How Penn caved to Trump’s authoritarianism when administrators erased Lia Thomas

Nice university you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

That’s what the Trump administration has essentially been saying to my own employer, the University of Pennsylvania, regarding our decisions about trans female swimmer Lia Thomas. Back in April, the White House warned us that we risked losing federal funding if we didn’t strip Thomas of her records and apologize to swimmers who lost to her.

On Tuesday, we caved. And we will never live that down.

A university is supposed to be a place where free and untrammeled minds search for the truth, as best they can discern it. But in this sordid episode, we put all of that aside. Money talked, and everything else walked.

Let me be clear: Reasonable people can and do differ about whether Penn should have allowed Thomas to compete on its women’s swim team back in 2021 and 2022. It’s a complicated question, and I still don’t know how to answer it.

But here’s what I do know: We should not have capitulated to the White House by removing Thomas’ individual swimming records and promising to apologize to athletes who might have been harmed by her participation on the women’s squad.

We did win a reprieve from the government, which agreed to restore the $175 million in grants that it paused back in March because Thomas had competed on the women’s team. But what does it profit a university if it gains the whole world of federal dollars and loses its own soul?

» READ MORE: What trans athlete Lia Thomas teaches us about fairness | Opinion

As president J. Larry Jameson noted in his letter to the Penn community, the university was following NCAA eligibility rules — and the federal Title IX law, “as then interpreted” — when it let Thomas swim on the women’s team. Jameson went on to write that “some student athletes were disadvantaged by these rules,” and he pledged to apologize to them.

You read that right: Penn is going to apologize for following the law.

To be sure, some laws are unjust. Slavery was legal across the United States when the nation was born. Women were mostly barred from voting and from inheriting property. And millions of Black Americans were segregated in communities and schools — again, by law — until the civil rights era.

Universities were deeply implicated in all of these matters. And, to their credit, many of them have acknowledged the same and promised to make amends. Most notably, Georgetown University apologized for its role in the 1838 sale of 272 enslaved African Americans to pay off a debt at the school. Together with the Jesuits, the religious society that founded Georgetown, the university also gave $27 million to a foundation that assists descendants of the people who were sold.

Meanwhile, students at Georgetown voted to add a new fee each semester of $27.20 per student, and to donate the proceeds to healthcare and education programs in Maryland and Louisiana, where many of the known descendants of the 272 enslaved people now live.

One day, allowing Thomas to swim on the women’s team might be viewed as a profound injustice, as well. But in the here and now, most students, faculty, and administrators at Penn don’t see it that way. We’re not apologizing because we think we did something wrong. We’re apologizing to save our own skins.

That’s understandable, but it’s also deeply cynical. It’s the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian countries, where you have to echo the party line to stay in the government’s good graces.

Penn is going to apologize for following the law.

Ditto for Penn’s decision to restore individual records and titles to female athletes who lost to Thomas, as the Trump administration had demanded. By Tuesday afternoon, our website already showed other athletes owning the school’s top times in Thomas’ events.

You might argue that’s fair and just, given the physical advantages Thomas enjoyed. And you might be right. Like I said, it’s an open question.

But there is no question — none — about why Penn made this call: to avoid the wrath of Donald Trump. And that’s what I call cowardice.

In his letter announcing the agreement that Penn reached with the Trump administration, Jameson said that he remains “dedicated to preserving and advancing the University’s vital and enduring mission.” I’m sure he does. But if that mission includes an unwavering quest for truth, the agreement made a mockery of it. Shame on us.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of “The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America” and eight other books.