Spring semester at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, where I serve as president, began with the sound of helicopters on January 20 — one year after the second Trump inauguration, two weeks after the killing of Renee Good, and four days before the shooting of Alex Pretti.
Our campus in the heart of the city is seamlessly integrated with the surrounding neighborhood, so what happens in Minneapolis reaches into the heart of Augsburg. The city offers our students extraordinary opportunities for learning and service; in every discipline, the city acts as an extension of the classroom.
The reverse is also true, and what is happening in higher education and in our city right now is unprecedented — a word that has risked losing its meaning through overexposure. Yet I don’t know how else to describe how profoundly the so-called “Operation Metro Surge” has affected our students, faculty, staff, neighbors and community.
A sense of danger and anxiety permeates Minneapolis. The ongoing federal operation in our streets, the targeting of immigrant communities and the killings of U.S. citizens by federal agents raise profound questions about what justice looks like in practice.
I often think about what this moment means for all of us who serve as college presidents. I firmly believe that we have been called to stand for the historic values that have defined higher education in our democracy for more than 250 years.
Those values — human dignity, academic freedom, social mobility and the rule of law —must be our North Star no matter what challenges we face.
I sincerely hope my colleagues around the country will not face the distressing challenges we have experienced here in Minneapolis. But if they do, perhaps there is something to be learned from our story about what it means to be called to lead in a moment such as this.
Aside from the helicopters, spring term opened with an unusual quiet on campus. Many more students than usual opted for online classes: After Good was killed, Augsburg immediately pivoted to increase virtual options for students — adding several new online course offerings and increasing caps on existing online courses.
For some, this decision is about personal safety; others are caring for siblings or family members after a parent was taken by ICE. Some had no choice but to take a temporary leave of absence for the spring; others moved into emergency housing on campus to avoid the risks of a daily commute.
In this fraught time, our goal is prioritizing in-person learning as much as possible, while allowing individuals the flexibility to make the best choices they can for their own circumstances. This calculus looks different for every student, faculty member and staffer.
This work is ongoing, and our academic advisors continue to meet one-on-one with students to navigate the thorny problem of making satisfactory academic progress in a time of personal and collective crisis.
At Augsburg, as on many college campuses throughout the U.S. that serve a large number of low-income and first-generation students from diverse backgrounds, these questions are not hypothetical. Our students have been stopped and interrogated by agents in unmarked cars while crossing from one campus building to the next.
Many of our Somali American neighbors — including those with citizenship or legal status — are afraid to go out in public, fearing harassment, detainment, or worse. Swatting attacks that have targeted educational institutions around the Twin Cities
have prompted multiple evacuations of campus buildings.
Most chillingly, ICE has detained several Augsburg students, including one on campus following a tense confrontation with armed agents in early December.
Navigating all of this has been relentless and exhausting. As with any community, Augsburg students, faculty, and staff have diverse viewpoints, including about how best to respond to our current moment.
But a truth we hold in common is that education is resistance — not to any political party or administration, but to the forces of dehumanization, violence, and injustice, wherever they are deployed.
I am not naïve enough to believe that simply being educated in a university with a deep commitment to the liberal arts will cultivate in the hearts of students that love of the world and their neighbors; they each must make that choice.
But for better or worse, the city is our classroom. Our students are receiving a crash course in what my colleague Najeeba Syeed calls a “lived theology of neighborliness.”
In the midst of this crisis, we know that educating students for lives of service has been our core purpose for 157 years. This moment, while difficult, is one we are called to meet in the long arc of higher education’s role in our democracy. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
Paul C. Pribbenow is the president of Augsburg University.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about Minneapolis and ICE raids was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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