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Attacking the top institutions first - so the rest will cave [1]

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Date: 2025-05-28

We are on the page in the autocracy playbook where they go after the leading institutions of our democracy and our civil society, starting at the top. Trump and his Project 2025 masterminds have identified the parts of our civil and governmental infrastructure that serve as barriers against one-man, one-party autocratic rule, and they are attacking. Lawyers, courts, and the rule of law. Newspapers, television, radio, e-media, journalists, and the free press. Universities, professors, students, and their international web of connections. And of course the “Deep State” of dedicated public servants.

You’d think their strategy would be to pick off the weakest individual elements first, one by one. But their strategy is bolder. It follows the historic pattern of, for example, Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. They are attacking the top institutions, figuring if they can destroy or at least badly damage them, the others will cave much more easily. Think CBS, not your local TV channel; the leading national law firms, not your community practice lawyer down the street; Harvard, not the local state college. And, today, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Lancet, and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), not the West Virginia Medical Journal (which may be a fine regional publication, but it’s not the top tier.)

Harvard is the preeminent university in this country, and one of the top in the world. Other universities may be comparable in a individual areas, but for breadth and depth, as well as prestige, Harvard is hard to beat. Harvard itself is very aware of this, and so are most Americans — including Trump and his Project 2025 cabal, most of whom went to elite universities themselves.

So Trump’s team has attacked Harvard, making outrageous and clearly unconstitutional demands for control over who gets hired, what they can teach, what kind of research they can do, and who gets admitted. They cut off funding, including money that supports treatment of patients at Harvard’s world-leading hospitals and medical research centers, and threaten to cut off even more funding, take away Harvard’s tax exemption, and go after the endowment, if Harvard doesn’t comply immediately. Harvard of course has access to the best lawyers and constitutional law scholars, and so far the courts are sympathetic.Even if Harvard wins most of these cases, though, the battle will be long and costly. The uncertainty and the funding cuts have already caused great damage, to the undisguised glee of the MAGA crowd.

My employer, the University of California, is looking at this with its own uncertainty and fears. We are an obvious target: the flagship public university system in a state Trump openly despises. The medical school where I’m on the faculty is openly proud of its diverse enrollment and its commitment to serve the full diversity of California’s population with competence and respect.

Columbia was attacked, and they caved completely. What did they get? Still more demands, and still no restoration of funding. Harvard is defying Trump, fighting back in the courts and in public, and getting at least some vocal support from other universities, who worry that they might be next on the hit list.

I was on the faculty at Harvard for 5 years, in the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health. This was part of a master plan to get back to my home state of California; I knew my experience at Harvard would prepare me to make a difference here. Harvard was an amazing place — at least 10 deep in brilliant people in whatever area interested me at any time. I worked in Alzheimer’s disease studies, HIV clinical trials, vector-borne diseases, and pulmonary epidemiology, among other areas, as well as publishing in probability and statistics. Harvard’s motto is “Veritas” — truth — and my colleagues took this seriously. It was an honor to be part of Harvard, and a temptation to stay, but the pull of home was finally stronger.

That same commitment to serious scholarship has been a commitment of NEJM, JAMA, and Lancet as well as other top-tier medical journals for which I’ve been an author and a reviewer. RFK Jr. has labeled these journals as “corrupt” and declared that federal scientists will be forbidden to publish our federally-funded research in them. Kennedy’s arrogance is exceeded only by his ignorance — of medical research and practice, of scientific practice and ethics, and of the positive impact and lives saved by real science as opposed to whatever random drivel from sleazy frauds has filled what is left of his worm-eaten brain.

Lesson #2 in Timothy Snyders invaluable little book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, is Defend Institutions. Well, Harvard is one — representing all of education. NEJM, JAMA, and Lancet are institutions — representing medical research and evidence-based clinical practice. Let’s speak out and defend them. The next victim could be the one right next door to you.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/28/2324775/-Attacking-the-top-institutions-first-so-the-rest-will-cave?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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