Universities in Trump's crosshairs

Za "Time" from Fargo, SAD

"Ministry of Education is a fat fraud", he said several times Donald tramp repeated during the election campaign, promising to abolish it as soon as he became president. Exactly two months after he was sworn in as the 47th President of the USA, on March 20 of this year, he signed an Executive Order ordering Education Secretary Linda McMahon to work on "abolishing the Department and returning its powers to where they belong: to individual states and local communities." Minister McMahon immediately got down to work - she began to reorganize and reduce the scope of the program and lay off employees in the Ministry. She dismissed one and a half thousand people from the Ministry, which had more than four thousand. Lawsuits immediately started pouring in since federal employees cannot be fired without cause and explanation. The Ministry still exists: the abolition of the Ministry is the sole competence of Congress.

These developments are only part of Trump's ideological and structural fight against the education system that still exists in the United States. And that's a minor part. Namely, the Federal Ministry of Education has existed only since 1979, and it took over programs that previously existed within other ministries and agencies. Its function is primarily to financially support schools in poorer areas, to ensure that education is accessible to children who need special conditions (all elementary schools must have ramps for wheelchairs, for example), then to provide financial assistance to poor students, and conduct research on student success. It is not within its jurisdiction the content of school materials or the way schools work - that is dealt with by institutions at the state level. Last year, out of the 250 billion that was the budget of that Ministry, 3,5 billion went to the salaries of employees. So far, the only effect of Trump's measures is that the number of employees in the Ministry has been reduced by a third, so it has become ineffective due to lack of manpower. Fear and uncertainty reigned. The previous rules could cease to be valid, many schools will be left without the necessary aid, small universities, which live on a large number of students who receive state aid, may not survive. The budget proposal that is being discussed these days predicts, of course, big cuts in the field of education and aid to schools.

photo: ap photo

A DAY OF SHAME FOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

However, the real battle between the new state authorities and the education system is being fought on another front, and the whip in the hands of the authorities is - money. The largest and most important American universities are private, but that does not mean that they do not depend, and to a great extent, on federal funds. Namely, the state finances a large part of the research programs at the faculties in various ways and now it has decided to use it to put pressure on them and blackmail them.

The first step in the confrontation between the university and the Trump administration took place over the complex, media intensively followed situation related to student protests: after the attack on Israel and the beginning of the war in Gaza, numerous students at American universities started pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In some places, these protests turned into riots and stepped into the waters of anti-Semitism. Opinions were divided on how the colleges reacted to those events, and the Trump administration intervened precisely at that point: nominally standing up against anti-Semitism and invoking the right to speak about the work of institutions that receive federal funds, it began to threaten, publicly call out and launch investigations.

The first serious intervention was the freezing of 400 million dollars in grants and contracts with Columbia University in New York, where the protests were particularly dramatic. Columbia is big and powerful, and it was assumed that its reaction to pressure from the White House would be a good indicator of what to expect from other, smaller and weaker universities. Colombia was presented with a list of demands that they should meet, after which negotiations on the thaw could begin, although it is possible, as the memo states, that the White House will also seek "other immediate and long-term structural reforms." Columbia's capitulation followed surprisingly quickly - the University's administration agreed to meet most of the demands. They will change the rules regarding what is allowed in protests, the police will be allowed to patrol the campus with the right to arrest and detain students, the Department of Middle Eastern Studies will get an outside supervisor to review whether the teaching content of that department is "acceptable"... And there is no end to the list of concessions. Reactions to Columbia's stance were also swift and dramatic, best summed up by Professor Pollock, former dean of the Middle East Department, who said the same day: "The Governing Council's decision shocked and deeply disappointed Columbia professors... This is a day of shame."

Other universities soon began to unite in a common front, working on strategies to counter the increasing number of investigations, pressures and demands that began to arrive from different institutions. For example, the abolition of measures to achieve "diversity, equality and inclusiveness" (DEI, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is an important part of Trump's policy, so universities have started to stop initiatives of this type as a preventive measure, or else to remove words that suggest such goals from the description of programs and measures. Transgender people are being fired from the military today, and the University of Pennsylvania has been threatened with being denied more than $100 million in aid because a transgender athlete was allowed to compete on the women's swim team.

HARVARD SAID - NE

As the pressure on Columbia produced the desired results, the next target on the list was the most ambitious - Harvard. One of the most prestigious and powerful educational institutions in the world, Harvard includes 13 faculties, employs almost two and a half thousand lecturers and teaches 25 thousand students. The Trump administration is threatening Harvard with the denial of $2,2 billion in grants for the coming years. It is, therefore, about money that is primarily used for top scientific research.

Dr. Alan Gerber, the president of Harvard, received a letter saying that the federal government would withhold grants and terminate contracts with them if they did not change their policies - not only in how they deal with student protests but also if they do not allow government officials to monitor the work of the University, inspect and interfere with the teaching content; of course, the letter also demands that all "diversity, equality and inclusiveness" be stopped, both as a criterion and as a practice, with the simultaneous demand that each department must necessarily include ideologically opposed opinions. In other words, the White House explicitly demands that ideology never be the reason and basis for hiring new lecturers and students except for the idea that there is ideological uniformity between liberals and conservatives among professors and students in all departments.

Harvard said "no" and filed suit. Noah Feldman, professor of law at Harvard, points out in an interview with NPR: "If it doesn't have the freedom to teach what it wants, the freedom to choose its students and teach future teachers, then the university is not free. Without that, it does not have the most basic component of higher education in a democracy. The Trump administration has very openly said that it wants to get rid of those freedoms... It is a violation of our freedom of speech, a move that is unconstitutional and illegal." According to Professor Feldman, Donald Trump's short-term goal is to be in the media spotlight as someone who opposes "Harvard liberals" and to intimidate all those in higher education who disagree with his policies; The longer-term goal, according to Professor Feldman, is related to his broader attack on democratic values ​​and institutions. The more he is able to weaken independent institutions, the more dominant his political agenda becomes. And finally - it's about Trump wanting to impose his worldview on everyone else.

A PRESIDENT WHO LOVES THE UNEDUCATED

Stopping critically important research, leaving top researchers, canceling programs that will have long-term negative consequences for both America and the world - these are all the prices that government authorities are currently more than willing to pay to achieve this goal. The White House tried to revoke Harvard's special tax status and to take away its ability to enroll foreign students (federal authorities give such accreditation to educational institutions). The courts have so far stopped the implementation of both measures. The war, it seems, is just starting to flare up.

Almost a third of Harvard students, mostly in postgraduate studies, came from abroad. One of the key elements of the current political scene in America is the pressure exerted on immigrants, primarily those who are not legally in America, but also those who are. Immigrants without a residence permit are arrested and deported, and many legally present immigrants, including foreign students, have their visas revoked. In some cases, the revocation of visas is justified on strict and previously unapplied grounds, say for a traffic violation, and occasionally for no legally based reasons - as in the case of Mahmut Khalil, a Columbia student, because he was a ringleader in pro-Palestinian protests. When you add to that cases like Rimeza Ozturk from Tufts University - her visa was revoked, and she was not informed about it, so she was intercepted on the street by plainclothes federal agents and taken to prison - then the desired effect has been achieved. Foreign students are scared, those who previously wanted to come to study in America will now think twice. Harvard, once the most prestigious place for experts who wanted to improve and work on world-important scientific projects, may, if the resistance proves unsuccessful, be left without foreigners and with cut funds.

It is no coincidence that Donald Trump said during the 2016 presidential campaign: "I like poorly educated people!"