HANOVER — More than 300 Dartmouth College alumni have signed an open letter urging President Sian Beilock and other school leaders to take a stand against the Trump administration’s “efforts to chill free speech on college campuses.”

Among the signatories is Martha Hennessey, a longtime former state senator who grew up in Hanover and graduated in 1976 from Dartmouth, where she recalled protesting the Vietnam War.

“It was an important part of my undergrad experience,” Hennessey said in an interview this week.

Then-Dartmouth President John Kemeney, would engage with students and invite them to his office to discuss their demands, Hennessey said.

“I wish the current college administration, especially the president, was more visibly involved and actively involved in coming out to (talk to) students while they’re protesting,” Hennessey said. “That’s how it has been in the past.”

Hennessey, along with 325 of her fellow alumni, signed the letter written by Hanover resident Scott Brown, who graduated from the college in 1978.

The one-paragraph letter sent to Beilock and the Board of Trustees on Monday morning reads: “As alumni of Dartmouth College, we are deeply disturbed by Trump Administration efforts to chill free speech on college campuses and restrict academic freedom by arresting students for exercising their right to free expression and withholding funds from schools which teach courses on subjects that are contrary to the views of the Administration. We are troubled by the apparent willingness of college leaders to acquiesce, and we are concerned that recent statements from President Beilock calling for ‘restraint in speaking out on current events unrelated to our academic mission’ reflect timidity in the face of Trump Administration pressure. There is nothing more closely related to Dartmouth’s academic mission than academic freedom, and little that calls more loudly for unrestrained opposition.”

After reading Beilock’s March 31 letter to the Dartmouth community titled “Embracing Difference and Affirming Our Values,” which says the college’s “academic mission and core values remain the same” and it will not take sides on political matters, Brown said he knew he wanted to draft a statement about the college’s position.

“This is an issue that neutrality is timidity,” he said in a phone interview.

Brown circulated his letter to several classmates, and after about nine days, he had collected hundreds of signatures.

“I expected a lot of people to sign on,” Brown said. “I think people who care about academic freedom and their Dartmouth experience should care about this issue.”

Last week, Harvard became the first university to openly defy the Trump Administration as it demands sweeping changes to limit activism on campus. The university announced Monday that it was suing to halt a federal freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants after the institution said it would defy the administration’s demands to limit activism on campus.

On April 22, the American Association of Colleges and Universities released a statement opposing Trump’s threats to higher education.

“As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education,” the statement said.

Almost 200 college presidents signed onto the statement, including all Ivy League school presidents except for those of Columbia and Dartmouth.

Columbia University was the first school targeted by the Trump Administration. In early March, the administration pulled $400 million in research grants and other funding over the university’s handling of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A few weeks later, the university put its Middle East studies department under new supervision and overhauled its rules for protests and student discipline, acquiescing to an ultimatum by the Trump administration to implement those and other changes, or risk losing billions of dollars in federal funding.

In response to the alumni letter, Beilock said, “our new policy of institutional restraint does not mean retreat. Indeed: This is a moment to reaffirm Dartmouth’s values. That means ensuring we are a community where everyone knows they are welcome and safe — where discrimination based on race or religion is never OK. It means speaking about critical issues, including free and open inquiry, academic freedom and the importance of federal research funding. I am proud of Dartmouth and our sole focus on being an educational institution, not a political one. It is something I push on everyday.”

Brown said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the college’s response.

“I understand it but I don’t believe that you can be solely focused on the educational mission and ignore a political attack on that mission,” he said. “When the educational mission is under political attack, you have to stand up to the attack.”

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.