Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In the troubled modern academic landscape, one in which the Trump administration is undermining the independence of countless universities, a troubling trend is emerging: Some universities are asserting the right to retroactively revoke degrees in response to students’ political activism.
Most recently, Columbia University has come under fire for revoking degrees and issuing expulsions to students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, including the high-profile occupation of Hamilton Hall, dubbed “Hind’s Hall” in honor of killed Palestinian 6-year-old Rajab Hind, in early 2025. These actions, which followed threats from the federal government to withhold funding, represent a dangerous fusion of institutional overreach and political coercion. Allowing universities to weaponize and politicize education undermines the very systems of education the minds of our country are built upon.
A university diploma is not a wholehearted endorsement of a student’s political views or an approval of a student’s particular moral scale; it’s a certification which signifies the completion of academic work. A diploma doesn’t make comments on every possible facet of a person. Instead, it reflects upon years of study, sleepless nights, rigorous coursework, and often crippling financial investment.
In the US, students frequently take on tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in order to earn a degree. To revoke that credential, for reasons related not to academic dishonesty or fraud but instead political expression or protest, amounts to a theft of labor, time and money.
Academic dishonesty and fraud provide clear grounds for revocation of a diploma; they show an explicit violation of the trust upon which the student-university relationship functions, which provides grounds to break that same contract. A university education is meant to create and mold independent, intellectual moral actors; students develop political ideologies and moral frameworks using their education, a testament to their agency and capability. Revoking a diploma for disagreements around those moral frameworks discredits both the education provided and the institution which provided that education.
What makes the Columbia case even more alarming is the clear evidence of administrators having caved to improper government pressure. This is more than just a case of a university enforcing ex-post-facto discipline on shaky moral grounds; it is an institution bending to the whims of state power and punishing students as proxies in the government’s agenda. Universities ought to be centers of thought and learning, independent from the ever-changing political tides. When universities act at the behest of governments, they cease to be the forefront of critical thought and learning and transform into instruments of state control.
The message universities send by revoking diplomas? Students, past, present, and future, are not the leaders of tomorrow; instead, they’re mindless slaves held at gunpoint with their diploma as a hostage. This dynamic doesn’t just make students beholden to their universities, it makes them slave to government interests as well. The implicit message is said aloud: Your degree is conditional, not just on your academic performance, but on your willingness to toe the line politically. Allowing universities to revoke 400 thousand dollar, 4 year diplomas at a whim brings a dystopian story to our reality. Universities become tools of subordination, and students live under the threat that any deviation from institutional or governmental orthodoxy can erase their academic achievements.
This is incompatible with the core mission of higher education. Universities should be spaces for intellectual challenge, dissent, and exploration. A society where a graduate fears retroactive punishment for lawful political expression is not a free society, it’s a subjugated one. Education should empower individuals to think critically and act independently, not create a class of obedient citizens bound by fear.
When it comes to political beliefs or actions unrelated to academic misconduct, the line must be firm: the university’s role ends at the classroom door. Education ought not be weaponized. A diploma is an earned achievement, not a conditional privilege that can be stripped away on a whim.
If this power continues to grow unchecked, we risk turning universities into moral enforcers and political agents, institutions not of learning, but of control. To keep our society free, universities need to be strong — and free.
