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Harvard's Way is the Only Way [1]

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Date: 2025-04-17

I think I’m going to buy myself a Harvard University sweatshirt next fall/winter season. Maybe a t-shirt, too.

No, I’m not a graduate from there. I’ve never had the brains or the money to pull that one off.

It’s just my way of honoring the school after it told our mob boss president Donald Trump to get lost when he threatened to take funding from it if it didn’t give in to his list of demands. It didn’t, and he subsequently cut $2.2 billion in funding and a $60 million contract for the school, the New York Times reported.

At least a horse’s head hasn’t appeared in Harvard President Alan Garber’s bed. At least not yet, although Trump’s corrupt Internal Revenue Service is thinking about trying to take away the school’s tax-exempt status.

The administration was demanding “an extraordinary set of changes that would have reshaped the university and ceded an unprecedented degree of control over Harvard’s operation to the federal government,” the Times wrote.

Here’s some of what Trump demanded from the university:

*Conducting plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members. (The Times story explained that conservative activists have used plagiarism accusations to go after individuals in the academic world that they don’t like.)

*Sharing all its hiring data with the administration and subjecting itself to audits of its hiring while “reforms are being implemented,” at least through 2028.

*Providing all admissions data to the federal government, including information on both rejected and admitted applicants, sorted by race, national origin, grade-point average, and performance on standardized tests.

*Immediately shutting down any programming related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

*Overhauling academic programs that the Trump administration says have “egregious records on antisemitism,” including placing certain departments and programs under an external audit. The list includes the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Public Health, and the Medical School, among many others.

Trump’s demands also included reducing the power of students and faculty members over university affairs, reporting foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities, and bringing in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is “viewpoint diverse,” according to the Times.

Going after foreign students is an obsession with this administration. It’s already taken away the ability of hundreds of international students to stay in the country, the Times reported

The administration didn’t define what it meant by viewpoint diversity, but it has generally referred to seeking a range of political views, including conservative perspectives, the Times said.

No one who knows how Trump and the GOP operate would believe they want a diversity of views. They want their views, and less black and brown faces sitting in the classrooms to hear them.

Garber responded in a statement that “No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

A letter from Harvard’s lawyers to the administration said the demands were unlawful.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the letter said. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”

Good for Harvard. Although I’m guessing its $50 billion endowment helped steel Garber’s backbone. The university had previously been criticized for a series of moves that faculty members said were taken to placate Trump.

A Harvard faculty group filed a lawsuit last week seeking to block the administration from carrying out its threat to withdraw federal funding from the university. We’ll have to see how that goes.

The Trump administration has initiated investigations into dozens of schools – antisemitism allegations and its ongoing attack on DEI efforts have been its weapons of choice -- and has suspended hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds for research in an effort to strongarm them into doing as their told.

Harvard has been the first to essentially tell this criminal president to go to hell.

You can read the Times story here.

You can read another story about Trump’s assault on higher education here.

***

This brings us to Columbia University. Last month the school capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands after it withheld $400 million in funding. Columbia agreed to overhaul its protest policies, security practices, and Middle Eastern studies department in what the Times called “a remarkable concession” to the government.

The school agreed to hire a new internal security force of 36 “special officers” who’ll be empowered to remove people from campus or arrest them. Anyone want to bet that their main targets won’t be foreign students?

The most contentious move: Columbia said it would appoint a senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department. Several faculty members have said this looks like a case of putting the department under academic receivership – a rare federal intervention typically reserved as a last resort in response to extended periods of dysfunction.

You can read the Times story on Columbia’s decision here.

Here’s a story on the school’s latest response after Harvard’s action.

***

Here’s the thing about bullies and blackmailers: They usually don’t stop once they know you’ll give them what they want. We’re seeing this with Trump and his criminal gang right now. The administration still has its foot on Columbia’s throat.

Even after Columbia gave in, its funding hasn’t been restored. The government said this was “a precondition for formal negotiations” and that the White House may call for other “immediate and long-term structural reforms.”

Here’s another case of what happens when you let the mob get its tentacles into you. Remember how nine elite law firms promised to do almost $1 billion in pro bono (free) legal work after Trump threatened them with executive orders?

What did they do wrong? They represented or aided Trump’s pollical opponents or employed people he sees as having used the legal system to come after him, the Times reported. There’s nothing there, but still, they caved.

The firms thought they’d be doing work on non-controversial causes, but now Trump “has a far more expansive view of what those firms can be called on to do,” the Times reporting revealed. He’s hinted that he sees the money “as a legal war chest to be used as he wishes.”

The Times reported that these tasks could include negotiating trade deals, helping reviving the coal industry, aiding co-president Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or the Department of Justice, even representing Trump or his allies if they become the subjects of investigations.

“They thought they made one-shot deals which they would fulfill,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School. “But the administration seems to think that they have subjected these firms to indentured servitude.”

This would be a good time to point out that four firms that Trump targeted, instead of throwing themselves down and lying prostrate before the mob boss president, have gone to court and received rulings from federal judges that temporarily halted any government action against them.

You can read the Times story here.

***

I guess the term creeping authoritarianism is applicable for what we’re seeing in this country. Trump keeps pushing the envelope. When he gets away with something he goes further. When he can intimidate you into doing something he demands more.

The Republican-controlled Congress has refused to stand up to him. Trump has taken its power with no resistance. That’s a constitutional crisis.

The courts have done some good work but we’re seeing the administration testing the limits of ignoring its orders. That’s a constitutional crisis, too.

Step-by-step we’re moving towards the dictatorship Trump dreams of. Our right to free speech has been attacked. Our right to due process is in danger. It won’t just be immigrants who’ll be in the administration’s sites. It’ll be American citizens he perceives as his enemies or who oppose him.

A lot of people are afraid of what Trump will do. They point to him possibly declaring a national emergency to engage the military or calling for martial law. On a lesser scale, the law firms and colleges we’ve talked about gave in out of fear of what would happen to them.

I understand the fear, but I’d argue that instead of cowering we have to force his hand. Shut down a major university? Go ahead and try it. Wipe out a law firm? Give it a shot.

Send the military out against the millions of people who oppose you. Declare martial law on 340 million people. Have at it.

Only if we face and overcome these fears will we as a country be at our most ready to resist the undermining of our democracy and rule of law that’s already well underway. Otherwise, we’ll always be timid. Too scared to take the necessary steps until it’s too late to do anything.

Harvard said no. Those four law firms said no. I don’t know how it will end up with them, but I do know they’re the examples we have to follow.

A bully will push you as far as you let him. We’re well past the time when all of us – without exception – must join forces and push back.

***

Thank you for reading my post. You can see my other writings on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. Please share and subscribe for free via email on its home page.

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