Latest news with #DrewGilpinFaust
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump news at a glance: Harvard threatened with more cuts as foreign universities seek to attract students
Donald Trump delivered the traditional presidential Memorial Day speech at Arlington national cemetery and also attacked judges on social media, talking up his own achievements and threatening Harvard University with further cuts to its funding. Trump posted on his social media platform: 'I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land.' Harvard has launched legal actions over what it said was Trump's attempt to 'gain control of academic decision-making' at the university and his administration's threat to review about $9bn in federal funding. Last week the Trump administration announced it would revoke federal permission for the institution to enrol international students. A federal judge issued an injunction within hours, temporarily blocking such a ban. Here's what's been happening. A recent former president of Harvard University has urged people to 'speak out' in defence of 'foundational threats' to values such as freedom, autonomy and democracy in the US. Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard, also warned of US constitutional checks and the rule of law being 'at risk' under the current administration, even as Donald Trump issued a fresh threat against the elite university as it seeks to repel his assaults on its independence and funding. Read the full story Hong Kong's education bureau has called on the city's universities to 'attract top talent' by opening their doors to those affected by the Trump administration's attempt to ban Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard has launched legal action against the ban but done little to assuage concerns among students thrown into limbo. Experts have warned the US the ban could be a boon for foreign institutions looking to attract talent. Read the full story Donald Trump honoured the sacrifices of US military veterans in the traditional presidential Memorial Day speech at Arlington national cemetery, but also peppered his address on Monday with partisan political asides while talking up his own plans and achievements. The US president laid a wreath and paid tribute to fallen soldiers and gave accounts of battlefield courage as tradition dictates. But Trump also veered off into rally-style personal boasting and brief partisan attacks during the solemn event. Read the full story Holidaymakers in countries hit the hardest by Trump's trade tariffs are taking the US off their list for trips abroad, according to online travel booking data. Hotel search site Trivago has seen double-digit percentage declines in bookings to the US from travellers based in Japan, Canada and Mexico. The latter two countries were the first on Trump's tariff hit list when he announced tariffs of 25% on 1 February. Read the full story Experts have told the Guardian that Islamic State is capitalising on Trump's dismantling of the international order, his affinity for Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Israel, and most of all his appointment of Pete Hegseth as Pentagon chief, in its recruitment propaganda. Read the full story Former government officials have told the Guardian that Trump's quid pro quo approach to foreign policy has more in common with his predecessors than it first appears. Where he does differ, they argue, is in his shameless abandonment of moral leadership and use of the US presidency for personal gain. Cuts to AmeriCorps – the US agency for national service and volunteerism – were among the harshest doled out by Donald Trump and Elon Musk's so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge). Those cuts are already disrupting LA wildfire recovery. Catching up? Here's what happened on 25 May 2025.
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Former Harvard president urges people to ‘speak out' against threats to US democracy
A recent former president of Harvard University urged people to 'speak out' in defense of 'foundational threats' to values such as freedom, autonomy and democracy in the US, as those whose deaths for such causes in war were being honored on Memorial Day. Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard, also warned on Monday of US constitutional checks and the rule of law being 'at risk' under the current administration, even as Donald Trump issued a fresh threat against the elite university as it seeks to repel his assaults on its independence and funding. 'We are being asked not to charge into … artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which [the US civil war dead] gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?' Faust wrote in a guest opinion essay for the New York Times. She highlighted, in particular, the principles fought and died for by Union soldiers in the US civil war and the roles played by assassinated US president Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and leading Black civil rights leader of the 19th century. 'We must honor these men,' she wrote. Faust, who led Harvard between 2007 and 2018 and still teaches there, did not mention the US president by name but she referred to his position and made a direct link between the civil war and now. Noting that about 2.7 million men, mostly volunteers, in 1861-1865 'took up arms to preserve the Union as a beacon of democracy at a time when representative government seemed to be fading from the earth', she went on to warn: 'Today democracy is once again under worldwide threat, assailed as disorderly and inefficient by autocratic leaders from Budapest to Moscow to Beijing, leaders our own president openly admires.' Faust said that Lincoln regarded the Confederacy's split from the Union, when southern states seceded in order to defend slavery and evade federal government intervention, as a 'direct assault' on government by the majority 'held in restraint' by constitutional checks. 'Those structured checks and the rule of law that embodies and enacts them are once again at risk as we confront the subservience of Congress, the defiance of judicial mandates and the arrogation of presidential power in a deluge of unlawful executive orders,' she wrote in her essay. Critics of Trump lament congressional Republicans' acquiescence to the president's expansions of his authority and challenges to constitutional constraints, Democrats' lackluster resistance, and the administration's defiance of court orders over various anti-immigration extremes and partisan firings of federal officials and watchdogs without cause. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly accused Harvard of antisemitism and bias against Jewish students and attacked its efforts towards greater diversity on campus, and the administration has further demanded cooperation with federal immigration authorities, while harnessing federal powers to try to punish the university. Last Friday, Harvard sued prominent government departments and cabinet secretaries for what it said was a 'blatant violation' of the US constitution when the Trump administration announced it would revoke federal permission for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution to enroll international students. A federal judge issued an injunction within hours, temporarily blocking such a ban. Harvard had previously sued in April over what it said was Trump's attempt to 'gain control of academic decision-making' at the university and the administration's threat to review about $9bn in federal funding. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion On Monday, Trump posted on his social media platform: 'I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,' adding: 'What a great investment that would be for the USA.' By Monday afternoon the president had not followed up with action or further explanation or statements. Harvard's current president, Alan Garber, who is Jewish, has called the Trump demands 'illegal' and said the administration was trying 'to control whom we hire and what we teach'. Faust, a historian and research professor at Harvard, who was also its first president to have been raised in the US south, concluded her essay by acknowledging that those who fought in the US civil war did, in fact, save the nation and subsequently gave opportunities to the generations that followed. 'They were impelled to risk all by a sense of obligation to the future,' she wrote, adding that 'we possess a reciprocal obligation to the past' and that 'we must not squander what they bequeathed to us'.
