UD President Absent from Presidents’ Letter to Trump
A letter from college and university presidents to President-Elect Trump asks Trump “to condemn and work to prevent the harassment, hate, and acts of violence that are being perpetrated across our nation”.
Signed by Harry Lee Williams, President, Delaware State University, and over 150 other university presidents, Dennis Assanis, the president of the University of Delaware has not signed the letter.
Here is the letter in full.
Dear President-elect Trump,
As do you, we “seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict.” In order to maintain the trust required for such productive engagement, it is essential that we immediately reaffirm the core values of our democratic nation: human decency, equal rights, freedom of expression, and freedom from discrimination. As college and university presidents, we commit ourselves to promoting these values on our campuses and in our communities, and we stand alongside the business, nonprofit, religious, and civic leaders who are doing the same in organizations large and small.
In light of your pledge to be “President for all Americans,” we urge you to condemn and work to prevent the harassment, hate, and acts of violence that are being perpetrated across our nation, sometimes in your name which is now synonymous with our nation’s highest office. In our schools, on job sites and college campuses, on public streets and in coffee shops, members of our communities, our children, our families, our neighbors, our students, and our employees are facing very real threats, and are frightened.
One of the roles of leaders is to protect and empower the most vulnerable. As President-elect, this responsibility rests heavily on you. Let this be a mark of your leadership.
You don’t become one of the five highest paid University Presidents in the country by picking fights.
You get the position by kissing ass. How is this guy’s name pronounced, Ass-anus?
By the way, it may come to DSU needing some help standing for this. You guys may or may not know about the Dreamers’ Program, which is completely privately funded by an angel billionaire. It gives full ride scholarships to undocumented students brought to America as children, and who went through K-12 right here–have essentially lived here all their lives. But they cannot qualify for loans, grants, or any form of State or Federal support for higher ed. So the Dreamers Program pays for their full ride.
Last year DSU was one of only two institutions in the entire nation to sign up for this, thanks to Dr. Williams literally browbeating our Board of Trustees into doing it. We took 34 Dreamers. At the end of their first semester the average Dreamer GPA is 3.76 (the lowest was 3.44 and seven of them achieved 4.0s). This year there are six colleges nationwide participating, and about 150 Dreamers total; DSU is far and away the first choice (57 selected us as first choice; 49 as second choice), and we are committed to taking as many of them as would like to come here.
But there’s clouds on the horizons–not just the potential for deportations. A truly venal US Department of Education could make a big issue of allowing them to reside on campus (even paying cash) because of the Federal funds we receive, and could move to force us to exclude them from the residence halls. We are lining up contingency places for them to stay if this happens. There are a number of issues like that threatening these students, and while DSU is working pro-actively (and more radically and aggressively than I have ever seen) on behalf of these kids, there may come a time when we need a groundswell of support from Delaware itself.
I will let you know if that happens, and I hope we can count on that support.
End of public service announcement. Back to asking why the President of UD lacks the cojones of other higher ed leaders.
“asking why the President of UD lacks the cojones of other higher ed leaders.”
Because they’re kept in a small jar on John Cochran’s desk.