After message protests Trump, Carnegie Mellon University temporarily closes The Fence
Whether it be advertising their organization or giving a take on current events, it has served as a way to express their speech. But in a letter to students, CMU President Farnam Jahanian said the fence is closing after a recent message protesting President Trump.
The fence sits as just a white fence now in the center of the campus. No messages, no pictures, just a plain fence. This comes after "no rapists on our campus" was painted during the AI and Energy summit at Carnegie Mellon on Tuesday.
CMU's administration decided to paint over it and close it until sometime next week.
"It strikes me as very uncharacteristic and concerning to see that they've made the decision to censor speech on campus," said Anthony Cacciato, a CMU senior and member of the College Republicans.
Cacciato said CMU has championed free speech, and this goes against it. While he didn't agree with the message, he says students had a right to say it.
River Sepinuck, a junior at CMU and communications chair of the College Democrats, said it's disappointing the university is censoring students. His group met with university leadership about the fence.
"Unfortunately, [Jahanian] spent most of the meeting talking down to us, which we were disappointed by. We were hoping to get some form of concrete action about the change in policies surrounding the fence," Sepinuck said.
Earlier in the week, "protest the summit" was written and protected by the school with space for the students to address their concerns about Tuesday's event. In a message from the university's president, he says CMU supports peaceful protest, public dissent, and the exchange of ideas. It goes on to say that after messages equating Nazism, Zionism and Hindutva earlier this year and this latest message, the school is looking at how to move forward.
"It would be a great disservice to the culture on campus and the students on campus to go back and renege on this commitment to free speech that has been a cornerstone of how Carnegie Mellon has conducted itself in the past," Cacciato said.
Jahanian's letter says recent years have seen more messages disconnected from "meaningful dialogue." Cacciato said once messages are allowed back, no one should feel a chilling effect to say their thoughts. Sepinuck says there is most certainly a chilling effect moving forward.
"Knowing that just by unilateral decision, that President Jahanian can say, 'I don't like and I'm going to paint over it,' it makes us more hesitant to paint on the fence," Sepinuck said.
According to CMU, it looks to reaffirm the purpose of the tradition. No word on when next week messages may continue.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
2 minutes ago
- Fox News
What Musk's fracture with Trump means for GOP's future: ‘Beating heart of the Republican Party'
From "super genius" to "CRAZY," President Donald Trump has changed his tune about SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a matter of months, while the tech mogul has backpedaled his support for the Republican Party and called for a new, third American political party instead. Musk unveiled the creation of the so-called "America Party" after Trump signed into law his massive tax and domestic policy bill, which Musk staunchly opposed due to concerns that it would increase the federal deficit. "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom," Musk said in a July 5 X post. While there is an appetite for a third party in the U.S., Musk's so-called America Party is not likely to pick up steam and the tech mogul would have better luck driving reforms in the Republican Party, according to experts. "Elon's effort will go nowhere," Republican strategist Matt Gorman said in an email to Fox News Digital. "But I don't doubt it'll make a lot of consultants rich in the process." Meanwhile, Gorman said candidates undoubtedly would prefer an endorsement from Trump over financial backing from Musk – the largest donor in the 2024 election cycle who contributed approximately $295 million to Republicans. "If given a choice between a Trump endorsement or $20 million in ads from Elon, it's not even a contest," said Gorman, who previously served as the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "They'd take the Trump endorsement every single time." Political columnist Kristin Tate said that while Musk was helpful in driving public support from wealthy Silicon Valley Americans for Trump, it's unlikely these same tech leaders would abandon Trump and follow Musk instead. "Trump is the beating heart of the Republican Party right now," Tate said in an email to Fox News Digital. "Elon Musk would be better off trying to shape politics from within the Republican Party," Tate said. "A third party effort is doomed to fail. Most of President Trump's supporters see the effort as hostile to Trump and will not support Musk. Meanwhile, all Democrat voters have been conditioned to despise Musk, so they will not support him either." Tate said Trump and Musk should attempt to repair their relationship because "both men bring something important and unique to the GOP. "By leaving Trump, and the GOP generally, Musk will chisel off a small fraction of Republican Party voters – a fraction that will not be nearly big enough for his new party to win elections, but could be a spoiler for Democrats in elections with extremely tight margins," Tate said. Alex Keyssar, a history professor at Harvard Kennedy School of public policy, said that given dissatisfaction with the two-party system right now, it's possible that more third-party candidates could win state and local elections. But it's unclear if that would translate over to national elections because the rules governing elections and who may appear on ballots pose additional limitations for those candidates, he said. "There's a lot of popular sentiment looking for something else that is creating pressures for a third party," Keyssar told Fox News Digital. "In that sense, Elon Musk is on to something." Still, voters don't appear interested in a third party affiliated with Musk. While 49% of U.S. voters said they would consider joining a third party, 77% said they weren't on board if Musk created it, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Musk's relationship with Trump first started to unravel, at least publicly, in May toward the end of Musk's tenure overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Shortly after Musk's exit from DOGE, the two traded barbs over the "big, beautiful bill," where Musk said Trump wouldn't have won the 2024 election without his backing. Likewise, Trump accused Musk of going "CRAZY" over cuts to the electric vehicle credits that benefit companies like Tesla, and said Musk had been "wearing thin." Meanwhile, Trump isn't counting on Musk's political party taking off anytime soon, and told reporters July 6 that he believed another party "just adds to confusion." "Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it – but I think it's ridiculous," Trump said.
The Verge
2 minutes ago
- The Verge
The intolerable memes of Alligator Alcatraz
Alligator Alcatraz, Florida's hastily built, $225 million-and-counting immigrant detention facility in the Everglades, is both a de facto concentration camp and a right-wing meme. President Donald Trump's most ardent supporters are willing to excuse — or are in some cases reveling in — allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility: worms in food, floors flooded with fecal water, fluorescent lights left on for 24 hours a day, and no air conditioning at night despite South Florida's relentless humidity. To them, the whole thing is a big joke, fodder for memes that activate the base even as they turn the majority of Americans off from Trump's draconian immigration enforcement. One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch Laura Loomer, a close confidante of Trump's, was giddy at the prospect of potential escapees dying in the act. 'The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we start now,' she posted on X. (The figure refers not to the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in the country but to the United States' entire Latino population.) Conservative commentator Benny Johnson compared the facility's entrance to Jurassic Park and bragged about getting official Alligator Alcatraz merch during his visit. (Before his rightward turn, and before he was fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism, Johnson also compared the Arab Spring to Jurassic Park. It's unclear if he's seen any other movies.) One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch to fund her reelection campaign. There's more merch on Etsy. Obviously, there's also a shitcoin. The memes and merch are more than a get-rich-quick scheme for enterprising nativists, though grift is obviously always part of the MAGA equation. In his second term, Trump has turned immigration enforcement into a spectator sport. Far-right influencers like Chaya Raichik, better known as Libs of TikTok, have been invited to ride-alongs with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has turned her position into a sort of cowboy cop cosplay, often appearing in public in a bulletproof vest or a ten-gallon hat (or sometimes both). The official White House X account is posting 'deportation ASMR' and Studio Ghibli-fied images of crying migrants in handcuffs. There's a real glee to it. To borrow from Adam Serwer, the cruelty is the point, but there's more to it than that. At this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Vice President JD Vance said that voters had given Trump a mandate on immigration enforcement; Trump won the popular vote in part because the public was clamoring for mass deportations. It's true that before the 2024 election, most voters expressed disapproval with President Joe Biden's border policy and seemed open to a more hardline approach to immigration. But Trump — and the zoomers presumably running the White House's social media — either haven't realized that public opinion is no longer on his side with regard to immigration, or they simply don't care. Trump seems even less beholden to public opinion in his second term than he was in his first. Since January, he has pursued deeply unpopular policies, from tariffs to completely gutting the federal government, so relentlessly that he has even lost support from his own base. Half a year into Trump's second term, it's clear that voters agreed with some of his proposals in abstract terms — they elected him because he promised to 'do something about immigration' and 'run the government like a business' — but don't like how these policies have played out in practice. A chunk of Republican voters have turned against tariffs and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Still other Trump supporters have seen their friends, relatives, and spouses targeted by ICE since the president's return to office. One naturalized citizen who voted for Trump was even stopped by ICE agents while driving to work; he now believes that ICE is racially profiling Latinos. He told a local news station that he voted for Trump because he would be targeting 'criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-look-alike.' Trump's approval rating on immigration is now down to 41 percent, the lowest since his second term began. Voters may have trusted Trump to get 'criminals' out of the country, but they weren't necessarily expecting his administration to indiscriminately target noncitizens (and some citizens as well), deploy the National Guard to arrest immigrants and crack down on protesters in Los Angeles, or disappear hundreds of people to a Salvadoran megaprison. In a post on X, White House adviser Stephen Miller justified the decision to sic the National Guard on protesters by saying that 'America voted for mass deportations.' Recent polling suggests that Americans are no longer on board with Trump's immigration agenda. Rather than responding to this shift in voters' sentiment, the administration appears to be doubling down on its all-or-nothing approach to immigration enforcement and to its gleeful depictions of these draconian policies online. The memes create a sort of alternate reality, a virtual universe in which everyone is still on the Trump Train and all Americans are thrilled at the prospect of feeding immigrants to alligators. This echo chamber benefits from — and is amplified by — algorithmic silos. Your average voter may read about Alligator Alcatraz in the news, but they aren't necessarily seeing Benny Johnson's concentration camp selfies. The memes are in-group signaling; they engender a sense of belonging for Trump's most ardent supporters while inuring them to the cruelty of this new era. The memes are politics disjointed from polls and demagoguery free of democracy, a sign that the White House — either out of recklessness or something much worse — does not care about elections.
New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
Trump Administration Live Updates: Hostility in Washington Raises Shutdown Worries
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, left, and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, second from right, meeting with Chinese officials in Geneva in May. In recent years, one of China's biggest requests of American officials has been that the United States relax its strict controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips, measures that were put in place to slow Beijing's technological and military gains. Last week, the Trump administration did just that, as it allowed the world's leader in A.I. chips, the U.S.-based Nvidia, to begin selling a lower-level but still coveted chip known as H20 to China. The move was a dramatic reversal from three months ago, when President Trump himself banned China from accessing the H20, while also imposing triple-digit tariffs on Beijing. That set off an economically perilous trade clash, as China retaliated by clamping down on exports of minerals and magnets that are critical to American factories, including automakers and defense manufacturers. China's decision to cut off access to those materials upended the dynamic between the world's largest economies. The Trump administration, which came into office determined to bully China into changing its trade behavior with punishing tariffs, appeared to realize the perils of that approach. Now, the administration has resorted to trying to woo China instead. Officials throughout the government say the Trump administration is putting more aggressive actions on China on hold, while pushing forward with moves that the Chinese will perceive positively. That includes the reversal on the H20 chip. The H20 decision was primarily motivated by top Trump officials who agreed with Nvidia's arguments that selling the chip would be better for American technology leadership than withholding it, people familiar with the move say. But Trump officials have also claimed that it was part of the trade talks. After telling Congress in June that there was 'no quid pro quo in terms of chips for rare earths,' Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, reversed those comments on July 15, saying that the H20 move was 'all part of a mosaic' of talks with China. 'They had things we wanted, we had things they wanted, and we're in a very good place,' he said. Image A chip from Nvidia. The company's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has gone on a lobbying blitz in Washington, pushing politicians to open China for A.I. chip sales. Credit... Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times A Chinese Ministry of Commerce official seemed to reject that on Friday, saying that the United States had 'taken the initiative' to approve the H20 sales. China believes the U.S. should continue to remove its trade and economic restrictions, the official said. A person familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the H20 chip was not specifically discussed in meetings between Chinese and American officials in Geneva and London this spring. But the reversal was part of a more recent cadence of warmer actions the United States and China have taken toward each other. For instance, Beijing agreed in recent weeks to block the export of several chemicals used to make fentanyl, an issue Mr. Trump has been concerned about. Recent events have underscored the influence that China has over the U.S. economy. When Mr. Trump raised tariffs on Chinese exports in April, some top Trump officials thought Beijing would quickly fold, given its recent economic weakness. Instead, Beijing called Mr. Trump's bluff by restricting rare earths needed by American makers of cars, military equipment, medical devices and electronics. As the flow of those materials stopped, Mr. Trump and other officials began receiving calls from chief executives saying their factories would soon shut down. Ford, Suzuki and other companies shuttered factories because of the lack of supply. Mr. Trump and his top advisers were surprised by the threat that Beijing's countermove posed, people familiar with the matter say. That brought the United States back to the negotiating table this spring to strike a fragile trade truce, which Trump officials are now wary of upsetting. That agreement dropped tariffs from a minimum 145 percent to 30 percent, with the Chinese agreeing to allow rare earths to flow as freely as before. The administration's caution when it comes to China has been amplified by Mr. Trump's desire for an invitation to Beijing later this year. The president, who has been feted on other foreign trips, wants to engage in face-to-face trade negotiations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has begun recruiting chief executives for a potential delegation, setting off a competition over who will get to ride in Air Force One, according to people familiar with the plans. Craig Allen, a retired diplomat, said both countries were 'clearly preparing for a summit meeting,' adding, 'that's bringing forth measures that the other side wants and it's also holding back measures that the other side doesn't want.' 'It's like a dance,' Mr. Allen said. 'One side makes a move, the other side makes a move to correspond to that.' The Commerce Department declined to comment. The White House, the Treasury Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment. 'The government understands that forcing the world to use foreign competition would only hurt America's economic and national security,' John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, said. A Chinese bargaining chip Opposition to China has fueled bipartisan action for the last decade. Now, Mr. Trump's more hawkish supporters are quietly watching as the president remakes the party's China strategy. Though few are willing to speak out publicly, officials in the Trump administration and in Congress have privately expressed concern that the trade war has given China an opening to finally bring U.S. technology controls onto the negotiating table. Christopher Padilla, a former export control official in the George W. Bush administration, said the fact that the United States was now negotiating over what were supposed to be security restrictions was 'a significant accomplishment for the Chinese.' 'They've been after this for decades, and now they've succeeded,' he said. 'I assume the Chinese are going to demand more concessions on export controls in return for whatever we want next.' Mr. Trump was the first to harness the power of U.S. export controls, by targeting Chinese tech giant Huawei and putting global restrictions on American technology in his first term. But the Biden administration expanded those rules. Concerned that China's growing A.I. capacity would advance its military, Biden officials cracked down on exports of Nvidia chips, seeing them as the most effective choke point over Chinese A.I. capabilities. Image President Trump and Mr. Huang at the White House in April. Mr. Huang argues that blocking U.S. technology from China has created more urgency for China to develop its own technology. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times Since then, when Chinese officials raised their objections to U.S. technology controls in meetings, U.S. officials had responded by insisting that the measures were national security matters and not up for debate. But in the meeting in Geneva in May, China finally had a powerful counterargument. Beijing insisted that its minerals and magnets, some of which go to fighter jets, drones and weaponry, were a 'dual-use' technology that could be used for the military as well as civilian industries, just like A.I. and chips. It demanded reciprocity: If the United States wanted a steady flow of rare earths, Washington should also be ready to lessen its technology controls. It's not clear exactly what the United States agreed to in Geneva: The agreement has never been made public. But when the United States put out an unrelated export control announcement the day after the Geneva summit concluded, China responded angrily, saying the statement 'undermined the consensus' the countries had reached. In a notice on May 13, the Commerce Department said that using Huawei's A.I. chips 'anywhere in the world' was an export control violation. The notice was directed at other nations considering purchasing Huawei chips, people familiar with the move said, not the Chinese. The announcement appeared to take other parts of the Trump administration by surprise, and within hours, the language in the release was walked back, though no policy changes were made. Mr. Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, expressed concerns that such moves could damage trade talks with China, people familiar with the incident said. China once again clamped down on rare earth exports. Trying to find its own leverage, the United States responded by restricting exports of semiconductor design software, airplane parts and ethane. The two sides restored their truce in a meeting in London in June. Since then, trade in those products has restarted. But U.S. companies complain that Chinese licenses for rare earth magnets are limited to six months, and that the Chinese government is requesting proprietary information to obtain those shipments. Beijing has also continued to build out its export controls. On June 15, the day after Nvidia said it would be permitted to sell the H20 in China, Chinese officials announced new restrictions on exports of battery technology. The United States has been trying to decrease its dependence on China for rare earths, but there is no quick solution. China has a powerful hold over numerous industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to solar panels to drones. 'The challenge for the Trump administration is, how do they get out of this quagmire?' said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis to the RAND Corporation. 'It appears some competitive U.S. actions are now at the whims of Beijing, who can now determine the time, place and nature of U.S. tech and trade policy toward China.' Deal makers in the White House The change in the relationship with China has coincided with a separate shift in the administration, in which officials who favor technology controls on China have been sidelined in favor of those who support the tech industry's ambitions to sell abroad. Mr. Lutnick and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who has long been an ardent China critic, have hewed closely to the position of the president, who is more of a deal maker than a national security hawk. And hawkish members of the National Security Council have been fired in recent months, after being accused of insufficient loyalty. Their absence has paved the way for officials like David Sacks, the White House A.I. czar, who has criticized export controls, to push for tech companies to have freer rein. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has gone on a lobbying blitz in Washington, pushing politicians to open China for A.I. chip sales. Mr. Huang has contended that blocking U.S. technology from China has backfired by creating more urgency for China to develop its own technology. He has argued that the Chinese military won't use Nvidia chips, and pushed back against Washington's consensus that China is an adversary, describing it a 'competitor' but 'not our enemy.' Image The change in the U.S. relationship with China has coincided with a separate shift in the Trump administration, in which officials who favor technology controls on China have been sidelined. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Others have challenged those assertions, pointing to past research that the Chinese military has placed orders for Nvidia chips. Scientific papers published earlier this year also showed Chinese researchers with ties to military universities and a top nuclear weapons lab using Nvidia chips for general research. Mr. Rizzo, the Nvidia spokesman, said in a statement that 'non-military papers describing new and beneficial ways to use U.S. technology promote America.' In a letter on Friday, John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said the H20 chip had aided the rise of the Chinese A.I. model DeepSeek and would help China develop A.I. models to compete with American ones. These arguments do not appear to have persuaded the president. In an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Huang in July, Mr. Trump agreed with Nvidia that keeping American chips out of China would only help Huawei, and decided to reverse the H20 ban. People familiar with Mr. Trump's views say he has always viewed export controls more transactionally. In his first term, Mr. Trump agreed to roll back U.S. restrictions on ZTE at the urging of Mr. Xi. In this term, Mr. Trump and his advisers have begun using America's control over A.I. chips as a source of leverage in negotiations with governments from the Middle East to Asia. With China, Mr. Trump has his own longstanding aspirations. He believes that U.S. businesses have been getting ripped off for decades, and that he can be the one to fix it, particularly if he negotiates directly with Mr. Xi. His advisers have begun strategizing toward a more substantial trade negotiation with China focused on market opening, as well as the potential visit this fall.
