For Trumpism, Universities Are the Enemy. Just Ask JD Vance.
The demands to Harvard show it's a campaign to demolish higher education in America.
Harvard’s Widener Library
Going far beyond the stated purpose of fighting anti-Semitism in American universities, Donald Trump is using the power of the federal government to try to crush Harvard University, the nation's oldest school, founded in 1636, older that the United States by a century and a half.
When the University's president, Alan Garber, rejected a long list of reform demands, Trump lashed out like a spoiled child who doesn't get his way. Withholding $2.26 billion in research grants was not enough to make Harvard buckle, so he has moved to have its tax exempt status revoked, and when that wasn't enough, threatens to block foreign students from enrolling – an important source of revenue. Our embarrassing president is in the grip of tantrum, tweeting on his Truth Social…
“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders’”
Harvard was the first to fight back against the administration, which has posted a list of 60 colleges and universities the administration is investigating under the rubric of its anti-Semitic crusade. Which begs the question, are there really that many universities across the country that have exhibited anti-Semitic outcroppings?
“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” University President Dr. Alan Garber wrote in a message to the Harvard community.
America won’t shed too many tears over Trump having taken particular aim at the Ivy League, perceived as bastions of white privilege, however mistaken. But these institutions use the federal funds to conduct vital research for the advancement of human knowledge in medicine and science. This administration evidently considers the production of knowledge worthless.
Columbia University had been struck with a denial of $400 million in funding, but in its case the school opted to accommodate the Trump demands, earning it scalding criticism for appeasement. Most odious, the university said it would appoint a senior vice provost to review the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, and Center for Palestine Studies, caving in to the administration’s support of Israel and its willful blindness to Gaza atrocities. Princeton was told by the Education Department that is is being investigated, which says $210 million in research grants is at risk. Brown stands to lose $510 million. Cornell at least $1 billion. And as indication that anti-Semitism acts as a surrogate for wider aims, the reason that the University of Pennsylvania was docked $175 million was because it had allowed a biological male transgender to compete on its women’s swim team in 2022.
DO THIS OR ELSE
To go through the stunning demands made by the Trump administration in its letter to Harvard’s president and Penny Pritzker, Lead Member of the Harvard Corporation, is to come away with the realization that not only did Harvard have no other choice than to refuse, but that the authoritarian intrusion into a private educational institution needs to be actively combatted. And, indeed, Harvard has sued the administration.
One needs to do a deeper dive than the quick summaries the media provides to get why Harvard took the virtuous course. We urge you to plow through this:
One needs to do a deeper dive than the quick summaries the media provides to get why Harvard took the virtuous course. We urge you to plow through this: Continue reading
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