Letters to the Editor | Oct. 7, 2025

A lot has been made of the Trump administration’s offer to give the University of Pennsylvania preferential access to funding in exchange for giving the White House some say in tuition, hiring, etc. Whether or not Penn should sign on to this agreement or remain independent from government interference is one issue. There’s also another very important question that hasn’t been discussed.

Regarding the issue of taxpayer funded university research, I believe that Penn and other universities should not take federal taxpayer dollars that subsidize their research unless there is a way in which taxpayers are reimbursed for their investment when a successful breakthrough occurs.

The way things currently stand, taxpayers underwrite some portion of university research in the form of grants...fine. As such, we, the taxpayers, also underwrite some portion of the risk, and in many cases, there is no breakthrough.

When the research does lead to a potentially lucrative innovation, scientists and the university get paid — sometimes millions of dollars — but the taxpayers (read: schmucks), whose money helped underwrite some portion of the cost, don’t recoup any of their investment, much less profit from it.

This needs to change, and Congress must pass a law that clearly sends some fair portion of the proceeds of success back to the U.S. Treasury.

Until this happens, Penn and other universities should fund their research out of their own billion dollar endowments and assume 100% of the risk instead of laying some of it on the backs of the American taxpayer.

Steve Hirshenhorn, Maple Glen

In the face of the most recent extortionate demands from Trump intruding on faculty and student academic freedom at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn should heed the first principle of opposition in Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance — most of the power of authoritarians is freely given.” Penn must vigorously oppose this unprecedented subversion of free speech and the independence of universities.

The U.S. District Court decision in Boston found similar Trumpian interventions to be violative of the First Amendment, constituting unconstitutional coercion and retaliation, and violative of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Failure to exhaust every avenue of fighting back will be a nation-wide invitation to Trump to dictate what faculty can teach and say and render our universities a tool of a totalitarian regime.

Jonathan Stein, University of Pennsylvania Law School Class of 1967, Philadelphia

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As a Penn alum, I’m alarmed by the Trump administration’s attempt to influence hiring, admissions, and the curriculum at the university, as reported in the Inquirer.

The university should be ashamed of itself for having planted the seeds that led to this moment. Time and again, Penn has preemptively complied with fascism and allowed the right to tighten its chokehold on higher education and academic freedom. We saw this when Penn facilitated the witch hunt of Liz Magill in 2023, brought in the police to violently disband peaceful student protesters in 2024, and again this July when the university capitulated to the administration’s transphobic demands over trans athletes. For a school whose motto is “Laws without morals are useless,” Penn sure has shown that its own “morals” are nonexistent, or will be abandoned for the right price.

My only hope is that the university decides now is the moment to draw the line, and protect what is left of its reputation as one of top institutions of higher learning in this country.

Maya Afilalo, University of Pennsylvania Class of 2016, Philadelphia

I watched ICE jump-out boys swarm in on a man going to work at a local bodega parked on Frankford Avenue in Philadelphia at 6:37 a.m. Thursday morning as I was taking my daughter to school. Eight armed men in an unmarked black SUV with red and blue police lights pulled two men out of their truck to the ground and whisked them away with alarming speed. They were zip-tied and disappeared within seconds. All within the moments it takes for a street light to change. All I could think was “This can’t be the America we live in 2025.” It could have easily happened to me since I didn’t have my wallet or cellphone on me at the time. My daughter and I were shaken by what we witnessed. Who voted for this?

Katrina Patterson, Philadelphia

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