Ellie Park, Multimedia Managing Editor

On the first day of class in August, University President Maurie McInnis told the News she would spend the first 10 months of her presidency in meetings. She would hold hundreds of conversations with Yale’s stakeholders, listen to their concerns and use that information to define a vision for the future of the University.

She gave a date by which she would share that vision with the Yale community: her inaugural address, which she will deliver this Sunday, April 6, from the stage of Woolsey Hall. “We will have something that looks more like a vision speech,” McInnis said in August about the inauguration.

But in a Wednesday interview, McInnis said that because the climate of higher education has changed, she no longer plans to give such a speech.

“We are in a different and more complicated moment in terms of the public’s sense of higher education,” she said on Wednesday. “It’s a little bit more complicated time.”

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance LAW ’13 have painted universities as elite echo chambers that indoctrinate students, calling them “the enemy.” Since taking office, the Trump administration has sent higher education leaders into panic mode with threats to revoke hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to universities. Republicans in Congress have also proposed dramatic increases to the taxes levied on university endowments.

Wesley Whistle, a project director for higher education at think tank New America, said these attacks mean universities will abandon some plans and programs to avoid becoming political targets for funding cuts and to reduce operating costs.

“These attacks will inevitably stifle creativity and ambition within higher education,” Whistle said. “Programs and initiatives that could have driven meaningful change, particularly for marginalized communities, will be sidelined in an effort to maintain funding and, for many institutions, the doors open. It’s truly a shame that college and university presidents are pressing pause on initiatives.”

In a recent budget update, Yale announced that its spending for the 2026 fiscal year will be “far more constrained” in part because potential cuts to federal funding and higher endowment taxes “could have profoundly negative consequences on Yale’s finances,” McInnis wrote to the News. 

In a December interview, McInnis said that her office would design a process by the beginning of the spring semester to “deepen our listening” around five topics she earlier told the News she is focusing on. The University has not yet announced that process. In Wednesday’s interview, McInnis said that Yale administrators have spent much of their time dealing with federal policies and politics affecting higher education.

While some university presidents have spoken publicly about Trump, publishing articles opposing him or letters resisting his policies, McInnis’ approach to preserving Yale’s funding has been to avoid making statements about threats facing higher education. She has instead spent time and money lobbying lawmakers in Washington about the importance of Yale’s research to the country.

Katie Chang GRD ’27, a graduate student who sat on the inauguration planning committee, said that university leaders are facing tough decisions about how much they should say publicly.

“I sympathize because in my work as [Graduate Student Assembly] chair, there is a push and pull between advocating for students and making sure we do it in a way that doesn’t endanger the students we speak for or the representatives in our body,” Chang said. “So I understand it from that point of view.”

McInnis said her speech will now consist of reflections on Yale’s history, the values of the University and musings on its future.

Whistle argued that it is unclear what universities can do to avoid being targeted by the Trump administration. He said it is not worth attempting to appease the federal government if those attempts could be futile anyway.

“Obviously, university presidents are in a tough spot given the large amounts of research dollars they receive, but they shouldn’t cave to political coercion,” Whistle said. “They should be firm in defending academic freedom and transparent about what’s at stake.”

The installation ceremony begins at 11 a.m. on Sunday and will be livestreamed.