The following is the transcript of an interview with Ted Carter, The Ohio State University president, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on July 27, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Columbus, Ohio and the president of The Ohio State University, Ted Carter. President Carter, welcome to ‘Face The Nation.’
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT TED CARTER: Margaret, good to be with you on this Sunday from Columbus, Ohio.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I wanted to ask you very directly about these Trump administration claims that Ohio State is one of 60 universities that they deemed may have antisemitic practices and policies on campus. They say you’re being investigated for them and for failing to end diversity policies, which could be a violation of the Civil Rights Act. What’s the status of the probes? And how much pressure are you under?
CARTER: To be quite frank, I’m not feeling a lot of pressure. Our understanding is we’re on those lists because we had been previously on those lists under the Biden administration. We had been working with the Office of Civil Rights during that administration, and I think mostly that was a holdover. We are more than happy to talk to anybody from the Office of Civil Rights. We stand behind our actions. We know how we acted during the time of the protests. We never had an encampment here at Ohio State. We had some attempted we didn’t allow that, and that’s our long-standing rules on the Oval, which is the centerpiece of our campus. So I’m confident that as this plays out forward, that we’re going to be just fine.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Trump administration did publish Ohio State on the list of universities it’s probing, and when you look at some of the issues they’ve raised at other places, you look at the result of freezing $3 billion in contracts at Harvard, $1 billion at Cornell, hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding at universities like Brown. Are you worried that your federal funds could be in jeopardy because of this?
CARTER: Well, like I always say to my staff and my people, if we do the right things for the right reasons, everything will play out. And we’ve been doing it that way since I’ve been here since 1 January of 2024. Our research funding here at Ohio State has grown leaps and bounds over the last couple years. We’re actually ranked number 11 in the country, ahead of Harvard, ahead of UNC Chapel Hill. Our revenues last year were $1.6 billion, 775 million of that came from the federal government, largely in NIH and NSF. As we sit here today, we’ve had some research grants impacted, but in the tens of millions of dollars, nothing like you’re seeing at our Ivy League colleagues, and a lot of that is still in litigation. So I can’t even tell you what the number of dollars that we may lose, but against the $1.6 billion it’s pretty small, even though it’s had some impact on some of our researchers. Unlike some of our counterparts, we have a significant research arm here, 14,000 faculty, post doc students, that do the research here. And it is significant. It goes way beyond the numbers and the dollars. It’s what it’s what it’s doing for the community, what it’s doing to extend and save and change lives, and what it’s doing in agriculture, what it’s doing for our police force. So what I would tell you is, at this moment today- even compared to where we were last year, we’re still up in our research revenue about 7% from where we were last year, and we’re- we’re- we’re proceeding to ask for more grants so that we can be a cancer free world here in our lifetime.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we all hope for that future, sir, but you sound not to be concerned. But I did read that earlier when you had the buckeyes football team at the White House earlier in the year- and that was well covered, the Wall Street Journal said you told President Trump and Vice President Vance that quote, Ohio State is not the enemy. Why did you feel you had to say that? What did you mean?
CARTER: Well, that might have been taken a little bit out of context. I kind of said that in jest, a little bit to the vice president when I had a chance to meet with him, and we had a long conversation. It was a very productive conversation. I won’t go into all the details, but the point is, they know that Ohio State is doing the right things for the right reasons. I have said publicly that I believe the future of higher education is going to go through the large public land grant flagship institutions like the Ohio State University, I look at what we’re doing today, and yes, like many other universities, there’s a lot of concern about the future, what’s coming out of the federal government, even what’s coming out of our state government here in Ohio. But right now, I feel like we can still play defense, still understand how to adjust, kind of make sure that we’re getting our bat on the ball, so to speak, in playing defense and protecting the plate, but we’re also looking at how we can play offense. This is a time where institutions like Ohio State, we are very financially secure. We’re actually looking to invest in ourselves. I just reflect on the graduation ceremony that we just had this past May. We produce about 18,000 In graduates a year. But at that ceremony, we graduated 12,400- all of them, by the way, got their diploma that day that they earned. And 90% of those students- 90% already had a job or they were going to another higher academic endeavor. And 70% of those undergraduate students are staying in the state of Ohio. 66% of the PhD and masters are staying in the state of Ohio. This is a wonderful workforce development program. That is what is raising the confidence of Ohioans and the American public in higher education, and that is starting to change.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Vice President Vance was on this program a number of times- and one of them when he was still a senator. I spoke to him about his views on higher education. He’s an Ohio State alum, undergrad, and he said he believes universities- he wasn’t speaking of yours, but he said universities are ‘controlled by left wing foundations,’ and they’re going in the wrong direction. Do you think he has a point?
CARTER: I think higher education has started to build that reputation. And you can even see that in the Gallup-Lumina polls. You know, I was the superintendent of the Naval Academy from 2014 to 2019 you know, and that Gallup poll in 2015 said that nearly 60% of Americans had high confidence in post-secondary education. Now go ahead and just move that needle nine years forward, and yet, two in three Americans said they did not have confidence in higher education. That’s a really bad mark. Americans were saying higher education costs too much. They were saying that the return on investment was difficult to prove. They even were saying some of the research being done may not impact them or their families. And yes, there was this conversation about the potential indoctrination of students, or that institutions were leaning very liberal. You know, we as administrators of higher education maybe ought to listen to the American public and say, maybe we haven’t always gotten it right. So I’m here to say, here at the Ohio State University, we have paid attention to that. We are making efforts to make affordability a key issue for students. I mentioned that graduating class, 57% of those undergraduates left with zero debt. Zero debt. And the other 43% that left with debt was less than $24,000. And as we look across our hiring practices, I have 8,500 faculty. It is the best group of faculty I have ever worked with in my 12 years of leading in higher and that’s saying quite a bit. I will tell you that as we hire the future, we’re looking across the entire political spectrum for who we hire.
MARGARET BRENNAN: On that point, you talked about what happened at the state level. The Republican controlled state legislature passed a law that eliminates the diversity programs, it does a number of things. But it also requires professors to post their course syllabus- syllabi online and their contact information. Do you think that this is meant to intimidate? Are you concerned? Is your faculty concerned about the focus on what they’re doing?
CARTER: Yes, I have talked to our faculty through our faculty senate and our leadership. There are some concerns, of course, because we’ve not done that before. We’ve got some time before we implement that. We have put all the pieces of Senate Bill 1 which is the General Assembly’s bill here in the state of Ohio, into the implementation phase. We’re still working through some of the details, but let me tell you the principles of academic freedom, what is taught in the classroom, the move towards scholarly pursuit, the research that we do here at Ohio State, those are things that we are still very passionate about, and I know that we’re going to continue that work, and yet we’ll still follow the law. We’ll still follow some of the federal policies that are coming out. We’re ready and prepared to do all of that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: To that point, you saw what Columbia University did this week in paying the $200 million fine to settle their dispute with the Trump administration, they also agreed to an outside monitor to assure the school complies with stamping out diversity programs. Does this precedent trouble you? I mean- would you take a deal like that?
CARTER: Well, I can’t speak to those institutions because I’m not leading them. I know both President Shipman and some of the other Ivy League presidents are colleagues, and they’re having to do I think what I would call be in survival mode. Quite frankly, we’re not going through any of that here at Ohio State, and nor do I think that we will. I mean, obviously we have a new state law. We’re a public institution, so that means we’re going to be transparent and put out everything that we do so the state of Ohio, the people and the entire country can see it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will watch to see what happens. Good luck to you, sir. We’ll be right back.