When Democrat presidents want universities to do something, they just call and ask
There is no rule that says universities have to accept public funds and some do not. But, if you accept public funding, then the federal government can make you do things. Those can be big things like title IX, but also small things. There are dozens of federal rules that must be met to receive funds. I am told some of the stupid annual modules I do are to sate these rules.
The Trump administration wants universities to do some things. Ban masks so protesters can be identified. Note: there is no evidence that community masking improves any health outcome based on high quality data. End DEI. Use merit to govern admissions and many other things. Right now, universities are squirming. Harvard claims it will #resist. But they are borrowing cash and will soon be crippled if they do not capitulate. I think Alan Garber is smart enough to know this.
Let us be clear. This is not censorship. Harvard can give up federal funds and stop admitting whites and asians and men, and only admit under represented minorities. It can violate title IX, and commit fully to DEI. But as long as it chooses to accept public funding, it must follow the rules of the federal government, which are numerous. Trump is adding to these rules in an effort to make universities less woke.
The American people voted for this. They are sick of faculty being cancelled for saying “pregnant women” not “pregnant persons”. They think “people with uteri” is Orwellian. It's women. Why do unis hire someone to review slides to police for these words? (They do!)
They don't want Harvard to admit students who need to take remedial math (Google it), but rather the best. Universities meanwhile want to fire faculty who supported school reopening. If a faculty member opposed cloth masking 2 year olds, universities worked to punish that view, stripping them of teaching duties. In other words, universities are completely lost: veritas is replaced with left wing partisanship.
They also won't fix themselves. They don't admit error. They keep lying about lockdown and masks and school closure and gender medicine, etc. They have hired so many deranged left wing faculty to the point that the avg university professor makes AOC look conservative. Enter Trump: with the mandate of the people, he seeks to punish universities.
He is just getting started. First he threatens Harvard 9 billion in funding. He stops 2 billion. They fund raise 1 million, so they are only minus 1999 million. Next he threatens their tax exempt status. Next his DOE asks for a list of all foreign donors. Harvard does not want this. They will soon find unimaginable dirt. If Trump's IRS kills the tax exemption Harvard is game over. And Trump can do so much more. He can run Harvard into the ground. Harvard has no leverage on him. Trump can wipe Harvard from the face of the earth.
Some say Democrats would never do this. That is because they don't have to. When Biden wanted Universities to fire workers who didn't get a covid shot, he didn't threaten their funding. That's true. He just called and asked. Biden’s admin used soft power to make Universities their puppet. He fired nurses who got COVID on the job. Only a fucking moron would do that. Universities happily complied. That's because universities just do whatever Democrats ask for. That's how deep the bias is.
I think if a university takes federal funding, the average faculty should be close to the average American. Some faculty should be conservative, and some liberal, and the average should be centrist. At a minimum, universities should not punish faculty with views that align with conservatives. That's not the case.
And until it is, Trump should use all his powers to crush universities. He has no alternative. And Harvard has no public support. The average American thinks they have their head up their ass. The average American is right. Universities are a Democrat think tank. So why should tax payers fund them?
I was born in Romania under the communist iron curtain. I remember listening as a kid to a small radio that my dad had as it was playing crackling broadcasts of BBC Radio Free Europe. I was thinking of a distant land and dreaming, "Oh America, come free us from this prison, we have no power to make ourselves free!"
My parents broke free, and for several decades -- 1980s to the late 2010's -- I enjoyed true freedom being a scientist at Ivy League universities. It was so much fun!
Then, 2020 hit and everything fell apart (and, on hindsight, I realized it had started much earlier).
Now I look out of the window in my professor office at my Ivy League school after yet another distopian departmental meeting in which everyone toes the Orwellian line and dreaming "Oh Trump, come free us from this prison as we have no power to make ourselves free!"
In Romania, we faced tanks and guns if we dared to protest. Here, we are imprisoned by our mental bubble.
I am not sure if people outside universities understand how many on the "inside" agree with the sentiments that Vinay expresses. But somehow, those voices are powerless to influence University leadership.
The absolute best thing Trump et al can do is empower those students and faculty.
I so much hope this is what will happen!
The corrupt, nepotistic establishment needs to be corrected—but by statutes of Congress, enacted after public debate and transparently and impersonally applied to many institutions at once by administrators responsible to their offices, not the president, a mere chief magistrate, not a despot.
I would support Congress if by legislation it cut back on tax-exempt status for all universities.
But even for a president who (narrowly) won the popular vote, to demand that the IRS strip a single institution of its tax exempt status is unconstitutional and illegal and tyrannical, however much it may be deserved.
Jeane Kirkpatrick once mentioned a rule she was taught by Harold Lasswell of Yale Law in the 50s: “When designing a constitution, imagine that your worst enemies are in power.”
If Trump can strip organizations he dislikes of their nonprofit status and bully Democratic law firms, then President Harris or AOC or Newsom in 2029 can single out institutions on the center and the right for destruction. Not the right way to go.