Apr.15

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Fascism Watch, Part III: The War on Universities

Independent media are not the only source of WrongThink. Universities are also "guilty" of throwing cold water on the brave new world envisioned by the Dear Leader. Until this week, the various universities targeted by the Trump administration had all meekly surrendered. But then, in what could be a "Joseph Welch" moment, Team Trump took on mighty Harvard University. If there's any school that is in a position to take a stand, it's Harvard. That school has worldwide prestige and credibility. It has a vast and well-connected alumni network that includes folks like, oh, Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg. Its faculty includes a large cadre of world-class lawyers. And, by the way, it also has an endowment over $50 billion, which is enough to weather a few storms, even if it means waiting a few years to win some lawsuits, and get back the money that has been illegally withheld by the Trump administration (plus damages and interest, probably).

Because Harvard is not bending the knee, and because the school is run by a bunch of really shrewd SoBs who can think circles around Donald Trump and his fawning lackeys, the letter that the administration sent to the school has now been made public. It is fair to think that other schools, like Columbia, got similar letters, but Harvard is the first one to share, because Harvard is not frightened of the consequences of doing so. "In for a penny, in for a pound" is the general idea.

Forgive us for using this concept so frequently today, but the 5-page, single-spaced letter reads like a fascist wet dream. You get the impression that various members of the Trump administration sat in a room, came up with every possible demand they could think of, and then put it ALL in, regardless of how plausible, how reasonable, or how legal the demand might be. Among the many, many demands:

• Reducing the power of anyone on campus (faculty, students, etc.) deemed to be involved in "activism"
  
  
• Eliminating all DEI programs and diversity-based hiring/admissions standards, and yet...
  
  
• ...at the same time, making a point to populate the student body, the faculty, and every academic unit with 50% MAGA Republicans, in the name of "ideological diversity." This is to be monitored and enforced by an independent group of commissars, to be paid for by the university but approved by the Trump administration.
  
  
• Significantly altering, and limiting, admission of foreign-born students
  
  
• "Reforming" programs with track records of "bias," including the Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Religion and Public Life Program, FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic. Because if there's one place that's just chock full of wild-eyed commie-pinko revolutionary agitators, it's the Harvard Divinity School.
  
  
• Immediate crackdowns on any student protests by university police.
  
  
• A comprehensive ban on surgical masks. Presumably, patients at the Harvard Medical School just have to learn to live with infections and communicable diseases.
  
  
• Total compliance with all demands no later than June 30 of this year (i.e., 76 days from now), and quarterly reports to the Trump administration documenting progress on, and compliance with, the new rules.

It is unbelievable that any government official would make such demands verbally, as all of these things are clearly illegal. It is even more unbelievable that any government official would actually WRITE THE DEMANDS DOWN, memorializing them for all to see. There is some reasonable suspicion that the folks running Harvard—who, again, are multiple orders of magnitude smarter than anyone in the Trump White House—deliberately played along with an eye toward receiving an actual written list of demands, so that the list can be submitted as Exhibit A in every single upcoming lawsuit the university files.

In the end, we would say that the White House overreached so much, Harvard was effectively left with no choice here. There is a way that a university builds up a $50 billion endowment, and that is through donations. Should the school sell out, the roughly $2 billion a year it collects could largely dry up, and $2 billion a year adds up pretty quickly. Further, once faculty and students got wind of the new regime, there would be rebellions, or mass resignations, or both. That would not be well for Harvard's educational/research missions, nor for its staid, Brahmin image. In other words, aside from questions of ethics, or integrity, or philosophy, it could well be that from a pure dollars-and-cents point of view, it was actually cheaper to fight than to yield. After all, if Harvard got a reputation as a quisling university, that would linger and do damage for years and years after Trump leaves office.

We think the Joseph Welch parallel really is salient here. Once the first person (or the first university) stands up and says "no," then it gets much easier for the second, and the third, and the fourth. Welch shamed Joseph McCarthy in June 1954, and the Senator's fall from power was complete by December 1954. We don't expect Harvard to win quite that fast, but with victory in court practically tied up in a nice, red, bow, it might not take too much longer than that, either. And if other universities follow, then maybe this part of Trumpism will be shattered for good. (Z)