And, more recently, Bukele and Trump insisted that they would not return a "terrorist" to the United States: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
This phrasing buys into the Trump admin's narrative.
They did not determine that it was impossible to get him back. They have chosen to not pursue it. They refuse to define the agreement between the US and El Salvador sufficiently for anyone to know what is or is not possible through that path. They also seem to refuse to use political or financial influence to go beyond whatever that agreement may define.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
Totalitarian? not yet, but....
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
No society is free where government makes one person's liberty depend upon the arbitrary will of another. Dictatorships have done this since time immemorial. They do now. Russian laws of 1934 authorized the People's Commissariat to imprison, banish and exile Russian citizens as well as "foreign subjects who are socially dangerous."' Hitler's secret police were given like powers. German courts were forbidden to make any inquiry whatever as to the information on which the police acted. Our Bill of Rights was written to prevent such oppressive practices. Under it this Nation has fostered and protected individual freedom.
The Founders abhorred arbitrary one-man imprisonments. Their belief was--our constitutional principles are-that no person of any faith, rich or poor, high or low, native or foreigner, white or colored, can have his life, liberty or property taken "without due process of law." This means to me that neither the federal police nor federal prosecutors nor any other governmental official, whatever his title, can put or keep people in prison without accountability to courts of justice. It means that individual liberty is too highly prized in this country to allow executive officials to imprison and hold people on the basis of information kept secret from courts. It means that Mezei should not be deprived of his liberty indefinitely except as the result of a fair open court hearing in which evidence is appraised by the court, not by the prosecutor
Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Yet, US was systematically disenfranchising people for centuries
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
The US came close to losing its democracy status with FDR, which is why after he died, the 22nd Amendment was quickly created - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
The court system simply isn't built for it, nor the detainment facilities to house them while the courts take months to process each person. The housing market is already under too much stress and low cost housing and free housing has gone to them instead of citizens who were already here and in need. To say nothing of the billions being spent out of local budgets to sustain it.
A problem was created that can't be solved by our courts in a timely manner, probably on purpose, because Wall Street wanted cheap exploitable labor that have no worker's rights or OSHA protections and could always be deported if they caused problems. To say nothing of businesses who have to compete against those that do follow legal standards for hiring and can't abuse their employees because they're documented and have full legal protections are now at a competitive disadvantage to those that don't care about following legal practices. I feel like the other administration getting back into the game of importing slave labor to the harm of poor, low income and working class Americans is probably far worse of a crime or at least that was the start of the decay. This was not their stance on this 10-20 years ago. They don't want to pay fair or market wages, so they import those that can be exploited.
An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage, eliminating the benefits of bringing in illegal labor and maintaining a humane society. Furthermore, we should probably only trade with countries which have equal labor protections as our own, so as to ensure that jobs aren't offshored to save money, at least at the expense of human rights.
I'm sorry, I just can't buy that "treat a bunch of people like animals" is the humanist, labor friendly, perspective.
Do you think that the law has a cut-out to allow for paying illegal immigrants less than minimum wage? This is like solving the murder rate by making murder illegal -- it's already illegal to employ these people and pay them below minimum wage.
Like these people are victims of a system which is exploiting them. Treating them even more like shit isn't going to make the world a better place. Target the exploiters.
That theoretically could have happened at any point in US history. It hasn't, and when it does, I will oppose it and it def would get time in courts, they'd sue, etc. So stop with the emotional hyperbole, if an American citizen ends up in those jails, that'd be a problem, VZ won't take their own gang members back and imprison them, maybe blame them? The worse thing that is likely to happen is someone who isn't a US citizen ends up in the prison.
I have empathy, but it has its limits, and I chose to place. it towards those that have done nothing wrong and are facing way worse. The consequences of what you're proposing (doing nothing or taking a long time doing it) does way more harm than the risk of the current situation. Maybe they should have thought of this before letting all this happen. Extreme policies result in extreme backlash effects.
How do you exercise due process on the 10 million people imported into the country over the last 4-5 years?
The court system simply isn't built for it, nor the detainment facilities to house them while the courts take months to process each person. The housing market is already under too much stress and low cost housing and free housing has gone to them instead of citizens who were already here and in need.
The same way you exercise it for 320 million other people. The same way it has been exercised for every person who immigrated to American soil. Including your ancestors.
Let's be clear about what you're actually saying and you're advocating for, you are advocating for the suspension of due process and fundamental rights to an entire class of human beings you see as the other.
If history has taught us anything, the definition of who and what is other changes over time. One day, you too shall be the other. And that day you will beg for the due process and fundamental rights you wish to deprive these people.
When the Benjamin Franklin said, "... if you can keep it." This type of thought process is precisely what he meant.
I can easily say you're advocating for cheap exploitable labor because you as an educated affluent person (since you're on here), want someone cheap to clean your home or make your food and don't deal with the direct consequences since you don't compete for housing, resources, etc.
Don't create extreme situations and then act shocked when it gets an extreme reaction and the majority populace has an appetite to allow it to happen.
totally a ton of illegal immigrants running across the trading room floor yelling put orders and putting the real, American stock brokers out of jobs they deserve!
Wtf you talking about bro? Cmon buddy.
You saturate the labor market with workers, it depresses wages, plain and simple. It's in the interests of shareholders to saturate the labor market to increase profits.
The fact that you are okay with the defacto slavery/trafficking because "its always happened" says a lot, and why I generally dismiss these arguments, because at the end of the day, you just want to pay less for things, while you live in the nice part of town.
And the current administration is flagrantly violating and ignoring the laws and the courts of our country. What is the point of laws if they're not followed? What is the point of your argument saying we have laws in place if laws no longer matter?
Immigration and border security were maybe the #1 policy front for Trump in 2016 -- am I missing something here?
Because it's a relatively new phenomenon that the ruling administration enables and advocates for the import of 10 million illegal immigrant laborers.
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
> I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
Trump has only really gone after Columbia and Harvard. (Institution is a broader word than university.)
WilerHale and Jenner & BLock are two: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/g-s1-56890/law-firms-sue-trum...
There's a lot going on and it's really hard to keep abreast of it all
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro...
Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling LLP, and Elias Law Group are fighting Trump's executive order. Those are 3 of the biggest law firms in the US. As far as I know only two major firms have made deals with Trump while many are sitting quiet but not everyone is cowering.
Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
Heck, just in the last few years we've seen several countries regress by a decade or more because of military coups or similar.
Really, if you look at many countries that haven't been a world power, this has happened once or twice in recent memory.
Do you have a better example? Or is that it?
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
I assume parent is talking about the functional end of this iteration of the United States as a political entity.
Not everyone.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
Responsibility for Merrick Garland's failure to adequately pursue Trump lies at Joe Biden's feet and will likely be the thing he is remembered for most in the history books* despite the fact that he had some decent domestic policy (and some horrific foreign policy).
* (assuming we work our way out of the current mess, if we don't he will be remembered for far worse things given that he's Trump's reflexive whipping boy despite the fact that it makes Trump look weak to keep droning on about Biden)
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
That may be true. The North won the war, but let the ideology that caused it fester.
Like any ideology, you can't actually destroy it with force any other way than burning books and, eventually, men.
And whether or not that would have been wise: the war was extremely costly for the North and there was a non-zero chance that if they started dropping every third Southerner from the gallows the federal government would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the survivors on both sides of the Mason-Dixon and that'd be it.
Like a heart attack can be good for your health,perhaps this USA withdrawal will be good for Europe. (If Europe is what you mean)
Eventually you run out of the low hanging fruit that can be messed with by executive fiat, and then you have to find enemies to blame.
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them.'
This is a myth. Wages of Destruction [1] details the Nazis’ autarkic economic incompetence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction
Which, again, is a parallel to Trump. If the peoll,e he deports to El Salavdor start to have their assets taken by the state/their neighbours/the people that dobbed them in, good luck.
I don't like him either, but that doesn't mean I will say unfair things about him.
Furthermore, my statement was very clearly presented as a massive stretch in the first place; noting that it might slightly increase the chance that he'll be unable to make an attempt at a third term (even if by 0.01%). Sometimes squinting hard enough that the resulting bokeh resemble a silver lining is all you can do to muster hope.
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-t...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-going-run-third-term-ste...
Legal residents are being kidnapped and disappeared into foreign gulags but let’s turn down the temperature, right?
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
Serious question, when someone tells you what they want, why don't want you believe them?
It's openly being discussed and you think it's alarmist? No, we need to turn the temperature up and start taking people at their word.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
For context, this is exactly what was said of _literally everything_ that has happened in Trump's current term.
Is it alarmist, or is it just alarming? And, if it is alarming, shouldn't we be taking it seriously, instead of hand-waving it away?
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
Tell me how this doesn't fit?
If you want something more modern, someone made a tracker: https://www.realtimefascism.com/
The tracker uses "the 14 characteristics of fascism identified by Dr. Lawrence Britt" (which is slightly different): https://osbcontent.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/PC-00466.pdf
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
You're supposed to say that it will help the children too.
Obama didn't need to demand it, the Universities went ahead and did it on their own.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...
In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.
I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.
You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.
You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.
I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.
Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.
I am not a US tax payer, I am a UK tax payer. I loath that my tax money is financing some universities that discriminate based on race and push bullshits like "decolonise maths". They are free to pursure all the left-wing fantasies they want, just not with my money. I think it is perfectly legitimate for the US to do the same.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/black-lives-ma...
Algebra could be renamed Chestering, to credit the Englishman who did the real work of translating Al-Khwarizmi's text from Arabic into Latin.
Surely the arabs have been colonizing mathematics by translating the indigenous greek works
That argument is rather weird as mathematics was never about culture, but rather about logical truth
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
You want real politicization of science? Check on the GOP's side. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to french scientist for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
I currently worry more about the left though, as it is much more powerful in the academics, and actually creates political "science" today
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
The context was:
> *At least read the Nature one, damn.* ~ @thrance
> *I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.* ~ @ConspiracyFact
> *Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?* ~ @myself
This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
I don't mean to be rude, but do you think it's possible that your understanding of the situation is a bit out of date?
Which part of my critique of post-colonialism do you think had become obsolete?
This part. I'm not sure if it's because it's out of date or just plain wrong, though.
But sorry, it's hard to discuss when you quote a single sentence from the few paragraphs i've written and say it's wrong, with nothing added. When adding to it your replies in previous discussions we had such as this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705166
I feel you are overly emotionally attached to the subject and this is approaching troll/flame territory. It's not that I don't want to discuss with you, but I feel in our engagements a lot of aggression and very little actual passing of information except for short sentences, so let's end it right here
You just sent links to me without acknowledging the conversation we were having at all.
Very, very strange.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
Since we’re bringing it back onto topic, has any university ever ran a “decolonised maths” program? What would that look like?
Seems relatively straightforward to me...
"" Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1) "" or: "" It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2) ""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
Agree. I don’t think they should accept federal funds to the extent that they do. Maybe it’s time for elite institutions to get past the 70s camp era and start behaving (and wielding the power of) being elite.
Why? The funding chased their reputations during the world wars. There are plenty of ways of collaborating on expensive research facilities with the federal government while keeping a boundary between church and state within the elite halls.
Sorry... you think that Trump is doing this because of suppression of dissent about amyloid plaques?
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
Not in any meaningful way. And not in a way that would have mattered.
The elite universities got into this hole by trying to court pedestrian approval. Trump is at war with the professional managerial class, not the elites. Harvard’s brand remains unimpeached among the latter. Return to serving that group and ignore the broader population.
Now do what it gets them.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument isn't good
I didn't say fund harvard xor fund local schools, I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets. The comment I'm replying to is who implies I must support harvard funding xor I must support trump, "the people who want to hurt harvard", I don't think that's true. I'm allowed to think federal funds for academia are too high and also think Trump is bad for the country
A place that has all the facilities, faculty and pedigree to pull some of the best researchers from all over the world. It's in fact crazy that Harvard, or any R1 university, wouldn't get a large amount of research dollars from the federal government.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
The Trump administration is not, has not, and will not be arguing in good faith. Stop pretending we're working collaboratively towards a shared future - they're either stealing your television or stealing your neighbor's television, and attempts to interrogate the merits of their television relocation policy aren't shedding any actual light to the situation.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
Second, I agree that local schools (I guess you mean K-12?) should get more money. DOGE is busy cutting that also.
let me cred fall. idgaDANG
The lion’s share of it appears to be NIH programs for area hospitals - all of which are associated with Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
We all benefit from that research.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
1) Granting that giving more power to tenured professors would be a good thing, in what way is it legal, wise, or good for the executive branch to achieve this in the absence of any law by strong arming individual private institutions that it has decided to target on ad hoc basis?
2) You are reading selectively, it says "fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter" [emphasis mine]. So in other words, it is a requirement that the university give power to those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration. This is a very clear and alarming violation of the first amendment.
In toto, the letter is an attempt to impose ideological reform in a private institution, and is part of a wider attempt by the current administration to browbeat or subvert every institution that might act to curtail (or even speak out against) its actions.
While I kinda agree that can also be taken to mean "those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration", it still means those calling the shots are the non academic activists not aligned with an ideology of promoting academic merit....
Maybe.
That sentence (from the letter) makes no sense. An activist isn't someone with power to do something. If they had that power, they wouldn't be advocating it, they would do it.
What that insisting the University do is shut down people talking and protesting with viewpoints they disagree with. They list those viewpoints in their letter: "..., Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild". The pro Israeli protests that happened aren't mentioned. If they get away with this, I'm sure a lot more viewpoints will follow.
This isn't about powers. It's about controlling what people can and can not say on a University campus.
Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
Nope. They literally spell out the activity they want banned in their letter. Have you read it? LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
yes they are
"discontinuation of DEI"
aka not giving someone a position of power purely because they are e.g. a hispanic homosexual and a quota needs filling.
and kicking out the activists that push that policy over academic credentials.
Kicking out activists is another thing they are asking for, in a different section. They list the sorts of activists they want kicked out. Right now it's a short list that boils down to protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza. DEI is not mentioned anywhere in the section, nor are any of the groups DEI typically encompasses. I have no doubt that if Harvard did acquiesce the list will be expanded to everything the administration disagrees with - for example protesting about abolishing DEI. But that's for the future.
It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues they want dealt with in different ways. One is a policy they want dropped, the other is a group they want shut down. What is not so clear is why you are so keen to conflate the two issues. Are you keen to get "hispanic homosexuals", and any other sub-group you don't like banned from campuses?
Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
All of whom have exactly zero acedemic credibility.
Certainly non of whom should be funded by tax collected from a single mother living in a trailer park.
Just for clarity, do I have this right: You think people who protest Israel’s handing of Gaza are mostly people favoured by DEI, you think "hispanic homosexuals" are favoured by DEI at Harvard, and you think someone who is a "hispanic homosexual" and others that fall under DEI invariably have zero academic credibility?
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
Again for clarity: blocking those students have been ruled illegal: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/14/ucla... so no invention from the Whitehouse was needed. Unlike the Whitehouse, the university involved feels compelled to follow the law, so that's the end of the matter. It also wasn't necessary at Harvard as it didn't happen at Harvard, so that can't be the reason it was included in their letter of demand.
So Harvards response is to vigorously defend their right to hire racist criminals. They of course have that right.
But the US Government is also well within their rights to no longer fund them anymore in that situation. Which I'm pretty sure will be the only hard outcome from Harvards response.
They absolutely have the right to not cooperate, the US govt has no obligation to fund racist crayon munching idiots.
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
>it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Because Americans in small towns overwhelmingly vote for people who lower taxes for rich people and promise not reduce the scope of government. Instead of blaming Harvard, why don't you ask your neighbors why they like to vote for people who refuse to help them?
Are there world-class research facilities in your small town? Why would it be hard for you to see it makes sense for billions to be spent on research at world-class facilities with world-class scientists?
FWIW, chances are whatever local state university nearby also receives quite a bit from federal grants as well. But it probably scales based on the research facilities and staff actually there. Do you think it would be better management of federal resources to instead spend the same amount at facilities that don't do nearly as impactful or nearly as much research?
These are grants for specific research. Researchers put together proposals to study things, the federal government decides that's something worth looking into, and funding gets cut (simplified). Harvard has a lot of people doing pretty fancy research, so it makes sense they'd have a lot of grant proposals requiring fancy and expensive things. Complain to your state legislature for not focusing on making your local university a research university if you feel your area should be getting more of these grants. But let me guess, you probably voted for people who argued for lower taxes. Gee, I wonder what they found to cut...
And FWIW the federal government spends a bunch on a lot of small-town America. FEMA grants for emergency preparedness comes to mind. A higher percentage of populations of small-town America live off federal aid programs. Small-town America also sees more of its school funding from federal sources and grants.
The democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare and free higher education it feels like forever. UBI has even come up a few times. Nothing that Trump is doing is for anyone but himself and his rich friends.
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"
Obviously I'd rather that 10 cents go to something productive, but on the national stage trump golfing feels like just a distraction from much more important topics
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.