Rector’s advice for travel to the US underestimates the threat

As a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, it is deeply concerning to read Rector David Dreyer Lassen’s extremely cautious statement in the University Post regarding the situation facing universities in the United States — and the University of Copenhagen’s (UCPH) relationship to this situation.

The rector’s advice is to think carefully about what’s on your computer and phone before travelling to the US, and to ensure your department head is informed.

This seems overly muted, and possibly even reckless.

We haven’t seen the worst yet

We are dealing with a country where disappearances have become commonplace — researchers have already been affected. Students with legal residency are having their status revoked without being notified. Universities are being pressured to comply with demands from far-right political actors, and visitors to the US risk being detained for weeks without explanation.

We are also dealing with a regime unrestrained by moral limits. We still don’t know how far the US government is willing to go. Already, we’ve seen US embassies attempt to pressure local service providers into bowing to the Trump administration’s declared opposition to equality, diversity, and inclusion — in direct violation of the laws of the countries where these embassies are based.

And we can be fairly sure that the worst is yet to come. As absurd as it may sound, we risk a US invasion of Greenland. There is every reason to believe that the Trump administration is willing to use almost anything as a pressure tactic in that context.

The unimaginable

I do not agree with David Dreyer Lassen’s assessment that the developments in the university sector could not have been at least partially anticipated. We’ve seen similar patterns play out elsewhere — for instance, in Hungary. And during Trump’s first term, public authorities in the US were dramatically gagged. But there is good reason to pay attention when the rector says the following:

»We all read the news and can see that US universities are currently under enormous pressure, undermining both arm’s length principles and academic freedoms. If you go back two years, I don’t think anyone could have imagined these kinds of full-blown attacks on universities that we’re now seeing in the US,«

This naturally prompts the question: If things have already happened that were unimaginable two years ago — isn’t it time we start getting a bit better at imagining things?

A few ‘unrealistic’ scenarios

What do we do, for example, when Professor X — who the department head knows is in Boston for a conference carrying only a nearly empty laptop and phone — suddenly disappears and turns up in some detention centre where UCPH has no access to her? Was the advice to proceed with the trip as planned but with a ‘clean’ computer really sufficient?

Sound unrealistic? The rector himself has acknowledged that things we couldn’t imagine two years ago are now reality.

What do we do if the US government seizes control of US software firms and then mandates that iPhones, OneDrive, Windows, EndNote, Excel and Word may only be used by universities whose researchers steer clear of topics like gender, race, climate change, Russian imperialism, African American history — or, for that matter, Danish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade? Have we prepared adequately for that? Researchers at Utrecht University flagged the issue long ago and called on their leadership to take action.

What if the condition is that we officially deadname [Insist on using transgender students’ birth names, even when they have requested otherwise, ed.] our non-binary and transgender students — or that researchers who have written critically about Trump on social media, perhaps even in harsh terms (I can think of at least one) — be fired?

We may already be behind

Sound unrealistic? The rector has told us that things once unimaginable are now happening.

So perhaps it’s time we start imagining more — and taking precautions accordingly. Most measures can likely be implemented in ways that are effective and may even benefit the university. Just look at Aarhus municipality, where significant savings have been made by switching to an alternative European cloud provider.

If those precautions turn out to be unnecessary, then that’s a fortunate outcome. But we must be far better prepared if they aren’t. And it is certainly not too early to start — in fact, we may already be behind.