonomy it is, will prevent the Trump administration from stopping the money again? Anyone who thinks the administration will mutely walk away after the ink is dry needs to look at both the past behavior of autocratic regimes in general and this administration’s in particular.
This deal won’t end Columbia’s torture. Whatever onerous terms the school has agreed to will be deemed to have been broken in the face of a campus protest, an edgy syllabus, a leaked classroom discussion or even an acerbic student opinion piece. New civil rights violations will be imagined, new vistas of anti-Americanism on campus will be discovered, and the attacks will continue.
It is unsurprising that a coalition of election deniers, Christian nationalists and supplement- and crypto-hawkers would have little regard for academic freedom, scientific progress and learning. It was always a stretch for Columbia to think a good-faith agreement was in the cards, but when the government is too often behaving unchecked by the law, the idea of a binding contract is a fantasy.
Columbia should recognize this agreement won’t placate the Project 2025 apparatchiks, and it should prepare accordingly. Donors and university leaders might consider moving more of the scholarly mission outside the United States, as the prestigious Central European University left Hungary for Vienna in response to Viktor Orban’s assault there. Using the still-phenomenal resources of U.S. elite higher education to stand up satellite campuses in still-liberal countries, and allowing joint degrees or classes abroad with schools in those countries (as Harvard has done with the University of Toronto), might be one, albeit extremely expensive, way to escape the assault of illiberal government. Or Columbia could follow Harvard to the Supreme Court. In either case, a poorer, smaller Columbia would at least still be a university committed to freedom of expression and academic autonomy.
Some colleagues and trustees might think that the terms will impose desirable changes on campus. Others might think that we will get at least some of the money back, and so the settlement is bearable. But I doubt the demands will stop at mandatory antisemitism trainings or requiring “balanced” educational offerings or immediate expulsions of student protesters, whatever you think of those things.
Thomas Hobbes, himself a higher educator, as tutor for the young Charles II, wrote, “Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.” But without any sword of its own, Columbia should not surrender its commitments to academic excellence and freedom in exchange for an unenforceable promise from the government. This deal will not stop the attacks, and right now, the best deal may have been none at all.
Suresh Naidu teaches economics and international and public affairs at Columbia University.
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