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Yesterday, when he wasn't busy banning people from various, mostly African, nations, Donald Trump was firing bazooka shots at two of the Ivy League universities he has decided are the enemy. One of the shots was kind of nutty, while the other was downright insane.
We'll start with the kind of nutty one, which is that he announced that he is canceling the approval that allows Harvard to enroll international students. "Wait," you might be saying, "I thought we already went through this." We did, and the first attempt, which was executed by the Department of Homeland Security, is still in court, and is still being stayed by a temporary restraining order from Judge Allison Burroughs.
For this new effort, Trump is not bothering with the federal bureaucracy, and is drawing on his own (alleged) power as president to protect national security. Readers can see Trump's order here; it's rambling and only semi-coherent, and not only talks about national security, but also accuses Harvard of hiding information about foreign students who have committed criminal acts, and says that not only will foreign students not be allowed into the U.S., but the ones who are already here may have their visas revoked. If that's not enough, there's also a digression about Harvard's use of affirmative action, and its discrimination against "non-favored races." Obviously, this will end up in court, too, and it's hard to see how it could turn out any better for the White House than the OTHER attempt to ban foreign students from attending Harvard.
And now, let's move on to the absolutely insane move, this one directed at Columbia University. Decreeing that the school has not done enough to combat antisemitism, and that it's been failing to protect Jewish students since the day that the current war in Gaza began, Trump wants to revoke the school's accreditation, on the basis that it has violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Now, this is very weedy, and would normally be of interest only to academic administrators. However, while the government can use its various powers (like the granting of student aid) to influence the accreditation process (e.g., we won't give Pell Grants to schools that do not meet [X] standard), the government doesn't actually control the process or the agencies that oversee the process. In Columbia's case, accreditation is granted by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), also known as the Mid-Atlantic Region Commission on Higher Education, which is a private, non-profit entity. And so, what Trump's threat really boils down to is a letter, sent by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, asking the MSHCE to take a look at Columbia, and to consider revoking accreditation on the basis of civil rights violations.
Because the administration's argument is laughable, the MSCHE is not going to prioritize the request. Rawan Abbasi, a spokesperson for the MSCHE, was reached by reporters, and noted that the organization was aware of "the press release issued today by the United States Department of Education." In academic-speak, describing a request for investigation as a "press release" is some pretty serious shade.
Assuming MSCHE does launch an investigation (and it might decline to do so), it's very likely to take its sweet time, and it's even more likely to reach a conclusion of "there's no problem here." But even if MSCHE's conclusion is adverse to Columbia, the whole process is set up so as to allow a university to correct whatever is wrong, with multiple chances to do so, spread out over years, before the axe actually falls. And that's not even including the fact that, in this particular situation, there are going to be lawsuits that drag things out even more. Put another way, even if the administration had a real argument (as opposed to a fantasy argument), and there was at least some substance to the claims that Trump is making, it would probably take a decade for Columbia to be in real peril. And in case you don't have a calendar right at hand, June 2035 is rather well after January 2029.
And of course Columbia is going to fight this tooth and nail, with every tool at its disposal. It's one thing to lose hundreds of millions, or even billions, in research funding. But to lose accreditation? Without that, there's no university. There's a reason that people sell degrees from non-accredited universities for $50 ($100 for a Ph.D.!), and that is because they are worthless. Columbia literally has no choice but to push back with all its might.
The unbelievable overreach here is part of the insanity, but it's not the entirety. Remember, unlike Harvard, Columbia was actually kowtowing to Trump and trying to do his bidding. And what was their reward? Now their entire existence is being threatened. The lesson, which has also been learned by a bunch of white-shoe law firms, couldn't be clearer: You can never give Trump enough. If you give an inch, he'll take a mile. If you give him a mile, he'll take a light year. If you give him a light year, he'll take a parsec. If you give him a parsec, he'll take 12 parsecs (presumably to make the Kessel Run).
It's hard to imagine that any university (or any law firm) will be willing to play ball going forward, because in the end, they're going to end up in court anyhow, very possibly fighting for their very existence. There's no value in appeasing him, because he can't be appeased. So, in service of this one battle, and a few headlines about owning the (Columbia) libs, Trump has probably made his overall war a lot harder.
And on that point, even before the latest shots at Harvard and Columbia, Thomas Edsall had a long piece about Trump's war on the universities, a war that is nominally about antisemitism, but in reality is clearly about something else. Edsall believes that Trump hates higher education in toto, and especially the elite institutions, and wouldn't mind destroying a few of them as an example to the others. In an April 30 cabinet meeting, he justified (illegally) cutting off grants to Harvard because "the students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have, is not American." In other words, they don't swallow his BS whole.
It is possible that Trump, himself an Ivy League grad, has been egged on by ungrateful Yale Law School graduate J.D. Vance. In 2021, in an address to the National Conservatism Convention, Vance said: "Universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth. Universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies." He also said that people have to attack the universities. He ended his speech quoting Richard Nixon: "The press is the enemy. The professors are the enemy." In short, anyone who is critical of the administration is the enemy.
McMahon recently told CNBC: "Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish." In other words, research that shows the administration is wrong should not be allowed. For example, if epidemiological research shows that vaccines save lives and the party line is that vaccines are bad, then that research should be banned and not funded or published.
What is probably triggering Trump and Vance is that universities generally tolerate a fair amount of free speech from the left and less from the right. When someone has a history of saying things the students and faculty like to hear, he or she is welcomed. When the speaker or author has things to say that they don't like, there are often boycotts, protests, and other attempts to suppress them. This has been true for a long time. When (V) was at Berkeley, Prof. Arthur Jensen did research that purported to show that IQ was largely genetic and immutable. Since Black people generally scored lower than white people on IQ tests, the implied conclusion was that they were inferior and nothing could be done about it. Rather than carefully examining Jensen's research methods to see whether the test groups were equal in educational level, income, socio-economic background, and other factors that could have affected and possibly invalidated the conclusions, there was a general freakout because people didn't like the conclusions. If his results had been the opposite, it is likely Jensen would have been praised as a brilliant researcher.
This is not to endorse Jensen or his conclusions (which remain hotly debated), it's just to illustrate the general bent of large universities. Trump may not understand all the details, but he knows that the elite universities skew fairly liberal and thus should be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up on conservative principles. In other words, replacing a disfavored bias with a favored one. That much of America's prosperity has been built on research done at elite universities doesn't interest him one whit.
Edsall also cites Prof. Sean Westwood at Dartmouth, who notes the irony of Trump trying to kill off DEI programs because they take factors other than merit into hiring, with an open call for hiring more conservative professors—which is an order to hire based on factors other than merit.
Edsall also cites The Wall Street Journal, which wrote:
The Trump administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back.
Trump is clearly trying destroy all sources of opposition. He has already gotten several media outlets and a dozen top law firms to kowtow to him. Universities are next on the list and whatever story he gives is just an excuse. The goal is simply to crush all opposition and Harvard is a good target because it is very visible and already disliked by many people for being "snobby." But, as of yesterday, the President may definitely have bitten off more than he can chew. And keep reading for more. (V & Z)