“We’re very proud of her, as is the economics department, the whole university,” James Madison College Senator Yael Aronoff said at the meeting. “We strongly support this.”

The resolution represents the first university body to throw its weight behind Cook, who is suing Trump, the board of governors and its chairman, Jerome Powell, after Trump said he fired her “for cause” on Aug. 25, citing allegations of mortgage fraud. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Trump cannot fire Cook for now.

Beyond the Faculty Senate resolution, the university has remained quiet regarding Cook, who worked at MSU for nearly two decades before being named to the Fed. A university spokesperson told The State News last month that she was unaware of any communication between MSU and Cook since her dispute with Trump began.

The university’s silence is in line with its strategy for dealing with the Trump administration. Amid an unprecedented attack on higher education that has seen the federal government leverage funding cuts, civil rights investigations and restrictive executive orders against universities, MSU has opted to act carefully and speak sparingly, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations among university leaders. One scholar of higher education characterized the strategy as a “very logical calculation” meant to keep MSU from becoming a target.

Discussions at the Tuesday meeting hinted that those concerns were also present among faculty members.

One faculty senator who was not visible in a video recording of the meeting said the statement would be received by Trump as an “obvious statement” against him and that the potential fallout from outwardly supporting Cook is “too risky” for the institution. 

The senator added that while Cook’s situation is “unfortunate,” it’s unrelated to MSU or her work at the university. Additionally, the actual impact the Faculty Senate’s resolution would have on Cook staying at the Fed would be “really minor,” the senator said.

While the resolution states that the Senate supports Cook “in her current role on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors” and the principle of due process, it makes no mention of the broader implications for the Fed’s independence that some have placed on the case.

Aronoff, the senator representing James Madison College, asked Senate Vice Chairperson John Aerni-Flessner if that omission was a “conscious decision” to avoid garnering Trump’s ire. Aerni-Flessner responded that the resolution drafters wanted to “steer away from litigating the facts” of the case and instead focus on supporting a faculty member in getting their constitutionally protected due process.

The drafters also wanted to avoid setting a precedent where the Faculty Senate is expected to weigh in on all court cases involving faculty members, Aerni-Flessner said.

Faculty senator Jack Lipton pointed out during the discussion that there was no fallout from the Faculty Senate passing a nonbinding resolution last spring calling on MSU to join a “mutual defense compact” to pool legal resources with other schools in the Big Ten Conference. That resolution specifically cited the Trump administration’s “legal, financial and political incursion” into higher education institutions as a reason for needing such collaboration.

“I really don’t think that we’re special enough for President Trump to go this far into the weeds,” Lipton said. “We did pass the mutual defense compact, and I don’t remember him coming after me.”