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Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Harvard should win in court. But academia still needs a reckoning.
Harvard University looks likely to win its legal battle against the Trump administration over foreign student visas and many of the school's grants and contracts, and it deserves to. The administration's escalating attack on the university (and, by extension, the rest of higher education) is clumsily executed, disdainful of due process and inimical to American principles of free speech, free association and free inquiry. It is also a strategic mistake. China, America's biggest geostrategic rival, has four times as many people as the United States, which means four times as many bright strivers with the potential to create the next big thing. Yet, the United States has been able to fight above its weight class, economically and militarily, because it has had the benefit of being an open society. China's intrusive authoritarian bureaucracy stifles the creativity of the country's vast talent pool, while America imports the best and brightest students from all over the world and allows them to use their abilities to the fullest. This difference helps explain why the United States continues to lead the world in many of the industries of the future and generate lifesaving medical breakthroughs. So it is easy to agree with the many university presidents who recently wrote in an open letter: 'The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society.' At the same time, no one in academia should confuse winning the legal battle against the present White House with triumphing in the larger war that conservatives are waging on higher education. U.S. universities are vulnerable, and they are in for a long fight for public support. In the past decade, trust in higher education has dropped precipitously. Ten years ago, a robust majority of Americans told Gallup they had a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in higher education; today, only one-third of Americans say the same. Meanwhile, the share who say they have 'very little' confidence or 'none' has risen to 32 percent from 10 percent. The fact that their targets are no longer particularly popular has made it easier for Republicans — in state government as well as in the White House — to attack the foundations of academic independence. The rising cost of college and the declining wage premium for college graduates might have contributed to this shift. Lingering anger about the covid-19 pandemic aimed at public health authorities and other academic elites could be a factor. The most common complaint among universities' detractors is that they have become too politicized — especially favoring left-wing or progressive thinking. Academics justly protest that this perception is exaggerated, that most professors teach technical subject matter, not political ideologies. Yet the exaggeration has formed around a large grain of truth. In a recent survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, almost half of conservative faculty said they regularly 'can't express their opinion on a subject because of how other faculty, students, or the administration would respond.' But not only conservatives feel this way. Students and faculty of all political stripes now frequently report that they self-censor on campus when politically controversial topics come up in class, online or in conversations with other students. In an academic community in which 'diversity statements' are required of new hires (and professors can be denied jobs merely for criticizing them), university administrations and disciplines issue official statements embracing social justice causes, journal editors apologize for or withdraw papers that offend the left, and conservative professors are becoming an increasingly endangered species, even moderates or those on the center-left can reasonably wonder what they're allowed to say, and universities can seem drastically out of step with mainstream society. The worst of this political fever might be behind us, but academia will have to take strenuous action to restore its reputation as defenders of the free exchange of ideas. Universities cannot convincingly demand that the government respect their academic freedom unless they consistently make the same demand of their own teachers and leaders. Renaming the diversity, equity and inclusion office will not suffice; they need to foster a campus environment in which the frank discussion of ideas is the core value. If they do not, they will find the public yawning as conservative attacks intensify and courts struggle to contain the damage. Judges might force the Trump administration to restore visas for foreign students and funding for research programs that have been revoked without due process, but the government would still have many levers left to pull. State legislatures, too, can cut funding for public schools, or tie it to significant restructuring. Every new student visa applicant can be scrutinized and justifications can be found for rejection that courts will be reluctant to second-guess. Grants can be directed toward more compliant schools. How would a judge with no background in science declare which projects are most worthy of funding? Such tactics are not wise, but they are available and, unless universities regain the public's trust, government officials might deploy them. Schools might also face legal scrutiny of their hiring practices based on the perception that, in their understandable zeal to close racial gaps, they have recently disfavored White, straight and male candidates, at odds with the Civil Rights Act. Until now, 'reverse discrimination' lawsuits have often been hard to win, in part because majority group plaintiffs may face a higher bar to prove their cases and because filing such suits would make it hard to get other jobs in many industries. But the Supreme Court has just made it easier for plaintiffs to win such cases, and the government has reportedly threatened Harvard with a 'pattern or practice' investigation that obviates the need for any plaintiff. All of which means that Harvard's current, righteous legal fight, while essential, is still less important for universities in the long run than the battle for American hearts and minds. Schools need to convince the country once again that they do vital work that serves all Americans.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘From all sides': universities in red states face attacks from DC and at home
Days after the University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, announced that he was leaving his post to lead the University of Florida, his name was quietly removed on Wednesday from a letter signed by more than 600 university presidents denouncing the Trump administration's 'unprecedented government overreach and political interference' with academic institutions. As Ono is set to become the highest-paid public university president in the country, in a state that has often been at the forefront of the rightwing battle against higher education, the reversal, first reported on by Talking Points Memo, underscored the challenges of standing up against the government's sweeping attacks on education in solidly red states. Many private colleges and universities have begun to push back against Donald Trump's federal funding cuts, bans on diversity initiatives, and targeting of foreign students, while faculty at more than 30 universities, most of them public, have passed resolutions calling for a 'mutual defence compact' – a largely symbolic pledge to support one another in the face of the government's repressive measures. But in conservative states, where local attacks on higher education were in vogue before the US president took office, faculty trying to fight back find themselves fighting on multiple fronts: against state legislators as well as against Trump. Related: Hope as US universities find 'backbone' against Trump's assault on education Some have persevered, although for now that resistance has been limited to statements and resolutions calling on the universities themselves to put up a more muscular response. The faculty senate at Indiana University, Bloomington, voted in favor of a defence compact last month, days before Republican legislators passed a sweeping overhaul of the state school's governance. In Georgia, Kennesaw State University became the first – and so far only – school in the US south to join the call for the solidarity pact, in part to protest the state scrapping a decades-old initiative to increase the college enrollment of Black men, which was pulled as part of the broader Trump-led crackdown on diversity initiatives. This week, faculty at the University of Miami in Ohio and at the University of Arizona – both states with Republican majority legislatures – also passed resolutions in favor of mutual alliances among universities. The resolutions are nonbinding, as faculty senates play an advisory role at most universities, and so far no administrations have responded to the call. But the idea, those behind it say, is to send a message. 'All universities in all states are under threat,' said Jim Sherman, a retired psychology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed the resolution passed by faculty there. 'If we don't stand together and talk about what each of us is experiencing, how we're dealing with it, and what the options are, then we're standing alone, and that's much more difficult.' Paul Boxer, a psychology professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, first came up with the plan to organize faculty in the 'Big Ten' conference, a group of 18 large, mostly public universities, to put up a united front against the Trump administration. But schools outside the conference showed an interest, and the solidarity effort quickly outgrew the consortium to include other, mostly public colleges and universities across the country. Boxer also praised other collective initiatives that have since emerged, including by a group of 'elite' universities quietly strategizing to counter the Trump administration policies, but called on more universities to publicly unite in their resistance. There is a lot of anxiety ... Red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government Jim Sherman, Indiana University 'A lot of the attention has been on Harvard, and the Ivy Leagues, and the universities that Trump has name-dropped, and I'm glad that Harvard did what they did, obviously, but they're sitting on a $50bn endowment, and they can do things that we can't in a public university,' Boxer said, referring to the university's public defiance of Trump's demands and a lawsuit it filed against the administration. Large, state universities – particularly those in blue states with sympathetic legislators – had other advantages, Boxer noted, including strong connections to alumni in local government and the broader community. That is a harder case to make in Republican-controlled states – some of which, like Florida, Texas, Iowa and Utah – had essentially drawn up a blueprint for attacking diversity initiatives and academic freedom in the years leading up to Trump's election. In Indiana, the recently passed measures, which legislators attached to a budget bill at the last minute, would establish 'productivity' quotas for tenured faculty and end alumni's ability to vote for the university's board of trustees, which would fall under the full control of the state's governor, Mike Braun. 'There is a lot of anxiety,' said Sherman. 'If Indiana is any indication, red states might even be more under threat from their state legislatures than they are from the federal government.' Taking a public stance in a climate of growing repression is not easy, faculty say. In Florida, where Ono is headed, the state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was an early champion of the battle against diversity initiatives and said this week that he expects the incoming president to abide by the state's mission to 'reject woke indoctrination'. Related: Over 150 US university presidents sign letter decrying Trump administration In Georgia, at a statewide faculty leadership meeting this week, scholars from across the state's universities debated how to defend programmes supporting Black students, help international students facing visa revocations, and prepare to fight proposed state legislation that would impose further restrictions on diversity initiatives and criminalize the distribution of some library materials. 'Faculty want to do something, they want to respond, but they also see the inevitability of their university system and their lawmakers doing it, there's no stopping that train here in Georgia,' said Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia who also leads the state's American Association of University Professors conference. 'There are state-level attacks, there are federal attacks,' he said. 'We are taking it from all sides.'
The Guardian
06-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Jewish faculty decry Republican panel members ahead of antisemitism hearing
A number of Republican legislators set to grill university presidents in a congressional hearing on antisemitism this week are associated with calls for Jews to convert to Christianity, have quoted Adolf Hitler, or have reportedly threatened to burn a synagogue to the ground. A group of Haverford professors, most of them Jewish, has raised concerns about the legislators, pointing to statements they have made in the past and antisemitic incidents in their districts that the professors say they have not forcefully condemned. On Wednesday, the US House committee on education and workforce will question the presidents of Haverford College, in Pennsylvania, DePaul University, in Chicago, and California Polytechnic State University, in San Luis Obispo, in a reprieve of contentious showdowns between legislators and university administrators that last year played a part in the resignations of several university presidents. In a memo published on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, a group of Jewish faculty at Haverford have questioned the credibility of several members of the committee. The faculty have requested anonymity to avoid retaliation. In the memo, they write that the committee's chair, Republican representative Tim Walberg of Michigan, is associated with the Moody Bible Institute, which, according to the memo, 'trains students to convert Jewish people to Christianity'. Representative Mark Harris of North Carolina, it notes, once said that until Jews and Muslims accept Jesus Christ 'there'll never be peace in their soul or peace in their city'. The faculty also condemned committee member Mary Miller of Illinois, who in a speech outside the US Capitol the day before the January 6 attack, quoted Hitler and said he was 'right on one thing' when he said that whoever 'has the youth has the future'. (Miller later apologized.) Pro-Palestinian activists at a protest at DePaul University in Chicago on Monday. Photograph: Chicago Tribune/TNS The memo notes that several members of the committee hail from districts with a history of neo-Nazi incidents. It points to Appalachian State University in North Carolina – in a district committee member Virginia Foxx has represented for two decades – where, in recent years, antisemitic groups have distributed promotional materials, scratched swastikas and racist slurs on to the car of a Jewish student, and spray-painted swastikas and covered campus spaces with antisemitic stickers. The university, the memo notes, is not among those facing congressional investigations, which are instead focused on pro-Palestinian speech. The memo also criticises representative Mark Messmer of Indiana for making 'no visible statements critical of Nazi and white supremacist antisemitism' in his district and state, and New York's Elise Stefanik for backing a political candidate who praised Hitler as 'the kind of leader we need today'. (The candidate, Carl Paladino, apologized but suggested that his comment was taken out of 'context'.) And it calls out Representative Randy Fine of Florida, a Republican Jewish congressman who reportedly threatened to burn his own synagogue 'to the ground' for hiring an LGBTQ+ staff member. The Guardian has reached out to all of the committee members named in this story for comment. It's not the first time Jewish scholars have accused those leading the fight over antisemitism on campuses of being compromised on the issue. In March, Jewish Voice for Peace's academic council published a report arguing that Project Esther – a rightwing blueprint for undermining pro-Palestine solidarity in the US – 'repeats and fortifies antisemitic tropes' by promoting the antisemitic conspiracy theory that powerful Jews are controlling social justice movements. At Haverford, Jewish students and faculty have signed separate statements accusing the committee of 'weaponising our pain and anguish' and saying that their voices 'have absolutely not been represented in the current public discussion of antisemitism'. 'We reject the premise of the hearings as being at all concerned with antisemitism,' said Lindsay Reckson, a literature professor and one of the authors of the faculty statement. 'They are political theater aimed at intimidating college administrations into sacrificing their commitment to academic freedom, and an effort to silence and police pro-Palestinian voices on campus – including many Jewish voices.' The memo comes as Jewish scholars and students have increasingly condemned the Trump administration's actions in the name of fighting antisemitism. Tim Walberg, the committee chair, right, and Bobby Scott, the Democratic ranking member. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-In a letter to Haverford's president, Wendy Raymond, ahead of her congressional testimony, the committee references 'antisemitic incidents' on campus, including the disruption of an antisemitism workshop by the Anti-Defamation League last October, and a talk, the same month, which the committee says 'whistleblowers' reported as promoting 'a culture of antisemitic discrimination'. What the letter doesn't say is that the protest against the ADL was staged entirely by Jewish students and that the lecture was by Rebecca Alpert – a rabbi as well as a professor of religion. 'To them, Jewish students means Zionist Jewish students,' said Ellie Baron, a senior at Haverford. Alpert, a self-described anti-Zionist, told the Guardian that she was 'astonished' the committee described her talk – about the difference between Judaism and Zionism – as antisemitic. 'In my mind, it's antisemitic to call a scholarly presentation by a rabbi antisemitism,' she said. The conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism championed in congressional investigations has also muddled discussion over real antisemitism, Jewish faculty warn. 'It's not that antisemitism doesn't exist. We know it does,' said Joshua Moses, an anthropology professor at Haverford, who said he experienced it personally but stressed that the suffering in Gaza and the arrests of foreign students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy are more pressing concerns at the moment. 'If there's antisemitism, I want to hear about it, let's figure out how to address it, but let's also look at who's most at risk and who's most suffering at this point.' He added: 'I don't feel unsafe. But if I did, this congressional committee is not the place I would go to.'
