Obama characterized the Trump administration’s actions as an attack on First Amendment rights, and suggested universities aren’t doing enough to combat the White House’s initiatives, saying he was “deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.” 

He continued to urge academia chiefs not to comply with the White House’s demands, even if it means losing federal funding.

“If you are a university, you may have to say… are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?” Obama said. “If not and you’re just being intimidated, you should be able to say, well that’s why we’ve got this big endowment. You know, we’ll stand up for what we believe in, and we’ll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment, and we’ll give up the extra wing or the fancy gymnasium.”

Obama’s warning comes as several top academic institutions, including Harvard, Columbia University, and the University of California, Los Angeles, have conceded they have not conducted a “perfect” response to antisemitism on campuses and rolled out campaigns to further protect Jewish students.

Obama also spoke to some of the country’s leading law firms that the White House cut ties with over concerns they had become partisan machines weaponizing the legal system against conservatives and Trump. Several of those firms, including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher, negotiated their way back into Trump’s good graces with deals that pledged to “be fair and nonpartisan for all” and represent the “full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society, whether ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal.’”

Obama slammed the White House for cutting ties with the firms, which included prohibiting any government contracts with Weiss’ law firm. However, he also called on the groups to “stand for a principle” and suggested negotiations with Trump were unacceptable. 

“The idea that a White House can say to law firms, if you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively…that kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans,” he said. “Yeah, if you’re a law firm being threatened, you might have to say ‘ok we will lose some business because we’re going to stand for a principle.’”

On the same day Obama called for mounted resistance against the Trump administration, former Vice President Kamala Harris similarly bemoaned “organizations staying quiet” and urged people to “stand with courage” against the White House.

TRUMP EXECUTIVE ACTIONS TARGET FEDERAL AGENCIES, ‘HARMFUL’ BIDEN ORDERS, AND PAUL WEISS LAW FIRM

“We are seeing organizations stay quiet. We are seeing those who are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats. And these are the things that we are witnessing each day in the last few months in our country, and it understandably creates a great sense of fear,” Harris, who ran a losing campaign against Trump during the 2024 presidential election, said.

“When a few stand with the courage, that is the courage exhibited by the leaders in this room every day, to have the courage to say, ‘I feel fear,’ the courage to say, ‘what is happening is wrong,’ the courage to say, ‘there is a way we must chart to get through this,’” she continued.  “Understanding our power in the democracy we still have if we hold on to it. Courage is contagious.”