Professor Soucek Talks to Boston Globe About Pressure on Yale to Reject Trump’s Demands

Professor Brian Soucek spoke to the Boston Globe for a July 16 story headlined “At Yale, pressure mounts to follow Harvard’s lead against Trump.”

Yale’s leaders and Donald Trump’s administration are negotiating behind closed doors to reach a resolution regarding the government’s claims the university discriminates in its admissions decisions, the Globe reports. A growing coalition of Yale students, faculty and alumni are urging the university o fight the Trump administration—in court, if necessary. (Harvard has sued over demands made by the government.)

Soucek told the newspaper that a resolution with the Justice Department would signal that Yale is validating the administration’s narrow view.

 “When you resist, the administration steps back and has to try new tactics,” Soucek said. “That’s important when a school as rich and powerful and well reported on as Yale or Harvard makes that kind of move.”

Professor Brian Soucek is a constitutional law scholar and philosopher of art whose work ranges from equality and free speech law, to academic freedom, to topics at the intersection of law and aesthetics. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Mark R. Kravitz in Connecticut, and Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Professor Soucek is a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow. He is the author of The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education published by the University of Chicago Press.