Latest news with #DartmouthCollege
Mint
5 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
The punch that launched Trump's war on American universities
Harmeet Dhillon, head of the civil-rights division at the Justice Department, wakes up around 6 a.m. and begins her workday scrolling through X, searching for claims of discrimination. A lot of them, Dhillon said, regard universities. After spotting 'a list of new horrors," she said," I text my deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking." The Trump administration is on the hunt for campuses that have allegedly tolerated antisemitism, threatening to yank billions of dollars in federal research funding from Harvard and other top-name schools. The White House has accused universities of failing to protect Jewish students during campus protests against Israel over the war in Gaza that began in 2023. Yet the idea of targeting elite schools by withholding federal funds originated years earlier. Many conservatives have long studied ways to combat what they view as the liberal, anti-Western ills of American higher education. Some are now in the Trump administration, trying to push change. While Dhillon was a student at Dartmouth College, she was editor in chief of a conservative college newspaper that sued the school in a free-speech case. She said the lawsuit, which the paper won, cemented her career path. In 2018, she was the lawyer on a lawsuit that forced the University of California, Berkeley to revamp its speaker policies. Trump has since become preoccupied with the White House push—headed by Stephen Miller, the president's top domestic policy adviser—to influence U.S. universities, particularly Harvard, according to administration officials. Harvard is going to court Thursday to oppose administration efforts to forbid international students from enrolling at the school. 'Harvard wants to fight," Trump told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office. 'They want to show how smart they are, and they're getting their ass kicked." Leaders in Trump circles have argued that universities were so deeply stewed in progressive ideas that small, incremental changes wouldn't be enough—that the federal government needed to force a major cultural shift. For years, the notion went nowhere. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, said he, Miller and others close to the president talked about asserting more control over universities in the early days of Trump's first term. 'The idea was nothing more than a concept back then," said Bannon, a Georgetown and Harvard graduate. 'You couldn't even call it an idea." Then a punch in the face grabbed Trump's attention. A demonstration against the war in Gaza at the Harvard campus on Oct. 14, 2023. In February 2019, Hayden Williams set up a table at UC Berkeley, where he was helping recruit students to join Turning Point USA, a youth-outreach group founded by conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A man taunted Williams and delivered a sucker punch. Neither the attacker, who was later arrested, nor Williams were students at the school. Video of the attack went viral and Williams, sporting a black eye, appeared on Fox News. Kirk recalled Trump saying at the time, We've got to do something about this. Kirk said he told Trump that it was a chance to stand up for conservative students, and that they talked about withholding federal funding for free-speech violations. Donald Trump Jr. has credited Kirk for pushing the strategy. About two weeks after the altercation, Trump brought Williams onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Trump said he planned to sign an executive order requiring colleges and universities to uphold free speech if they want federal research money. 'If they don't, it will be very costly," Trump said. Soon after, Trump signed the executive order. It was stalled by opponents, who included congressional Republicans and some in the White House. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, chair of the Senate's education committee, questioned whether the order was constitutional. 'I don't want to see Congress or the president or the department of anything creating speech codes to define what you can say on campus," Alexander said at the time. The roadblock echoed an earlier era. President Richard Nixon wanted to cut off Defense Department funding from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in response to campus antiwar protests, but members of his administration pushed back, historian Michael Koncewicz said. The first Trump administration nonetheless laid legal groundwork for the current fight. In 2020, after the administration tried and failed to stop money going to projects Trump opposed, the Office of Management and Budget adjusted federal grant regulations. The new rule permitted the termination of projects 'if an award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities." It was an opening waiting for its moment. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators marching past the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., on April 18, 1972. During the four years between Trump's first and second terms, some of his former administration officials began planning another crack at reining in higher education. Conservative higher-education policymakers mapped how they could use executive power, anticipating that Republicans might not have 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster. 'There was a lot of energy to boldly plan for the maximum higher-education reform that would be justified at the federal level," recalled Adam Kissel, who was a deputy assistant secretary for higher-education programs at the Education Department during Trump's first term. Vice President JD Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, made the point clear during a speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference, titled 'The Universities Are the Enemy." Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and subsequent war in Gaza, provided the surprise push. During a congressional hearing that December, House members questioned campus presidents from three top universities about reports of antisemitism. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), a top Trump ally and Harvard graduate, drew national attention with her inquiry. 'Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment, yes or no?" she asked Sally Kornbluth, the MIT president. Kornbluth didn't say yes, it was. Neither did the two other presidents. Stefanik said Claudine Gay, then-president of Harvard, should resign. Claudine Gay, left, then-president of Harvard University; Liz Magill, then-president of University of Pennsylvania, testifying before the House Education and Workforce Committee in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 5, 2023. The video of the hearing was viewed billions of times, Stefanik said. Both Gay and Liz Magill, then-president of University of Pennsylvania, resigned in the lingering criticism that followed. 'It shows that it was a seminal moment," Stefanik said, 'and it set off an earthquake in higher ed." Conservative think tanks, packed with Trump allies, seized the moment. In January 2024, the Heritage Foundation held an event to launch a National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. A number of Trump's first-term officials joined, including David Friedman, former ambassador to Israel. He said antisemitism had become 'a full five-alarm fire" that has 'infiltrated and insinuated itself into the halls of the Ivy League." 'You can walk into a cocktail party in Manhattan and spout Nazi rhetoric and you'll be shown the door," Friedman said in a video aired during the task-force launch. 'But if you express the conviction that Israel should not exist, you will probably be poured a drink." Friedman proposed a four-point prescription, beginning with 'take away their money," he said. 'Hate groups must lose their tax-exempt status, and universities that don't protect their students should lose their government funding," Friedman said. Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Trump's team was emboldened by his 2024 victory, which drew support across nearly every demographic group, including a significant boost from younger voters. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, believed he had a receptive audience in the second Trump administration. He provided a list of schools he believed should be investigated, based, in part, on his own unwelcome experiences speaking there. The list included Harvard, Columbia, Duke and New York universities, as well as U Penn and University of California, Irvine. Within about two weeks of Trump's inauguration, the Justice Department announced the new Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism. The Justice Department later released a list of 10 targeted universities, including several on Klein's list. Trump said recently he wanted to redirect federal funds from elite institutions to trade schools, and he has asked for suggestions about how to carry that out, officials said. The president has zeroed in on Harvard's endowment, telling aides that a university with some of the country's wealthiest backers doesn't need federal funds. 'It was kind of sticker-shock to him," Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. 'I think that it's right to investigate and take a look at all of it." Kirk said he speaks frequently with the president, telling him to 'crush these universities with every power you have." He was in the Oval Office Wednesday when the president said Harvard was going to get its backside kicked. Recent polls, including a survey by The Wall Street Journal this spring, show Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to cutting university funding for medical research. A Journal poll also found that some arguments from the Trump administration about the threat might gain support, such as casting the cuts as a way to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, center, at the Oval Office where President Trump spoke Wednesday about Harvard's prospects. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a leading critic of universities it alleges squash conservative perspectives, has expressed opposition to Trump's tactics, including the threat to cut research funding at Harvard. 'The government can grant and reject grant requests for many reasons. But it can't do so for unconstitutional ones. And that's exactly what is happening here," said Tyler Coward, the foundation's lead counsel for government affairs. 'The problems that exist at Harvard, and there are many, cannot distract from the very real threat of the government wielding its immense funding power to control America's colleges and universities." Top Trump officials are closely monitoring the words and actions of university leaders. Columbia University interim President Claire Shipman in her recent commencement speech mentioned the absence of pro-Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, who is the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His detention has drawn protests. The following day, the university received a notice of civil-rights violation. McMahon said the notice was in the works before Shipman's speech. 'President Shipman is trying to balance different factions, but I was disappointed," McMahon said. Naming Khalil wasn't 'necessary for her to say, considering all of the campus unrest that had happened," McMahon said. White House officials told Columbia it should be mindful during its search for a permanent president that such comments from university leaders would again jeopardize federal funding, a senior administration official said. Dhillon, head of the DOJ's civil-rights division, said 'all these schools are in the penalty box, they're all misbehaving." Harvard is taking an aggressive approach, she said. Columbia, meanwhile, 'they're playing dead," Dhillon said. 'It doesn't mean their intentions are any different." Write to Eliza Collins at Douglas Belkin at Tarini Parti at and Liz Essley Whyte at
Forbes
21-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Dartmouth Given $34 Million For A New Institute For Global Security
Dartmouth College has announced that it will launch the Davidson Institute for Global Security, which will feature several programs focusing on a wide range of international security and defense topics. Initial funding for the institute has come from a collection of private gifts totaling $34 million from more than 20 alumni and parents. Included in those donations is a multi-million lead gift from the Jim and Julia Davidson family. Jim Davidson is one of the original co-founding partners of Silver Lake, a major private equity firm focused on technology investments. While neither of the Davidsons is a Dartmouth alum, their three children all attended the school. Dartmouth anticipates that the program will prepare its graduates for leadership jobs in the governmental policy, defense and security sectors, helping address pressing workforce needs in important security fields. As one example, the U.S. is projected to be losing more than a third of its nuclear security workforce in the next five years. The Davidson Institute for Global Security is an outgrowth of Dartmouth's Initiative for Global Security, a four-year pilot program for which the Davidsons had provided early seed funding. It will focus on undergraduate education, providing students with both relevant course work and real-world, practical experience through internships, national and international travel experiences, and access to global thought-leaders via a new speaker series and Dartmouth's international security forum held annually in Washington, DC. Through such programming, students will be exposed to policymakers, journalists, foreign service officers, military officers, and other key policymakers. The institute, in collaboration with the Tuck School of Business and the department of economics, will enable students and faculty to explore the intersection of security and business and will also serve as the organizational umbrella for existing Dartmouth programs in several policy areas. An example is the recent International Security and Economics pilot program, where students and faculty study the relationships of security challenges to economics and business. It will also house Dartmouth's War and Peace Fellows, which annually brings 80 undergraduate students together from multiple disciplines to learn how social, political, moral, and technological factors affect a wide range of topics such as international conflict, human rights, terrorism, military policy, and climate change. In addition, the institute will host the E. John Rosenwald Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, named in honor of a former chair of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees. That program is focused on international history and security, supporting leading young scholars from all disciplines to come to Dartmouth to work on research in areas such as the environment, health, and human development. Rosenwald's friends and classmates raised $12 million to endow the program which was named for him in 2021 in recognition of his 70 years of leadership and service to Dartmouth. Daryl Press, professor of government at Dartmouth and the faculty director for its Initiative for Global Security pilot, will serve as the institute's inaugural director. Included among the faculty who will be associated with the institute are: Press told me that about 20 Dartmouth faculty are currently involved with the institute, spanning areas like political science, economics, history, and engineering. He expects more disciplines to be represented in the future. According to Press, a distinctive feature of the institute is that it will promote 'rigorous, politically nonpartisan research on today's most momentous, complex issues' such as China's rise as a superpower, the changing military balance in Asia, nuclear proliferation, prospects for peace in the Russian-Ukraine war, violence against civilians during military conflicts, the control of new dangerous technologies, disruptions to the global trade system, and changes in U.S. foreign policy. Press said that institute faculty will also continue to influence national and international policy through research-based consultation and advising with senior officials at the U.S. National Security Council, Department of Defense, and Department of State, as well as intelligence agencies and senior policymakers at NATO and in allied countries. In a recent interview, Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock told me that she envisions the Davidson Institute extending Dartmouth's traditional strengths in preparing students for future leadership roles. 'The rigorous, nonpartisan scholarship being done by our faculty is key to helping students learn how to navigate an increasingly complicated geopolitical landscape,' she said. 'We will focus on issues, rather than political stances, and we will teach students how to think, not what to think.' The $34 million in private funds will be used to endow the various components of the new institute. Current plans do not call for the addition of any new undergraduate majors or a major expansion of the number of students in the programs. Instead, the emphasis will be on enhancing student opportunities and increasing the quality of the small-group interactions that both Press and Beilock believe are hallmarks of a Dartmouth education.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-05-2025
- General
- Sydney Morning Herald
Why Gen X is the real loser generation
'We suffer', said Seneca, 'more often in imagination than in reality'. The Stoic philosopher could have been talking about the generations. Members of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, say that social media ruined their childhood. Millennials, between 1981 and 1996, complain that they cannot buy a house. Baby Boomers, between 1946 and 1964, grouse that they face an uncertain retirement. Many forget about Generation X, which is made up of those born between 1965 and 1980. Proxied by Google searches the world is less than half as interested in Gen X as it is in Millennials, Gen Zers or Baby Boomers. There are few podcasts or memes about Gen X. Aside from Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a novel published in 1991 which popularised the moniker, there are few books discussing the cohort. In Britain, Gen Xers are less likely than members of any other age group to know the generation to which they belong. Gen Xers may have no place in the popular imagination but, contrary to Seneca, they really do suffer. This is true both because Gen Xers are at a tricky age, and also because the cohort itself is cursed. A recent 30-country poll by Ipsos finds that 31 per cent of Gen Xers say they are 'not very happy' or 'not happy at all', the most of any generation. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College finds all sorts of nasty things, from unhappiness to anxiety to despair, top out around the age of 50. This is consistent with the 'U-bend of life' theory, which suggests that people are happy when young and old, but miserable in middle age. Baby Boomers went through it; before long millennials will, too. Loading The U-bend exists in part because chronic health issues start to emerge in middle age. People also come to realise they will not achieve everything they had hoped in their careers. On top of this, Gen Xers often have to look after both their children and their parents. In America, they devote 5 per cent of their spending to caring for people under 18 or over 65, against just 2 per cent for boomers. In Italy, the share of 18-to-34-year-olds living with their parents has increased from 61 per cent to 68 per cent over the past two decades. In Spain, the rise is even more dramatic. To which generation do many of these parents belong? Gen X.
The Age
16-05-2025
- General
- The Age
Why Gen X is the real loser generation
'We suffer', said Seneca, 'more often in imagination than in reality'. The Stoic philosopher could have been talking about the generations. Members of Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012, say that social media ruined their childhood. Millennials, between 1981 and 1996, complain that they cannot buy a house. Baby Boomers, between 1946 and 1964, grouse that they face an uncertain retirement. Many forget about Generation X, which is made up of those born between 1965 and 1980. Proxied by Google searches the world is less than half as interested in Gen X as it is in Millennials, Gen Zers or Baby Boomers. There are few podcasts or memes about Gen X. Aside from Douglas Coupland's Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, a novel published in 1991 which popularised the moniker, there are few books discussing the cohort. In Britain, Gen Xers are less likely than members of any other age group to know the generation to which they belong. Gen Xers may have no place in the popular imagination but, contrary to Seneca, they really do suffer. This is true both because Gen Xers are at a tricky age, and also because the cohort itself is cursed. A recent 30-country poll by Ipsos finds that 31 per cent of Gen Xers say they are 'not very happy' or 'not happy at all', the most of any generation. David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College finds all sorts of nasty things, from unhappiness to anxiety to despair, top out around the age of 50. This is consistent with the 'U-bend of life' theory, which suggests that people are happy when young and old, but miserable in middle age. Baby Boomers went through it; before long millennials will, too. Loading The U-bend exists in part because chronic health issues start to emerge in middle age. People also come to realise they will not achieve everything they had hoped in their careers. On top of this, Gen Xers often have to look after both their children and their parents. In America, they devote 5 per cent of their spending to caring for people under 18 or over 65, against just 2 per cent for boomers. In Italy, the share of 18-to-34-year-olds living with their parents has increased from 61 per cent to 68 per cent over the past two decades. In Spain, the rise is even more dramatic. To which generation do many of these parents belong? Gen X.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
New Theory Suggests Dark Matter Is Frozen Relics of Light-Speed Particles
In an ongoing quest to guess the secret behind the Universe's excess in gravity, two researchers from Dartmouth College in the US have proposed a chilling union between massless particles soon after the Big Bang. For the better part of a century it's been frustratingly clear that estimates of the Universe's visible mass have failed to account for the way galaxies rotate, pointing to slow-moving clumps of matter we can't see. This stuff has been dubbed ' dark matter'. Even as researchers whittle away at the list of properties describing this cold and silent corner of physics, its identity and origins remain elusive. Physicists Guanming Liang and Robert Caldwell picture a newborn cosmos sizzling with massless particles zooming about at high speed – a form of matter that has more in common with light than with cold chunks of darkness. Over time, particles within this fog of high-energy material collided and cooled, leaving them with the required mass to explain the Universe's unseen source of gravity. "That's totally antithetical to what dark matter is thought to be – it is cold lumps that give galaxies their mass," Caldwell says. "Our theory tries to explain how it went from being light to being lumps." Roughly 13.7 billion years ago, when the whole Universe was crammed into a space that would easily fit in a gap in your teeth, a quantum party was underway. Particles of all varieties were zooming about, bumping and grinding for want of room to move. According to the Nambu and Jona-Lasinio model of nucleon synthesis, one particular class of these particles known as Dirac fermions could buddy up in a very similar manner to the way electrons combine to form Cooper pairs in superconductors. Though the physics behind the activity is complex (even for quantum mechanics), there are implications for cosmological growth, from cosmic inflation to later expansion. Yet all have been based on assumptions that the temperature of this space remained fairly balanced. Liang and Caldwell wondered what might happen if other thermal properties of this process were taken into account. What if an imbalance in the partnerships between some hypothetical high-energy Dirac fermions resulted in them converting their insane energy to mass, effectively freezing them? The product would be like turning a thundercloud into a hailstorm. "The most unexpected part of our mathematical model was the energy plummet that bridges the high-density energy and the lumpy low energy," says Liang. The very fact Cooper pairs exist among electrons means no exotic activity is required to explain the emergence of these slow, dark matter particles. What's more, the hypothesis could explain where so much of the energy in the early Universe went. "Structures get their mass due to the density of cold dark matter, but there also has to be a mechanism wherein energy density drops to close to what we see today," Liang says. "The mathematical model of our theory is really beautiful because it's rather simplistic – you don't need to build a lot of things into the system for it to work." Being simple is one thing. Proving it is another. Unlike so many proposals on the identity of the mysterious material known as dark matter, this theory could actually be tested using data we already have at hand. Transformations from hot, high-pressure loners to cold and slow marriages would leave a signature in the cosmic microwave background – the distorted background glow of radiation that's been bouncing around the Universe since its earliest moments. Certain signs found in the cosmic microwave background would be points scored in favor of these fermions being at least one source of dark matter. "It's exciting," says Caldwell. "We're presenting a new approach to thinking about and possibly identifying dark matter." This research was published in Physical Review Letters. The End of The Universe Could Come 'Much Sooner' Than We Thought We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Lasts Thousands of Years Scientists Witness Lead Literally Turn Into Gold in The Large Hadron Collider
