They should be ashamed by their cowardice. Trump threatened and Columbia caved.
The US president has made no secret of his intent to control what is studied, thought, and debated. His administration sent a letter to Columbia University demanding sweeping changes, including placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department under “academic receivership” for five years, abolishing the university judicial board, and centralizing all disciplinary processes under the office of the president. Such unprecedented intervention is blatantly illegal and a wholesale attack on academic freedom and free speech. On Friday, Columbia capitulated.
It is an embarrassment to Columbia, of course, but the embarrassment is not Columbia’s alone. The use of federal funding threats to control universities should be a five-alarm fire for the thousands of other universities, and yet the response from the majority of academic leadership has been silence.
It is, ultimately, about the money. Trump has destroyed the autonomy of federal research agencies, which is what allows him to hold research funds hostage and exercise that kind of leverage over the curriculum and control faculty and students. That’s why spineless Columbia surrendered.
The reasons are understandable. If any one university speaks out, they are scared Trump would pull funding. The president of that university will have to see the place they love and the people they are responsible for gutted by a $50 or $100 or $400 million cut, either to federal grants or scholarships. What if speaking out will change nothing? Why risk the all-critical research of their science faculty, important scholarships for their students, for a statement that might lead to naught?
It seems to me that one approach universities could take to this threat is to not stand alone. Shouldn’t we all be standing together to resist. After all, it is illegal, everyone says, why isn’t everyone responding with lawsuits and threats of legal action? Columbia’s actions are going to have repercussions for all of us, because it’s crippling research.
The reason this is different is because the government is attacking free speech and free inquiry itself. The current collective cowardice is self-defeating. Their refusal to stand together now only makes them more vulnerable in the future, and less credible when they say they are privately resisting. How can we trust they aren’t complying in advance, reshaping their curriculum and research dollars to avoid retribution? We can’t.
If university leaders, some of the most privileged people in our society, allow themselves to be bullied and blackmailed, and refuse to coordinate with each other on courage, how do we expect any other institutions – law firms, non-profits, businesses – to stand up?
Personally, I find the silence of the University of Minnesota worrying. Maybe they’re busy building a case to defend against Trumpian attacks? Or maybe there are a bunch of lawyers on the board of regents holding everyone back.
I should acknowledge that one provost of Columbia has spoken out strongly against the assault on academic freedom — in the pages of the New York Times, no less. Usually the NYT is doing their best to provide cover, in the form of ambiguity and weasel wording, for Republicans, so this was a surprise.
The Trump administration has sought to impose its will on higher education by withdrawing more than a billion dollars of funding from some universities and threatening others with similar punishment. It has sought to deport student protesters who are legal residents. All this represents a fundamental assault on the values and functioning of our university system. Columbia and Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876 and America’s first true research university, may be only the first to feel the effects of this needless use of a sledgehammer.
Columbia’s capitulation last week to the Trump administration, in which it agreed to a number of demands in order to restore federal funding, obliterates its leadership in defending free inquiry. If Columbia allows authoritarian-minded leaders to dictate what we can teach, then the federal government will dictate what we can read, what books we may have in our libraries, what art we can display, what problems scientists can explore. Then, we are no longer a free university.
They don’t want a free university! Having a bunch of intelligent, articulate people who can criticize the dumbass-in-chief and his wicked, self-destructive policies is not desirable. He loves the uneducated, remember!
Today, the stakes are higher. We are in a fight for survival and appeasement never works. Despite platitudes to the contrary, Columbia’s leaders have weakened our community and our leadership among the greatest educational institutions in the world. This is not the way to fight Mr. Trump’s efforts at silencing our great American universities. If we don’t resist collectively by all legal means, and by social influence and legislative pressure, we are apt to see the destruction of our most revered institutions and the enormous benefits they accrue to America.
Collective resistance sounds like a good plan. Who is organizing it? Not the Democratic party, that’s for sure.
When this was reported in the German journal “Der Spiegel Online”, they also mentioned that Trump has special hatred against Columbia from his days as an real estate crook. He tried to dump a plot of land on them for 400 million dollar when they wanted to build a campus extension. Columbia’s experts valued the land below 90 million and in the end they declined the deal. Trump was obviously furious and badmouthed the university and its then president for years to come.
So, not much has changed in all those decades: he is a bad deal maker and business man, has a thin skin, is whiney and vindictive.
Well, we now know the answer to what America will do when fascism comes to this country?
Nothing.
No armed uprisings. No general strikes. Just a few meager, toothless, demonstrations followed by cowed acceptance.
We deserve our coming collapse.
@#2 No, we don’t deserve it. And WE aren’t doing nothing. It is hard for ordinary people to rise up, but they are starting to, while the people in the privileged positions, whose JOB it is to stop the enemies of democracy, have proven ineffectual or worse. It’s Vietnam deja vu, the “wise men,” and they were all men, of the defense and foreign policy establishment couldn’t stop that “damn fool war,” but WE did. Saving democracy means the general public must get riled up, and Trump is doing that. The more he pushes the more people will push back. Trump “wields power wildly, ignoring the legions of enemies that spring out of the ground.” (Mario Puzo.) Time to “take America back,” use the far right’s rallying cry against them, now that there really is a threat, and the far right has become it.
Columbia has a $14 billion endowment. Granted, you can’t raid those funds, but it tells me the alumni donors are out there.
Instead of sending out the same old “won’t you contribute” fund raising letter, they should lay it out to the alums that Columbia is under attack and can’t rely on the US government to honor its commitments. Demonstrate the seriousness of the situation by slashing the salaries of the President ($3 million!), deans and administrators. Desperate times.
1- Why risk the all-critical research of their science faculty, important scholarships for their students, for a statement that might lead to naught?
2- How can we trust they aren’t complying in advance, reshaping their curriculum and research dollars to avoid retribution? We can’t.
Reshaping the curriculum means turning all higher education entities into far right think tanks and making every lawyer a member of the Federalist Society.
This is where the country is headed. It has been slowly headed that way. The Republicans have been working on the less informed parts of the population, exploiting their hate and anger to redirected them. We need these people to wake up, obtain better knowledge of events affecting their lives and start realizing the current trend in government is not for their benefit. Unfortunately, they love the entertainment Trump, Bannon, FOX news etc. are providing. The misdirection is working perfectly fine.
I disagree with #3 Ted Lawry – the Viet Nam war is not a good analogy. The government back then was not forcing complete control over the country. What is happening now is different. The people need to come to their senses sooner. If they wake up too late, they will have missed the bus and total control will be what is left for us. This is not the time for slow motion activism. That is what is pissing most of us off, The Democrats seem to be waiting for this to blow over.
$3 MILLION!!!?! No wonder they caved — they’re bought and paid for already.
“No, we don’t deserve it.”
YES THE FUCK WE DO!!!!
This country is an irremediable cesspool of capitalism, Christianity, and racism built by slaves and exploited workers over the mass graves of Native Americans. Even when the libs were running things, this country is pure evil and it’s filthy, greedy, superstitious pig-ignorant citizens are no better!
The mere fact that Trump was elected at all is the ultimate indictment of the USA.
@7 Akira MacKenzie – That is a real mean comment about my country, but I can’t argue.
“The mere fact that Trump was elected at all is the ultimate indictment of the USA.”
@ 8
Technically, it’s my country too, supposedly. However, I’ve grown tired of the jingoistic lies of the right and liberalism’s wasted attempts to redeem the irredeemable. This country was always a scam and a lie.
@#7 NO, WE DON’T! Democracy and Freedom are OURS and no one has the right to take them away! Elitist snears at the general public, “pure evil and it’s filthy, greedy, superstitious pig-ignorant citizens” are worse than counsels of dispair, they give ammunition to MAGA. We had plenty of “holier that thou” purists back in Vietnam, they were worthless.
@#5 Yes, what they are doing to the USA now is worse than Vietnam, but how about the 20 million tons of bombs and artillary shells inflicted the Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese? And no, the bombs and shells were not used primarily on “military” targets, the entire rural population of those countries was the “target system,” as even the Pentagon admitted. Vietnam was the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, but carried out in a foreign country, and legitimated by the “Red Menace” rather than a Jewish one.
If you didn’t live through it, it is hard to understand how thoroughly the country was indoctrinated into communist evil as the justification for anything, including American evil, as it turned out. The administration thought they could get away with murder, literally, by telling the population that they were fighting naked Communist aggression. That is why Vietnam mattered so much, large segments of the population rejected right wing lies, and forced the government to back down. Seeing through the Cold War lies was much harder than seeing through Trump, but we did it. The anti-war movement started from nothing, whereas the anti-Trump movement already has about half the country!
Yes, I, too, am, by birth a citizen of the untied states. I have spent a massive amounts of time over the decades trying, in my own small way, to make this country more decent, caring and honest. However, the cumulative result is as satisfying as shoveling sand into the sea. I must agree with:
@ 8 stuffin
@7 Akira MacKenzie – That is a real mean comment about my country, but I can’t argue.
“The mere fact that Trump was elected at all is the ultimate indictment of the USA.”
and
@9 Akira MacKenzie
Technically, it’s my country too, supposedly. However, I’ve grown tired of the jingoistic lies of the right and liberalism’s wasted attempts to redeem the irredeemable. This country was always a scam and a lie.
And, I’m seeing more articles like this:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/helen-kromm/113336/the-free-world-will-be-better-off-without-us
Can this death spiral be turned upward? I don’t know. I hope. But, hopes and dreams are too often kicked to pieces by the destructive jackboots of the billionaire rtwingnuts.
Link. The link is to Talking Points Memo’s “Morning Memo,” which presents a roundup of a lot different news reports. Scroll down to see “It’s NEVER Enough.”
@12 Lynna, OM points out how, even if you give in to the magat cult’s demands, you will never be safe. They would shoot their own mothers on 5th avenue if they thought their mothers were not ‘thankful enough’.
Sitting back while the Trump picks them off one by one. Don’t they remember Martin Niemöller? He was supportive of many Nazi ideas until Hitler came to power. He actually didn’t pen his famous lines until his release form a concentration camp in 1945. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
@ 11 shermanj – Thanks for the link. The piece is certainly on target about everything it touched on.
Quote from Article: Even if there are elections, this is MAGA’s moment, and they didn’t come this far to give up. Unlike the Democratic Party they know how to fight, fight dirty, and they play for keeps. You think the Democratic Party is coming to your rescue? The Democratic Party that gave you Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden? Or maybe Chuck Schumer has an ace up his sleeve? Collectively they are weak, feckless, and arguably complicit. They aren’t going to save you.
I remember posting something like there are no knights in shining armor riding a white steed coming to our recue.
I want to add even if there are elections, the MAGAs with Musk’s tech teams have had plenty of time to control the companies who make the voting machines (or figure them out). The idea that midterms and the next presidential election will save us is becoming laughable.
What more would you expect from academia? It’s an institution built by old money for old money and it exists to legitimize power. I saw this coming from a mile away.
Like SilentBob said, no compliance. If you were under any illusions that fighting fascism wouldn’t mean tearing apart ivory towers like Columbia University and burning them to the ground, this strategy of placating fascists in power should make things clear.
“What more would you expect from academia? It’s an institution built by old money for old money and it exists to legitimize power. I saw this coming from a mile away.”
I reckon that talking point is basically calling academia part of the cabal of the elite.
The deep state.
(That’s a MAGA dog-whistle, and indicative of your style)