When taking aim at the king …

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump has a fight on his hands, at lasT

Omar Little, portrayed by the late Michael K. Williams, source: Fandom

The wonderful character Omar Little, appearing in the eighth episode of “The Wire,” offers a memorable line: “Ayo, lesson here, Bey. You come at the king, you best not miss.”

That line, now 23 years old, resonates anew as Harvard has decided to fight back against the would-be monarch now soiling the White House. It applies, too, to a group of other schools – including Brown University, Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois — that have brought suit against Trump’s Department of Energy.

All are attacking the vindictive federal overreach Trump is using to withhold funds in his effort to reshape higher education policies. Together, the moves could embolden more institutions, such as law firms and Columbia University, perhaps including some that the president has already bullied into acquiescence of various sorts.

“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives, told The New York Times. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”

But they also had better win. Their opponent is a wily master of the judicial system who has shown that 34 felony convictions, among other legal humiliations, are not enough to defeat him. Just look at how – so far, at least – Trump has spit on an order by nothing less than a unanimous Supreme Court to return wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison.

Along with showing an astonishingly callous indifference to a jailed man’s plight, Trump seems to believe that all and sundry should bow to his will, no matter how wrongheaded it is. The president is similarly indifferent to the damaging effects his battle with universities are having on medical and scientific research.

Already, Trump is upping the ante in his battle with Harvard. In the wake of Harvard President Alan Garber’s defiance, federal officials froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and canceled a $60 million contract, along with the president threatening to remove the university’s tax-exempt status. The administration had put nearly $9 billion in funding at risk when Garber refused to bow to its demands for extensive policy changes and oversight.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote in a message to the Harvard community. He added: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

As The Harvard Gazette reported, Garber’s message was a response to a letter sent late Friday by the Trump administration outlining demands that Harvard would have to satisfy to maintain its funding relationship with the federal government. These demands included “audits” of academic programs and departments, along with the viewpoints of students, faculty, and staff, and changes to the University’s governance structure and hiring practices.

Garber’s defiance stood in stark contrast to Columbia’s genuflection to Trump. So far, Columbia’s obeisance has not led to a restoration of the $400 million Trump cut. That, together with Harvard’s stance, may have prompted Columbia’s new acting president, Claire Shipman, to push back in a new message to the university community after her predecessor, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, had bowed to Trump’s demand and then quit.

Claire Shipman, source: Columbia Spectator

“To be clear, our institution may decide at any point, on its own, to make difficult decisions that are in Columbia’s best interests,” journalist and writer Shipman wrote. “Where the government – or any stakeholder – has legitimate interest in critical issues for our healthy functioning, we will listen and respond. But we would reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community. We would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire. And yes, to put minds at ease, though we seek to continue constructive dialogue with the government, we would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”

Separately, the handful of top schools that brought suit against Trump’s Department of Energy are fighting a policy change that would reduce the amount of indirect support that federal grants provide. As Reuters reported, the DOE announced that it would cut more than $400 million in annual spending by setting an across-the-board 15 percent reimbursement rate for indirect costs of research.

Many of the universities involved in the lawsuit have negotiated far higher “indirect” rates than the 15 percent proposed by DOE policy. The National Institutes of Health announced a similar cut and was also sued. A federal judge has issued an order blocking the Trump administration from proceeding with those cuts, while the lawsuit against NIH proceeds.

In the case of the indirect research support, the administration offers the specious argument that the cut would bring “greater transparency and efficiency” to federal government spending. In the case of the broader university reforms Trump is seeking, he and his minions have veiled their moves behind the claim of fighting antisemitism on the campuses.

The president’s broad list of demands to Harvard, however, gives the lie to the latter claim. He has demanded an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, for instance, along with eliminating any hiring preferences based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, along with gutting any such preferences in student admissions. He has demanded audits to assure “viewpoint diversity” at the school without defining that.

Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist who is also a president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, told The New York Times that it was “truly Orwellian” and self-contradictory for the government to force viewpoint diversity on the university. He said it would also lead to absurdities.

“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.

In going up against Trump, the universities, no doubt, will be equipped with the best and brightest. Happily, they will fight a Trump Justice Department and other agencies that have lost their top talents in the president’s government-wide gutting efforts. Just consider that Harvard’s legal team includes William A. Burck and Robert K. Hur.

As the Times reported, Burck is also an outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization and represented the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in the deal it recently reached with Trump. And Hur, who worked in the Justice Department in Trump’s first term, was the special counsel who memorably called President Biden “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

They are insiders who understand the man and the system they now are battling.

For his part, Trump is someone whose two years at The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School were undistinguished at best. “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had!,” one former prof of his said.

Still, he can work a lot of governmental levers, has a bottomless well of vindictiveness and can’t stand losing. The universities are in a fight for their lives and all of us have much riding on the outcome. They’d best not miss.

Social engineering

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Joe Weber

Trump’s efforts to remake higher education bring us all to grief

During the Easter Parade in New York in 1929, PR wizard Edward Bernays pulled off quite the stunt, one that influenced generations. He hired appealing women to light cigarettes and march, scandalously smoking in public. Their “torches of freedom,” as Bernays called them, garnered headlines nationwide as symbols of equality and emancipation.

Women, who earlier accounted for only about 5 percent of cigarette sales, soon bought about 12 percent of smokes and, in time, grew to consume about a third of cigarettes sold. It was a PR coup and a health disaster.

For Bernays, a Viennese-born nephew of Sigmund Freud who was then working for the American Tobacco Co., this was proof that “social engineering” could work. It showed how “people in power . . . shape the attitudes of the general population,” and that those who mastered communication could become an “invisible government . . . the true ruling power of our country.”

Such social engineering – once anathema to people on the right who long bristled at government efforts to shape public and institutional behavior – comes naturally to another huckster, Donald J. Trump. But, tragically, his efforts are more than just headline-grabbing stunts. His extortions of federal funds are biting deeply at universities including Princeton ($210 million), Columbia ($400 million), Northwestern ($790 million), Johns Hopkins ($800 million) and Cornell ($1 billion).

And health, along with public welfare, is at stake in his cuts. The grants he and his anonymous minions are withholding go for things such as medical research (in topics including pediatric long-COVID, environmental science, cancer) at Columbia, global health initiatives at Hopkins, pacemaker and Alzheimer’s investigations at Northwestern, defense and health at Cornell, and defense and energy at Princeton, and much more.

Now, with his reported plans to put Columbia under the control of a federal judge, Trump is poised to cement his engineering. Independent governance at the private university would, for all practical purposes, be eliminated. Such a judge would oversee the university’s compliance with any formal agreement to change a host of policies in Trump’s efforts to suppress dissent and academic freedom, setting up years of oversight and putting the school at risk for contempt proceedings if it fell short.

If Trump succeeds, a consent order providing for such oversight at the New York school would be a model for other schools he is attacking.

It is social engineering at its worst. Trump seems determined to humble such schools, to prove he can bring them to heel and gratify is base’s hostility to elite education. It seems to be all about control, reining in institutions that could defy him – whether they are law firms, Congress or educational outfits.

And, pathetically, Trump’s effort has little to do with his claimed battle against antisemitism at Columbia and the other schools. As Ben Olinsky of the Center for American Progress put it, is Trump’s effort is just weaponizing antisemitism for political gain.

“It does nothing to keep Jewish students or any other Americans safe from hate or prevent terrorism, which pose legitimate threats to America’s Jewish communities,” Olinsky said. “Instead, it forsakes education and dialogue while attacking protected political speech. It’s clear that Trump’s real goal is to silence opposing voices, whether they be from pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, Black Lives Matter marchers, clergy who pray for mercy, or journalists who report news that is critical of him. The right to free speech, protest, and exercise of any religion or none are bedrocks of America and must be protected in our schools and universities.”

To be sure, real dangers arose last year for Jewish students at many of the schools. They do need to do more to root out antisemitism among students and faculty alike. And there’s no doubt much ugliness persists, as became clear in protests at an April 7 visit to Princeton by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Jewish students at the event were taunted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. “You’re committing a holocaust!” and “You’re killing babies!” some said. Some were told to “go back to Europe.” As student Danielle Shapiro reported in The Free Press, “We also heard many shouts of ‘They’re all fucking inbred!’ and ‘inbred swine!’ At least two or three protesters used their hands to create the shape of the Hamas triangle.”

Ugly and ignorant as such language is, it is not against the law. Vile, uncivil and disrespectful as it is, it is legal.

Where such protests cross the line is in preventing others from speaking.

Saying he was “appalled at reports of antisemitic language directed by demonstrators at members of our community” after the event, Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber promised an investigation and disciplinary moves, if appropriate. Since some students disrupted the talk and others set off a fire alarm, the university may have reason to take action.

But, to Trump’s critics, the president’s use of such protests to move against universities is just a fig leaf covering up his assault on any dissent he dislikes. It also gives him an excuse to attack such rightist hobbyhorses as efforts to build diversity and erode inequality, so-called “woke” culture, and moves to preserve academic freedom.

“Trump obviously doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism, this is just an expression of his authoritarianism,” Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of the House of Representatives, told The Guardian.

“Once again, the President is weaponizing the real pain American Jews face to advance his desire to wield control over the truth-seeking academic institutions that stand as a bulwark against authoritarianism,” Nadler added in a statement. “Withholding funding … will not make Jewish students safer. Cutting funding to programs that work to cure cancer and make other groundbreaking discoveries will not make Jewish students safer. Impounding congressionally appropriated funding will not make Jewish students safer. Trump’s ‘review’ is part of a larger effort to silence universities and intimidate those who challenge the MAGA agenda. It is a dangerous and politically motivated move that risks stifling free thought and academic inquiry.”

So far, Columbia has rolled over in the face of Trump’s bullying, much as several law firms, some media magnates and some corporations have. Princeton’s Eisgruber has called on fellow academics to fight, writing in The Atlantic: “The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research. Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.”

Schools are not without weapons of their own. Columbia, for instance, has a nearly $15 billion endowment and a wealthy alumni base. Princeton could tap a $34 billion endowment.

As lawyers for many of the universities argue, moreover, there are grounds for legal action. The government cannot cut off funds until and unless it has done program-by-program evaluations of alleged Title VI violations, given schools notice and “an opportunity for hearing,” limited any funding cutoff” to a particular program, or part thereof, in which… noncompliance has been…found,” and submitted a report explaining its actions to relevant committees in Congress at least thirty days before any funds can be stopped.

The problem, of course, is that for all his stupidity and power-hunger, Trump is a master of using the courts to delay and obfuscate. While prospective lawsuits would wend their way through the judiciary, researchers would be sidelined and their work and, often, their livelihoods put on hold. And there can be no assurance that a sometimes servile Supreme Court, where the fights could wind up, would rein in the president.

Still, as the discrediting of the “torches of freedom” demonstrates, good sense can in time prevail. As with tobacco, though, one must wonder how long it will take to do so? Will it take a regime change? And, in the meantime, how much will universities, students, faculty and the public suffer?

The marketplace of ideas: who gets in?

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Joe Weber

Interesting developments on the free-speech front in Arizona and Massachusetts

The battle royal over free speech on campuses is climbing a few decibels on both sides of the country, it seems. The fracas at Arizona State University is likely to grow louder in coming weeks with a reprise visit by a couple controversial conservatives. As for the East Coast, Harvard has distinguished itself by placing last in a ranking by a prominent free-speech organization.

Let’s turn to ASU. It has become a showcase of sorts for conservatives who feel aggrieved and abused, as well as for academics who find themselves uncomfortably in the crosshairs of today’s cultural warfare.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who stirred up a hornet’s nest in February when they visited ASU, plan to speak there again on Sept. 27. Their “Health, Wealth & Happiness 2.0” session will be sponsored by a student organization, Turning Point USA at Arizona State University, rather than by an individual college such as Barrett, the honors college that controversially hosted them last time through a now-defunct center.

Conveniently setting the stage for their visit, a university report about the brouhaha over their last visit is expected to be released shortly. That report was demanded by Arizona State Sen. Anthony Kern, who led a hearing into the matter in July. Kern said the legislature’s judiciary committee will take so-far-unspecified action dealing with ASU, depending on the thoroughness of the report.

Kern, who co-chaired the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities, has already telegraphed his feelings that he expects little from ASU that would placate him. “I do not trust the Board of Regents,” Kern said at the July hearing. “I do not trust ASU. I do not trust our universities to teach our kids what needs to be taught.”

For their part, it’s not clear what Prager and Kirk plan to talk about in the coming confab, although the session will also feature at least one state legislator who served on Kern’s ad hoc committee, Austin Smith, who also is a former director of Turning Point USA. That suggests that free speech on campus could take center stage at the session, as well as hoary claims of a leftward tilt among faculty.

Smith had asked the regents to investigate the termination of the director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett. That ex-official, Ann Atkinson, had complained about her firing in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that it was in reprisal for her organizing the first Prager-Kirk session. In fact, the funding for her position fell away when donor Thomas W. Lewis pulled his backing, citing what he called “the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.”

Shortly before the wintertime Prager-Kirk session, 39 faculty members at the college had written a letter to their dean complaining about the men’s visit, lambasting them as “purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy, including our public institutions of higher education.”

Notably from a free-speech point of view, however, the Barrett faculty members didn’t call for the session to be cancelled. Instead, as some of them wrote in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, some had slated a teach-in prior to the session called “Defending the Public University.” They maintained that they encouraged students to attend both events and claimed that many students did so. Nor were they party to the Lewis center’s shutdown, the authors said.

While that suggests an openness to free speech, Atkinson has argued that the faculty bullied students into staying away from both the Prager-Kirk talk and the ad hoc committee hearing in July. So far, though, no evidence proving such bullying has emerged (perhaps the university report will illuminate the matter). It may be that students just found the initial talk uninteresting and that, in July, few were on hand for the legislative hearing.

There are some crucial differences between the upcoming Prager-Kirk session and the February one. For one, a student organization is sponsoring the gathering, rather than a college. Thus, while it bears the imprimatur of that student group, it doesn’t need the blessings of a college where most of the faculty find the speakers reprehensible.

Certainly, the men have distinguished themselves as advocates of notions many find toxic. Prager has criticized homosexuality, for instance, writing “I, for one, do not believe that a man’s inability to make love to a woman can be labeled normal. While such a man may be a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals, in this one area he cannot be called normal.” For his part, Kirk has praised Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol as “patriots” whose travel to Washington, D.C., was funded by Turning Point USA, as the Daily Beast reported.

So far, it doesn’t appear as if ASU faculty members plan counterprogramming to rebut likely comments by the pair, which is an interesting approach. Would such programming elevate Prager and Kirk’s status and serve only to legitimize their ideas? One faculty member suggested to me that engaging them in debate would be akin to dignifying a member of the Flat Earth Society by sharing a stage with him or her, even if only to refute the person’s arguments.

Still, the views of Prager and Kirk raise a compelling question for advocates of free speech and those who see universities as places where conflicting ideas ought to be hashed out. When is someone’s speech so far beyond the pale that it doesn’t deserve an airing? And when a school, as opposed to a student group, brings such a person in front of students does that suggest an endorsement (indeed, might it be considered educational malpractice, if there were such a thing)? The challenge in this MAGA era is amplified because a substantial minority of the public share the ideas of such men.

A daughter-in-law of mine who teaches at Princeton frames this as a matter of progress over time. She contends that the line between acceptable ideas and those rightly consigned to history’s dustbin has consistently shifted. There was a time, for instance, when advocates of slavery (indeed slaveholders) could find a forum at universities. Similarly, pro-Nazi speakers and racists were tolerated on campuses. Has the line moved such that it’s left the likes of Prager and Kirk on the wrong side, irrespective of any followings they have in the general public?

Strolling at Harvard, source: the Boston Herald

Now, as to Harvard, the school has been named the worst for free speech among universities reviewed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. As the New York Post reported, Harvard scored poorly in large part because nine professors and researchers there faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written. Indeed, seven of them were disciplined.

Moreover, much of the trouble at Harvard has to do with self-censorship — not the type imposed by authority figures. The FIRE rankings rely in large part on surveys of students. And at the Boston school, the Boston Herald reported: “Self-censorship is pervasive across the board, according to the survey. More than a quarter of students (26%) said they censor themselves at least a few times a week in conversations with friends, and 25% said they’re more likely to self-censor now than they were when starting college.”

The atmosphere at the university has grown so troublesome to free-speech advocates there that more than 100 faculty members have joined a new Council on Academic Freedom on campus. Indeed, the debate about whether free discussion is stifled at Harvard has been joined – ironically but appropriately at Harvard.

Harvard Magazine sketched out the arguments last June. In part, it cited an op-ed that founders of the new council wrote in The Boston Globe: “The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward,” they wrote. “…The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail.”

This notion, implying that the marketplace of ideas will weed out the intellectual dinosaurs, is a longstanding one, of course. For campuses nationwide, the question today is about who should be permitted into the marketplace and whose ideas deserve only to be shunned.

The Big Picture

Tag Archives: Princeton