“I strongly counsel against anticipatory compliance, which is a fancy way of saying bowing down and bending the knee,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said.
In a seminar hosted by the university’s chapter of the Central State Universities-American Association of University Professors, the topic of discussion was the battles higher education is currently facing against President Donald Trump and his administration, on Sept. 15 in Alumni Hall.
Central Connecticut State University’s CSU-AAUP chapter works as a union to advocate on behalf of faculty and staff and serves as an intermediary between academic freedom and federal legislation.
Attorney General Tong, a Democrat, is a native of Hartford and received his Doctor of Laws at the University of Chicago Law School. He is the 25th attorney general to serve Connecticut and has been serving the state since 2019.
Tong not only spoke about the preventative measures campuses should use to stunt losing certain freedoms but also aboutthe use of President Trump’s powers.
“They [the current administration] are trying to intimidate and bully us into submission, into a world view that frankly, before eight months ago wasn’t even conservative, wasn’t even marginal, it’s fringe,” he said.
Tong went into detail about just how far he can reach.
“The states delegated limited powers to the federal government and retained every other power; that’s the tenth Amendment. The Constitution does not give the President the authority to tell a public university that is part of the sovereign state of Connecticut how to teach, what to teach, how to conduct its affairs, period. Which is why they try to get us in other ways.”
While the Constitution has large implications on what is in the realm of possibility, social movements are now changing the trajectory of what it means to go to college in the future.
Michael Bartone, an education professor and Executive Committee member of the CSU-AAUP, said he is worried that Central is heading in the wrong direction.
“It’s not just until it happens to me,” he said. “They are currently scrubbing the word ‘diversity’ from our [CCSU] history. Thinking about the professor in Texas who is facing backlash for what he was teaching, he was being filmed by a student in the middle of class, and he was saying things like, “That’s against the President’s law.” There’s no such thing.”
Bartone isn’t the only professor on campus who is concerned about the compromise of values.
Fiona Pearson, a sociology professor at CCSU and Council Representative of CSU-AAUP, said preventative measures start with action.
“Awareness is so important to stay prepared,” she said. “Things like paying attention to what’s going on around you and being involved are how you start enacting change.”
