Latest news with #universitylife
The Guardian
a day ago
- General
- The Guardian
The kindness of strangers: drunk, alone and lost, a legendary drag queen helped me get home safe
I grew up in the English countryside, watching Queer as Folk on TV and dreaming about the day I'd move to the city and get to be part of the gay world. At age 18, in the mid-noughties, I packed up and left for Manchester, moving into the university halls of residence. I was thrilled. On my first night out, I went to a popular gay club night and got stupendously drunk. The university halls were only a five-minute walk away, but I was alone. Around 2am, I found myself propped against a wall outside a takeaway, unable to remember how to get back to my bed. Spotting me in trouble, Nana, who was lovingly known as the oldest drag queen in Manchester, came up to me and asked: ''Are you OK, chicken?' Nana was a Manchester institution. She had campaigned a lot during the HIV/Aids crisis in the 1980s and 90s. In the 2000s she'd often show up late at night to hand ice blocks out to drunk young partiers to help sober them up. She'd say: 'Here's something to suck on, boys,' which made everyone laugh. I told Nana I lived at the university, but that I'd just moved here and didn't know where I was going. Without hesitation, she replied: 'Come on love, let's get you home.' Nana escorted me back, got me safely into my room, tucked me into bed and saw herself out. All of this, dressed in drag. Her parting words were: 'Nana loves you – now be careful.' Looking back now, I can see how much of a vulnerable situation I had put myself in, as an 18-year-old in an unfamiliar environment. But Nana, who was probably in her early 60s at that point, took me under her wing. She got me home safely then just disappeared, like a gay fairy godmother. Nana died about three years ago. Canal Street, the gay strip in Manchester, effectively went into mourning. Nana had touched so many lives but it wasn't until after she passed and we all started trading stories of what Nana had done for us that we realised how wonderful she really was. For years there had been this fabulous person in the background who was looking after her community but not expecting any thanks for it. Vale Nana. From making your day to changing your life, we want to hear about chance encounters that have stuck with you. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. If you're having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here
Malay Mail
27-07-2025
- General
- Malay Mail
Better late than never — Daniswaran Seenivasan
JULY 27 — If someone had asked me during my first year at Universiti Malaya what my greatest ambition was, I would have said 'getting a good CGPA'. That was it. That was my entire world. Every decision, every thought, every effort, all anchored on the pursuit of academic excellence. And don't get me wrong, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But looking back, I realise how narrow my perspective was. I only realised that studies are not everything when I was at the end of my third year, and for someone in a four-year programme like mine, that was already very late. Three years, six semesters had already gone by, just like that. I had only one year left. By then, I had spent enough time watching others grow beyond lecture halls, winning competitions, leading organisations, and travelling the world, while I was still buried in books. It hit me hard, and I asked myself, 'Is this all that university is meant to be?' That was my wake-up call. But still, I told myself: nothing is ever too late, and everything starts from the first step. And so, I took that step. And then another. And another. One thing I learned is that you will only know your true talents and where you actually excel by involving yourself in diverse pathways. — Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri I started small, with an innovation pitching competition. It wasn't something I had planned months ahead for. In fact, we registered just a few days before the event at the Engineering Faculty of Universiti Malaya. I still remember how rushed everything felt. But somehow, our idea landed us as the First Runners Up. I remember thinking, 'Wow, is entrepreneurship this easy?' (Spoiler alert: it's not.) That experience was my spark. It gave me the confidence to explore further. I soon realised that winning second place was only the first stepping stone, not the finish line. In just four months, I pushed myself beyond what I thought were my limits. I travelled to six different countries, which were France, the United States of America, Turkey, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam, representing Malaysia in international forums, debating ideas with future diplomats in Washington, sharing my thoughts on youth leadership in Bali, and standing in Paris as a National Champion in the L'Oréal Brandstorm Challenge. Sometimes, I still can't believe it. But let me tell you one thing I'll never forget. During the L'Oréal Brandstorm finals, we were sitting there, hearts pounding, waiting for the results. My hands and feet were sweating like crazy. The only thing running in my head at that moment was, 'Please God, just bring us into the top 6.' And then they announced our country's name, 'Malaysia'. I literally dropped to the ground in pure disbelief and joy. We had done it. From UM to Paris. From just-another-student to Top 6 out of 80,000+ teams from 42 countries. But beyond the passports stamped and awards won, what truly changed me was the way I saw the world and the role I wanted to play in it. At Universiti Malaya, I wore many hats: Secretary of Rakan Muda UM, Information Officer of MIYC Lembah Pantai, co-founder of startups like JIIVI & CO and The Beardsmiths, cultural performer, athlete, and a statistical analyst intern at Maxis. It sounds like a list, doesn't it? But each role taught me something different about myself. One thing I learned is that you will only know your true talents and where you actually excel by involving yourself in diverse pathways. It's not about showing off or trying to impress others, but for you, yourself. Because at the end of the day, no one else can discover your talents except you. And for me, I found mine through entrepreneurship and business pitching. I realised I had a knack for coordinating teams, structuring ideas, and delivering pitches that resonate. That discovery didn't just stay on campus. It brought us all the way to represent Malaysia in the international finals in Paris, where we stood proudly as the Top 6 team out of nearly 80,000+ teams from 42 different countries. When I was coordinating food distributions during Ramadan, I learned the humility of service. When I stood before global leaders speaking on sustainability, I understood the power of voice and representation. When we launched JIIVI & CO, a smart compost bin startup, I faced failure, doubt, and rejection, but also learned resilience and hard work. And when I competed in sports, danced on stage, or led logistics for major events, I discovered teamwork, discipline, and the beauty of diverse talents. What I didn't expect to find in all these experiences was purpose. A purpose that goes beyond personal success. A purpose to empower others, to be a bridge between communities, and to always ask: how can I contribute? To those of you reading this, especially if you feel like you've 'missed the boat' or that it's 'too late to start', I want you to know, it's not. I was in my third year when I decided to truly live my university life. And look where it brought me. It's never too late to start, but you do need to start. You just need to take that very first step. And me? My journey doesn't end here. It continues, with every step forward, every challenge embraced, and every person inspired along the way. Because, as I've come to believe, we are all just one decision away from changing our lives. * Daniswaran Seenivasan is a final year student of BSc Statistics from the Faculty of Science, Universiti Malaya. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
Daily Mail
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kelly Ripa's daughter Lola candidly reveals difficult time her famous mom helped her through
Kelly Ripa 's daughter Lola has spoken candidly about how she was able to lean on her mother during a difficult period. The 24-year-old joined the latest episode of SiriusXM show Let's Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa where she opened up about a particularly testing time in which she only had her parents to turn to. 'When I went to university my first year, I was not happy at all,' Lola explained. 'And also, it's so hard because your other friends that you grew up with in high school are also going through the same thing. 'They're at a new school for the first time and you don't really wanna bother them. 'But I was going through a bit of a thing and I really felt like the only people I could speak to were my parents. 'Like most cases, when you're growing up, your parents always telling you, "When you're older you're gonna wish you listened to me." 'And there's so many times in my life where I'm now like, oh my God, I completely get it.' Lola admitted that she leaned on her mom Kelly and dad Mark Consuelos a lot during that spell – and was grateful that she was able to. 'You know that your parents actually in most cases – and it's really sad if this is not the case – but in most cases, your parents actually have your best interest at heart,' she explained. 'I think parents have to grow as well and understand that when your child is an adult, now we can make our own decisions for ourselves. And live with them.' Besides their daughter Lola, Kelly and Mark also share sons Michael, 27, and Joaquin, 22. In April, Lola revealed that she wants to recreate one of her parent's saucy pictures with her boyfriend – although believes doing so will give dad Mark a 'heart attack.' Her parents set the internet alight in July 2021 when they uploaded a racy vacation snap to social media. In the photo, mom-of-three Kelly dressed in a black one-piece, bent over while looking towards the camera as her husband stood behind her with his mouth wide open looking at her rear. Lola declared that she also wants to recreate the snap for herself. 'I'm going to say one thing right now. What if — POV — I post [this] with my boyfriend,' Lola declared to her mom, before going on to ask, "What does Dad do?" 'Oh my gosh, that's a great idea,' Kelly responded. 'We should recreate it and see!' Mom Kelly added: 'It's my favorite photo I've ever taken.' 'It's just so unnecessary,' Lola remarked. In their joint interview with People for the publication's World's Most Beautiful issue, the presenter continued: 'What's important about this photo is that I took it with the timer on my cell phone, and I just couldn't believe that it came out that good or funny! '[Mark] was sort of walking behind and I was bending over and I'm like, 'I'm going to see if this timer thing works.' 'And it turned out to be a really cute photo.' And it's fair to say Lola is hellbent on copying the shot for herself with Cassius, her boyfriend. She added to the publication: 'No, I stand by [wanting] to recreate it with my boyfriend. And my dad is going to have a heart attack.'
The Sun
13-06-2025
- The Sun
Moment ‘Karen' mum confronts 300 raving students who BOO her for demanding they turn down music but viewers are divided
THIS is the moment an angry mum confronts 300 university students having a noisy house party and demand they turn the noise down. Footage of the un-named woman pleading with the party-goers to turn the music down because her daughter had GCSE exams the following day has been posted on social media. 6 6 6 The un-named woman was among 30 householders complaining about noise from the party in a garden but was mocked online for ' being a Karen ' by some commentators. Police had to be called after university students descended on Cliff Road, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, to throw a final end of year party outside, as neighbours' requests to turn the music off went ignored. After leaving the party at 2am, the students then continued the party in the street, blasting music from a car until 3am on June 2. First-year cybersecurity student Gene Vale, 19, who attends Leeds Beckett university, arrived at the outdoor garden party at quarter to one in the morning. He said: "We were just chilling and this woman just barges in - there's an alleyway next to the house, so you can just walk through an alleyway. "She walks through the alleyway and barges through everyone, goes straight up to the DJ and says 'can you turn it off?' "He says 'oh, you're ruining the party' and everything and then she tries to explain her daughter has a 9am exam the next morning and says 'you're not being very considerate'. "Obviously, it didn't really end up working out for her, because the guy who actually was DJ'ing didn't really care.' The student - who plans to change his course to content creation and media studies come September - filmed the party and uploaded clips to TikTok. Leeds City Council officers who had descended on the home had to call for police backup after their requests to turn down the music went ignored. Tuition fee hike now active possibility amid university funding crisis - what it means for you Student Gene said the music in the back garden ended at around 2am - with students then taking the party out in to the quiet cul-de-sac as a driver blasted music out of their car. He said: "When everyone was at the front of the street, a car was playing music on full blast. "That ran for another half an hour until the police - everyone was gone by 3am. 'It took quite a lot of time to get people away because everyone was stood about wanting to see what was going on." While Gene says he does have some sympathy for the upset neighbours, ultimately, he says, they should be more empathetic. He said: "If I was in their situation, I'd be upset and I'd be angry - especially if my daughter's got a 9am exam, for example. "But, I'd never complain - I don't think I could ever bring myself to complain - because there's clearly a reason they're doing it. "Obviously it was their last big send-off party, you just have to put yourself in their shoes and think how gutted I would be if someone was complaining." On TikTok, commenters were sympathetic with neighbours. One user said: "Not a Karen, it's reasonable? I had a 9am chemistry exam and the uni house next door had a party. "Went into the exam absolutely knackered. Just go clubbing or do the party on a weekend like a normal person." Another wrote: "This is one of the many reasons why people are against the amount of students in cities as there are no caps on students numbers any more, too many students and things like happening too." A spokesperson for Leeds City Council said: "Incidents like this remain rare, largely due to the strong partnership working and investment that's been made over time by Leeds City Council's Dedicated Service, a project jointly funded by University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University. "With regards to this incident, the Dedicated Service out of hours noise team received two calls from one resident relating to a large house party with external speakers and laser lights. "Council officers arrived on site and unacceptable noise was witnessed from a distance of 100 metres. "When the officers approached the house there were approximately 300 people in the garden area and an unknown number inside the house itself. 'Initial requests to turn the music off were refused, however once the tenant of the property had been spoken to the music was turned off and people started to disperse. "Due to the number of people leaving the address, police attendance was requested. "The occupants of the address in question have been dealt with under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 via the Leeds Anti-Social Behaviour Team with further investigations on-going." 6 6 6
Globe and Mail
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
What is happening to higher education in the U.S. right now is not reform. It is destruction
Debra Thompson is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. She is an associate professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies at McGill University. I first set foot on a university campus in 1999. I knew absolutely nothing about the purpose of higher education, other than that my parents, neither of whom obtained a university degree following high school, insisted that I needed to go. I didn't do any campus tours in advance because I didn't know that was what prospective students were supposed to do. I couldn't afford to participate in frosh week once I got there. I had a full scholarship that covered tuition but not the cost of my dorm room, so I worked 35 hours a week at three part-time jobs, and never quite had enough time to do the course readings, study for exams, or attend the public lectures of renowned thinkers. But I loved it. I loved getting lost in libraries, the lectures and the labs, the all-nighters, the seminar discussions that continued for hours at the campus bar, new beginnings each September and years that were divided into semesters rather than weeks or months. I loved it so much that I never left. I have worked at or attended some of the best universities in the world – my current employer, McGill University, but also the University of Toronto, Northwestern University, and Harvard University. I spent a decade mired in the system of higher education in the United States, at both public and private universities. I've taught students who came from more wealth than I'll ever see, and those who shared my table at Christmas because they had no home to go to. I've heard lectures by Nobel Prize winners and former presidents. I have seen the future of scientific research, innovation, expertise, entrepreneurship, law, politics, and the global citizenry co-exist – sometimes tenuously – on the social microcosm of the college campus. Universities have faced varying and somewhat perpetual crises over the decades, but the recent showdown initiated by the Trump administration is an unprecedented inflection point. In a matter of months, the system of higher education in the United States has been completely upended. There are valid critiques to be made of universities, especially in terms of cost, access and value, but what is happening right now is not a careful process of thoughtful, nuanced reform. It is vindictive, ideologically driven destruction. It began with Columbia University, which had US$400-million in federal grants and funding cancelled in early March. The Trump administration then cut millions of dollars from seven other elite universities, including Northwestern, Brown University and Cornell University. Dozens of others have received notice from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights that they are under investigation for 'antisemitic harassment and discrimination.' The guise of combatting antisemitism on college campuses is a complicated cover for a far-reaching ideological assault. In March, US$175-million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania was suspended because the university allowed a transgender athlete to compete on the women's swim team. A few weeks later, the Trump administration issued a letter with a list of demands for reforms at Harvard, including merit-based hiring and admissions, allowing admission data to be audited by the federal government, and initiating an audit of 'viewpoint diversity' and of programs, including the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic. After Harvard refused to capitulate, federal officials froze more than US$2-billion in funding and later threatened to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status, even though federal law prohibits the President from directing the IRS to conduct investigations. Finally, on Thursday, the Trump administration revoked Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification – meaning international students, which make up 27 per cent of the school's population, can no longer enroll at the university. Meanwhile, more than 1,800 international students had their visas suddenly revoked or lost their legal status to remain in the United States – a decision that was later reversed. Before that happened, some fled, fearing deportation. Others were abducted off the street by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Canadian Association of University Teachers advised professors against non-essential travel to the United States. Some of my colleagues have cancelled speaking engagements, because it's not worth the risk. My discipline's largest and most significant conference, the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, will be in Vancouver this September, and organizers are scrambling to attend to the concerns of visa- and green-card holders who fear they will not be allowed to return home should they leave America. Most recently, President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts TRIO programs, which assist low-income and first-generation students and students with disabilities access and succeed in postsecondary education, slashes the budgets of the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (both of which already had thousands of grants worth billions of dollars in research funding cancelled), and eliminates the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Conservative commentators have long held the view that universities have been ideologically captured by the left and are now indoctrination factories of 'radical-left' ideologies. Some disciplines are considered intractably left-wing (women and gender studies, African American studies), while others either happen to allegedly be the exclusive domain of leftists (music, the arts and humanities) or are the subject of profound skepticism and hostility from certain segments of conservatism (science, climatology and medicine). A less generous interpretation of the Trump administration's attack on higher education would note that one of the most important voting trends in the United States (and other Western societies, including Canada) is educational polarization. Analyzing the available interview and survey data from the 2024 election, data scientist David Schor told The New York Times: 'The lower your political engagement, education level or socio-economic status, the less engaged you are in politics, the more Trumpy you are.' To put it bluntly, a reduction in college graduates would electorally benefit Republicans. And, of course, there's also a touch of Trumpian retributive-style politics at play here; the President is both resentful and reverent of the elite club of the Ivy League, which has never truly accepted him as one of their own. Regardless of the contrived or sincere rationale, as Vice-President JD Vance stated, echoing Richard Nixon before him, universities are now the enemy, and these attacks are popular among the conservative base. A Gallup Poll from 2024 showed that Americans are evenly divided among those who have a great deal of confidence in higher education (36 per cent), some confidence (32 per cent) and little or no confidence (32 per cent). This is a rapid decline in confidence from 2015, when 57 per cent had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence and only 10 per cent had little or none. Look, universities are a lot of things. Universities are employers, corporations, gatekeepers, landlords and governing boards. They are social spaces and innovation incubators. They are a public good, gentrifiers of poor neighbourhoods, a brand, a symbol, a lightning rod, a neoliberal façade, bureaucratic hierarchies, mysterious tuition fees and the citizenry in the making. Universities are research hubs, student pubs, generational legacies, and a kind of liminal space where students become the people they will henceforth continue to be, leaving the college campus, hopefully, with more knowledge, a critical eye, skills (both hard and soft) that make them employable, an understanding that the world is vast and complicated, and a love of learning. Moreover, the benefits of higher education are rarely immediately apparent. Only 14 per cent of Americans have professional or graduate degrees, and so those who attend a university (approximately 38 per cent of the American population over 25) are only on college campuses for a short time, making it difficult to see patterns over time or the importance of long-term investment for society-improving outcomes. High-quality research, I find myself constantly reminding my students, is supposed to take a long time because you search, hypothesize, test and analyze, and then you do it all again, just to make sure. The current siege on higher education is an attempt to radically alter what universities can and should be in a democratic polity. Their reliance on indirect and direct government funding and their role in producing the country's intellectual and political elites make them an easy target, but universities are important to democratic life precisely because of that which makes them both myopic and unique: They are centrally concerned with the pursuit of knowledge. This is why the attack on universities is a page out of the autocrat's handbook. We have seen this happen over the past decade or so in Hungary, Turkey, Russia and Brazil: regimes where liberal democracy is either a façade or deeply in crisis. The core mission of the university is to enable open and free inquiry, where denizens can exchange ideas and opinions, debate and contest those of others, engaging with the full, rich tapestry of viewpoints – even controversial ones – without fear of retribution, exclusion, or threats to lives or livelihoods. The climate of fear that the Trump administration has created, certainly for international students and faculty who are terrified of abruptly devastating visa revocations, but also for any whose research has been identified as maligned with the administration's views on diversity, gender, expertise, inequality, or science, is also a time-honoured intimidation tactic of dictators and demagogues. The American system of higher education is far from perfect. There are thousands of books and articles that detail deeply entrenched (but not insurmountable) challenges of higher education, including: issues of accessibility; astronomical tuition fees and lifelong student debt; declining state funding and increasing state interference; the heavy reliance on poorly paid and precariously positioned adjunct professors to teach core undergraduate courses; the exploitative mess of college sports; opaque admissions processes; asking would-be students to chart their life course at 18; for-profit colleges that prey on low-income families; the unspoken affirmative action of legacy admits; labour and workplace concerns; falling and racially disparate graduation rates; the replacement of universities' roles in social mobility with one of wealth consolidation; and much more. The explosive campus protests and pro-Palestinian encampments last year put a harsh spotlight on the contentious collision of academic freedom, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, prompting blistering moral and intellectual scrutiny of universities' ethically indefensible investments in weapons manufacturing. Universities nevertheless serve a vital role in democratic life. In his book What Universities Owe Democracy, Ronald Daniels, the former dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and the current president of Johns Hopkins University, argues that universities in fact have a duty to promote and protect democratic values. The nearly 4,000 postsecondary institutions in the United States, which will educate an estimated 19.5 million undergraduate students this year, are also stalwarts of democracy in at least four critical ways: (1) social mobility, or launching talented individuals up the socio-economic ladder; (2) civic education, or educating citizens to be active participants in democratic processes; (3) stewardship of facts, and the creation and dissemination of knowledge; and (4) pluralism, the cultivation of meaningful exchanges of beliefs, ideas and opinions across our human differences. In authoritarian regimes, it is the educated classes that push for democratization, and which help new democracies to stabilize and endure. Both the targeted degradation of democratic norms in the United States and Republicans' attack on higher education – especially tenure protections, curricular content, and academic freedom – have been years in the making. State legislators have introduced dozens of 'gag orders' that prevent professors from teaching about structural racism or gender identity, weakened or attempted to eliminate tenure protections, stripped power from faculty in shared governance models, and sometimes have even meddled in hiring processes. In Ohio, where I taught for several years, the state legislature recently passed Senate Bill 1, which requires course syllabi be publicly available, mandates student evaluations of professors' biases, eliminates DEI trainings, scholarship, and programs, and creates post-tenure evaluations, prohibits faculty strikes, and sets rules around teaching 'controversial beliefs' such as climate change, electoral politics, marriage, or abortion. The institutions hit the hardest in these battles will not be the Ivy League or selective liberal-arts colleges with their billion-dollar endowments; rather, it will be the state schools, already facing enrolment contractions and in perpetual financial crisis as states slash funding. It already is the state schools, in Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Florida and elsewhere, that Republican-controlled legislatures have fashioned the conservative blueprint that President Trump is now nationalizing. These are the institutions, with their dedication to serving a wide array of students from less privileged backgrounds and from less accessible communities, for which the promise of higher education as a key pathway to social mobility has been actualized more than any others. What is now required is the one thing that universities are not exactly known for: bravery. As Mr. Daniels puts it, 'Our institutions of higher education can be neither indifferent nor passive in the face of democratic backsliding.' This is an opportunity – fair enough, one forged from constant political chaos and pending societal doom – for universities to be courageous, bolstered by the fact that for once, there is an unprecedented interest convergence across public and private universities, minority-serving institutions and selective liberal arts colleges, as well as the millions of students, staff, faculty and administrators who believe that the pursuit of knowledge is worth defending. We Are Higher Ed, a coalition of faculty across the United States, was organized in the aftermath of the American election out of an acute sense of vulnerability on the part of racialized and queer faculty. It has since grown into a community of resource sharing, of strategizing, and resistance. When I spoke with some of the organizers, they emphasized that the Trump administration's cuts, lists, orders, cancellations and overreach are an unbridled attempt to dismantle academic freedom and decimate the entire endeavour of higher education across disciplinary, institutional and state boundaries. And it can get worse, still; should the Trump administration choose to cull or eliminate the US$120-billion in grants, work-study funds or low-interest loans that currently assist approximately 13 million students who attend university, small and medium-sized colleges and universities that are heavily tuition-dependent will simply cease to exist. The silver lining is that, urged by individual faculty members and coalitions like We Are Higher Ed, universities are beginning to fight back. There are several formal declarations of a united front in higher education, including the Big Ten Mutual Defense Compact initiated by professors at Rutgers University, and a similar proposal from 250 land-grant and public universities spearheaded by faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. There are dozens of lawsuits pending and there will likely be many more. In April, hundreds of university and college presidents and other educational leaders signed a statement condemning the Trump administration's 'unprecedented government overreach,' 'political interference,' 'undue government intrusion' and 'coercive use of public research funding.' With over 650 signatories, it is an astounding act of unity and resistance, especially considering the way that this administration targets and punishes those who President Trump perceives to have challenged him. 'Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust,' United States Supreme Court chief justice Earl Warren wrote in 1957. 'Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.' Academic freedom is not a luxury or liberal trickery – it is the cornerstone of democracy. The university is a lot of things, but it is fundamentally a public good. Universities exist for the benefit not just of those who, like me, cherish the moral responsibilities of conducting ethical and empirical research and teaching generations of lifelong learners, but for the entirety of society. However, the current political climate of ideological interference, restricted scientific research and punitive and retaliatory measures threatens elite universities and could devastate non-elite institutions that serve middle- and lower-income families. President Trump's siege on higher education undermines American democracy itself.
