Last week, Northwestern University officials betrayed their campus and reached an agreement with the Trump administration, paying $75 million to gain access to nearly a billion dollars in research funds illegally and immorally seized by a regime of antisemites and their apologists who mockingly pretend to care about protecting Jewish students from antisemitism. Along with the massive extortion payment came a long list of often bizarre demands that NU has agreed to.

It is common to describe these agreements as a surrender to the Trump regime, but it’s actually much worse. This isn’t capitulation; it’s collaboration. This is complicity, not compulsion.

Northwestern officials made an agreement with the Trump administration, not because they were forced to, but because they wanted to do it.

Even after Harvard won the lawsuits it (and the American Association of University Professors) filed against the Trump regime and had its funding restored, Northwestern officials refused to file a lawsuit. Why wouldn’t a university try to get its money restored, if only to improve its negotiating position? Bowing down before the Trump administration only makes sense as a strategy when both sides share the same goals. These agreements allow administrators to impose tighter controls over almost every aspect of campus life.

In October, Northwestern faculty voted 595 to 4 against “any capitulation on the part of Northwestern University to these or similar demands that undermine constitutional rights, democratic principles, faculty governance, institutional autonomy, and academic freedom.” While these Trump agreements are deeply unpopular with students, faculty and most alumni, many wealthy donors and trustees applaud them—and that’s whom top administrators work for.

The Trump regime and NU administrators share a common vision of the university as a hierarchical institution run from the top down, with students and faculty forced to obey rather than participating in a system of shared governance.

One demand from the Trump administration that NU officials were apparently pleased to agree to was the complete elimination of the 2024 Deering Meadow agreement. The Deering Meadow agreement promised minor reforms in order to end an encampment by protesters—a model of how colleges could listen to students and take reasonable measures that reinforced the values of the campus. Conservative critics across the country denounced then-president Michael Schill for daring to negotiate with student protesters and eventually forced his resignation this fall in retaliation.

The Northwestern agreement includes a long list of right-wing demands related to race, sex and politics. Some of the requirements almost seem sarcastic: “Northwestern will also develop training materials to socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.” It’s bizarre to see government and campus officials uniting to attack free inquiry—and then require NU to “socialize” foreigners into the ideas of “open debate” forsaken by this same agreement.

The agreement allows Northwestern to sue in federal court—the same right to sue that Northwestern has always had and refused to follow. If Northwestern was too fearful to sue the Trump administration for the blatantly illegal withholding of its contracted funds, why would Northwestern suddenly gather the courage to resist the Trump regime by filing a lawsuit over a violation of this agreement? The same logic of cowardice will certainly continue to operate; the same fear of further retaliation by the Trump administration will continue to justify inaction.

And while the agreement requires the Trump administration to sue in federal court to enforce its provisions, nothing in the agreement prevents the Trump administration from investigating new false complaints of antisemitism to justify additional penalties against Northwestern, or from freezing funding on obviously illegal grounds once again.

Before, Northwestern was on solid legal ground to challenge the illegal actions of the Trump administration. But under this agreement, Northwestern is obligated to obey a long list of commands from the Trump regime and could be punished for almost anything: a protester who is not disciplined, a trans woman who uses the women’s bathroom, a student admitted who mentions their identity in an application. Northwestern is relying on the good faith of faithless ideologues, hoping that unprincipled hacks in the Trump regime will suddenly adhere to legal principles.

Until administrators suffer the consequences of an alumni and campus backlash, they will continue bowing down to the Trump administration, sacrificing academic freedom every time they are forced to choose between free speech and the spigot of money.

Students, faculty, staff and alumni need to create a subversive alternative university lurking within the shadows of the university itself. This shadow university is essential because trustees, administrators and wealthy donors ultimately control the structure of universities.

The first step is financial: encouraging alumni to cut off all donations to the university. The problem is that when progressive donors withhold money, progressive causes at the university will tend to suffer the most. So the solution is to create a shadow fund, an independent nonprofit that alumni can donate to continue support for these goals. In the case of Northwestern, it could include independent funding for efforts being banned in the Trump agreement.

One version of this was endorsed by Jacqueline Stevens, president of the NU AAUP chapter, in a Nov. 29 press release: “We encourage concerned alumni to withhold from NU money to pay off Trump’s extortion and to donate to the AAUP Foundation, which is successfully supporting litigation in defense of academic freedom.”

A shadow fund allows a boycott of Northwestern without harming its students and faculty, and it also creates an incentive for the university to change its approach in order to gain access to the funds it is losing. A shadow fund provides a real measure of the effectiveness of the boycott.

The goal of the shadow fund is not to relieve a university of the obligation to support dissenting ideas. It’s important to remember that students, faculty and staff are the soul of the university and they need to be funded by it. Whenever student fees or departmental funds can go to support free expression of dissenting ideas, they should be used for that legitimate purpose without apology. But if a university is defunding controversial ideas, the shadow fund can help restore some essential activities and events.

Student organizations are a crucial part of any shadow university, because they can reserve rooms for events and request funding without being subjected to the same kinds of administrative control that staff and faculty often face. Whenever possible, coalitions of student groups should cosponsor the activities of the shadow university, even if additional money from a shadow fund is needed.

Universities have always had a dangerous contradiction at their core: Students and faculty are the soul of the university, giving it the lifeblood of activities and ideas. But trustees, administrators and donors are the power controlling the university.

When administrators fulfill their duty to protect academic freedom, then there is no conflict between the power and the soul of a university. But when top officials stray from this fundamental obligation and seek to impose their ideas on the university and banish their enemies, then the power and the soul are at odds. That’s when a shadow university is necessary, to provide alternative voices outside the power structure of the administration.

The fear that wealthy donors and powerful politicians would end up controlling the university and destroy academic freedom has always been an alarming prospect for advocates of academic freedom. But for most of the history of higher education in America, this fear has been kept in check by norms, policies, laws and the tremendous value created by free universities. Today, those norms are in tatters, policies are discarded on a whim, laws are ignored by a criminal regime and the value of higher education is seen as a liability by political hacks who view the world solely in terms of how it helps their partisan goals.

We need shadow universities to preserve academic values and academic freedom at a time when they are under attack by government officials and campus administrators.