Former President Barack Obama urged universities to resist attacks from the federal government that violate their academic freedom in a campus speech on Thursday.

He also said schools and students should engage in self-reflection about speech environments on their campuses.

“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right?,” he said during a conversation at Hamilton College in western New York. “Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?”

“If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.”

Mr. Obama’s comments came as the Trump administration has threatened universities with major cuts. It took away $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University in March. It later suspended $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, and said this week that it was reviewing about $9 billion in arrangements with Harvard and its affiliates.

At Harvard, where the university has made efforts to respond to Republican criticism and concerns from Jewish students and faculty, more than 800 faculty members have signed a letter urging their leadership to more forcefully resist the administration and defend higher education more broadly.