“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Who's selling that policy?
edit: looks like they started this in 2017! https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/29/university-il...
That's some forward thinking!
For a physics PhD for instance at Cornell you usually get paid to teach your first two years and if all goes right do your actual research on a grant. In my case the prof had written a grant for the work I wanted to do which didn't get funded, I spent a summer thinking about the problem which helped us come back with a great grant proposal that got funded.
I know Masters of Engineering students pay their own way, maybe other departments are different. I remember there being a lot of Chinese graduate students 25 years ago but now I see lots of undergrads.
This is more like the latter. There aren't many signs of us hitting the bottom thus far.
b) Impeachment is a political action; plenty of politicians can disagree with portions of their party's legislature enough to vote against it without saying "I'd like to burn down my party's control of the government (and thereby my career) over this".
No, the decision to use executive fiat to normalize dictatorship is not undertaken because of the absence of support for the policy, but because of presence of support for normalizing dictatorship and avoiding the public in-advance debate of the legislative process.
The current GOP doesn't flinch when their candidate is found guilty of SA, with a long history of fraud and embezzlement. If Trump approved a simple burglary of a Democrat's office, it would barely make the news at this point.
Not all infinitessimals are equal, just as not all infinities are equal.
The last is the most frustrating to me because there is a hint of the truth there - the stuff reported about Trump _is_ insane. They're doing things so openly and brazenly that there are kneejerk reactions to either ask "is it really so bad if they're doing it in the open" or "surely the reporting must be a lie because no one would be that shameless".
(Been ridiculed for it. Still get ridiculed for pointing out the current reality of it, with or without the additional "I told you so!" included.)
Vance literally defended the eating cats and dogs lie during the debate. The entire fucking point of this platform is to fuck the immigrants, legal or otherwise.
Or is this actually a surprise to anyone with half a brain?
At the end of the day, there are different levels of terrible things that can happen to us, and right now we are staring down multi-generational damage to our country.
There has to be more than a few of them, right? They could halt or correct this agenda at any time they choose.
In fact the reason why it’s so bad now is that he blames his (more intelligent) advisers in his previous administration for his problems.
I think you're having a hard time grasping the concept of people who care more about rolling back social and cultural change than they care about the United States being a strong and prosperous country. The tension between those priorities in the Republican party has been resolved. The current leaders in the party, including Vance, rose because they understood that their voters are ready to let go of world leadership, including technological leadership and economic competitiveness, in order to roll back social progress.
If you ask them directly, they'll invoke some magical thinking about how this is going to unleash a golden age of prosperity and technology, but they don't care if they believe it or if anyone believes it, because they don't actually care anymore. That's why they don't blink when Trump talks about backwards, impoverished countries with admiration. There's no contradiction for them. They really do look at a country like Russia and think, yes, I want the U.S. to be an American-flavored version of that.
That being said, republicans decided to chose an M1 Abrams tank to kill the pesky mice in the system.
I think the question is which set of ideas are not ok (e.g. clearly "I want to commit violence" is not an ok idea) which set of ideas are a grey area ("I have attended a major event of a US designated terror organization such as a funeral of a leader from a a terror organization") and which set of ideas are ok ("I want to advocate for peacefully advocate for more bike lanes"). There are very strong party affiliations for what ideas are considered ok vs forbidden (e.g. trans rights in the sports world).
It was always easy to dismiss those as uninformed morons, but Signalgate showed that at least Vance and Hegseth truly believes it, and who knows how many more of their ilk.
Up until 2016, the US was predominantly governed by people who understood the post-WWII world order, who understood the immense benefit of Pax Americana to the US itself. People who understood soft power and diplomacy, people who understood that although the upfront costs of maintaining the military hegemony, of playing world police, the benefits far outweighed the costs. People who understood mutually beneficial trade agreements, and that a trade deficit is a small price to pay to maintain the USD as the world's reserve currency.
But now, it's the spoiled grandchildren who are in power, who have been brought up suffused with the exceptionalism such that they take America's position for granted in eternity. And they look at the cost of all of these things, how much it directly benefits other countries, and react with stupid short-sighted greed, thinking that getting rid of the "free-loaders" will make them richer.
I remember the TPP trade deal. It took eight years to negotiate and the US strong-armed everyone else into accepting its provisions on IP, which would have allowed the US to maintain its position at the top of the value chain, countering the ascendancy of China.
All gone, in the trash, because the people who are once again in power fundamentally do not understand how it would have strengthened the US. So now we're back to some kind of mercantilistic trade-war, that the US will lose.
Party doesn't matter. Ds need to inform their R Congresscritters every bit as much as any other combination.
For what it's worth, Republican constituents overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the R primary. Any number of candidates would have provided boilerplate Republican policies, but that wasn't what they wanted.
What Trump is doing is what these voters want.
And there's no limit. It's become an illiberal pro-authoritarian movement. It's in-progress.
Pick something you care about and defend it. It can't be everything all at once at all times, no one can do that.
As someone with some "right-leaning" views I am indeed very sad that the US is losing our edge as an international destination for higher education but I do want to see major reforms at elite institutions. I don't see a good way to accomplish these reforms without being willing to go after institutions in the only way they really care about (hurting the budget). I think we would reach a better place if we could agree to compromises where the universities concede on the "less important points" (e.g. make an earnest effort to drop everything the right calls DEI and reduce the administration to student ratio back to ~1980 levels) while the right agrees to leave funding and privileges in place but if we cannot compromise then we unfortunately end up in a position that is worse for everyone. I suspect most of the left will blame the right for being unable to compromise while most of the right will blame the right but this is kind of the same theme for every major party-aligned disagreement.
My organization employs hundreds of people working on everything from low income nutrition education to researching Medicaid expenditure.
We belong to the University, but we don’t have anything to do with undergraduate education.
This is the problem with looking at higher-Ed ratios like that…there are a lot of good things happening at a University which don’t reduce to “teacher in classroom.”
---
Broadly speaking the spending and staff levels at universities have grown over time while the number of enrolled students have stagnated and tuition costs per student have risen. There is a desire to reduce the per-student cost without providing additional subsidy and a straightforward way to do this is to look at the side of the university that doesn't have anything to do with undergraduate eduction and see where cuts may be made. One clear example of what we perceive as administrative bloat in the recent past was the Stanford Harmful Language Initiative (https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/08/university-removes-harm...). Every institution makes mistakes but if a tax-exempt and grant receiving institution has the bandwidth to produce something that to the eyes of the right appears to be fairly silly while charging ~$60k for tuition, this does raise some eyebrows.
Most likely Harvard will try to fight it in court and then give in if they lose. It's not likely we see the future decertification continue into the academic year.
So people committing thought crimes huh?
This is the US in 2025 - indefinitely imprisoning people without any actual charges for having opinions the current administration doesn't like.
The courts have been beaten months ago. We are well into crazy train territory.
The courts aren't even trying, they could order someone into contempt, but they won't.
By that logic, Trump's orders are just words. The Trump administration obeys the courts - they push the envelope way too far, but it is still rule of law.
No they don't:
https://apnews.com/article/deportation-immigration-south-sud...
Will the people who had to transfer or leave be made whole? Even if a judge overturns this it will take time that the students impacted by this will have to pay, regardless of outcome.
[p.s. bravo to the one who downvoted as soon as I hit submit! Wow, that was quick. Bots on HN?]
We are in a global war, and US and the west is taking damage.
In the last three months, we've collected many data points which are each each further down a slope. I suggest the slope is slippery, and has a very unfortunate end.
__________
[Edit] Predicting a future that might resonate more with YC folks: "Pursuant to Trump Executive Order XYZ, you must submit regular firewall logs and social-media handles for activity by your staff. Failure to comply will result in losing the ability to post H1-B positions."
They will be accommodated.
damn, Trump is really gunning for Harvard
not sure what rolling over for Trump looks like, but a lot of existing foreign students will be screwed unless something gives
> In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/judge-blocks-tr...
> A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.
It is not, but it isn't unrelated; this is about the individual actions for which Harvard's refusal to assist by proactively supplying information is the basis for the action against Harvard.
I think you've confused this action with mindlessly deporting the under-documented.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/09/libya-deport...
[1] e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/20/trump-admini...
Also, most people affected by this will not be the son/daughter of the president of a foreign country or a billionaire.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/green-card-holder-detained-ice-immi...
Why would that be a risk?
Who remains there, despite SCOTUS ordering his return? https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
> Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an “oversight.”
> The order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.
Meng Wanzhou got deferential house arrest in Canada, ultimately followed by an embarrassing effort to forget the whole thing ever happened, while the official who ordered her arrested got yelled at by Trump for making him look bad.
International students are on the Meng Wanzhou end of things. They have Clout. Nobody is going to be accidentally sending them anywhere.
The vast majority of them (of which there are over a million) don't have a Wikipedia page, nor are they "Deputy chairwoman and CFO" of a company as big as Huawei.
Rumeysa Ozturk sat in jail for six weeks for writing an op-ed. I assure you, there are plenty of international students you can mistreat without causing a major diplomatic incident.
They sent a lot of people, mostly not Salvadoran, to El Salvador [0] without due process, the one Salvadoran just gets covered more in the news because, as well as the issues applicable to the others, he had a existing court order prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador specifically.
[0] And they've done or attempted to do that to Libya, South Sudan, and other third countries to whom the deported have no connection, as well.
This is going to burn the children of the most powerful families across the world. Monarchies, dictators, owners of international conglomerates, etc all send their kids to Harvard. Destroying their children’s education out of a fit of malice is going to haunt him, and America on top of all the other stuff America is doing to the world.
America first is rapidly becoming America alone.
When you frame it like this... it doesn't sound like such a loss. But yeah, it's not the only way to frame it.
Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.
(/s in case it wasn't obvious)
/s in case not obvious
I want to note that when Brexit happened EU citizens had about 2 years period to move to UK and just like that get their full rights there and those with enough years of stay had the right to obtain British citizenship. Streamlined process through scanning your id using an app, little to no hassle.
IIRC half of the EU citizens left despite having all those rights and streamlined bureaucracy. My observation was that those desperate or those who ware having their perfect life stayed, those who had other options left UK because it wasn't worth the stress and you future being bargaining chips for politicians.
I bet you, if this continues for some more time USA will no longer receive the best and the brightest. Those have options and their parents will prefer the options where their golden kids don't risk being subject to life changing actions or even abuse.
International students are heavily selected for wealth rather than brightness.
Just check papers for ground breaking research, you'll see the names are predominantly foreign. This recent AI breakthrough is heavily done by people from Europe, Israel, Canada and China. That's why the speakers at AI videos have funny accents.
People with options will start avoiding USA unless the have to.
Makes me think of:
"Reality has a well known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert
The amount of "burn it all down because I don't like the people that like this thing" is depressing.
What if a foreign adversary infiltrates the institution that appoints the individuals who run the institution that determines whether a higher education institution has been infiltrated!?
What if a foreign adversary infiltrates the… !?!
The beauty of a system where many different and independent institutions compete for students and teachers independently, develop and share ideas and technologies, cross examine each other, and collectively build knowledge, is that they don’t have some single point in the system that can be infiltrated, and all have to compete in the arena of ideas.
The closest thing to a single point that can be infiltrated is the federal government, which can be used to put pressure on the whole system from a point of higher power.
Does ICE just have full discretion over SEVP? Can they do this to any school for whatever reason they want?
[0] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/22/harvard-university-loses...
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/publication/dhsicepia-001-student-exchan...
It will quietly be done, although likely in a way that make it look as if Harvard hasn't.
Look how China is dealing with Trump. Trump announces tariffs, China returns Boeing planes, tariffs somehow comes down.
> Look how China is dealing with Trump. Trump announces tariffs, China returns Boeing planes, tariffs somehow comes down.
Doesn't this example make the opposite of your point?
Trump's history has shown that if you cave into his demands, he doesn't leave you alone—instead he starts demanding even more, since he knows you'll fold.
Harvard may argue that DHS’s request was overly broad, lacked due process, or sought information beyond what the law permits.
8 CFR § 214.3(g) and § 214.4(b), which require schools to maintain and furnish records “as required by the Service,” including disciplinary actions and other conduct relevant to maintaining status.
8 CFR § 214.3(l)(2)(iii) allows for withdrawal of certification if a school fails to “provide requested documentation” to DHS.
Not to mention other overly broad immigration laws
But given the laws on the books, DHS has broad authority to take this action.
Not arguing one way or the other just laying out the facts. This could have happened under the prior administration if the law was applied
From a similar CNN article:
"Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered her department to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, making good on a promise made last month when she demanded the university hand over detailed records on its international students’ “illegal and violent activities” before April 30 or face the loss of its certification."
Okay, who could they possibly be talking about? Right. The Gaza protesters.
Miriam Adelson - $150m donated to Trump, second highest
Elon Musk is not the only one that bought the White House. So there is a genocide that if any of us tech people had some courage we could easily make some pretty wild visualizations of the before/after of Gaza maps, and the current full scale ethnic cleansing of it, but we can't bring it up. We're failing as tech people on this, but so is the whole world.
They’re trying to hit some targets for deportation numbers and shipping home “criminal” foreign students is an easy win.
They're targeting everyone they can find. Russian refugees (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/science/russian-scientist...), Danish people who missed a form (https://www.mississippifreepress.org/ice-arrests-mississippi...), etc.
So it's not really about Gaza, Palestinians, or Jews. It's about control.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritag...
It's crazy they're punishing tons of students who don't even have anything to do with these protests
They might prefer to start with certain targets, but all international students are target of opportunity [0] the same way they've attacked people with lawful residency.
[1] Though perhaps with some very particular and suspicious quasi-ethnic exceptions. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crljn5046epo
[0] Ex. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/us/immigration-green-card..., https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article304988381.html
The champions of One True America are just using international students as pawns to force Harvard's hand.
It's actually only a 1st Amendment question in one case and not the other. Looks like they tricked ya though!
(Technically it's a 1st Amendment question in both cases in that private entities have a 1st Amendment right to create rules for their own campuses)
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/5/23/trump-admin-rev...
I still haven't found a valid argument for why a voter isn't held responsible for the actions of representatives. Especially if the actions would be likely to occur.
Edit: If by "hold responsible" you mean "be mad at them" then yes, of course you can, I can't read a comment section that isn't mostly that, and you knew that before making this comment.
Being shamed into a little introspection wouldn't hurt.
Of course if someone loudly states who they voted for they should not be surprised someone else calls them out on it. After all what is voluntarily giving up anonymity, if not an act of support?
There are a long list of things, and most people are not willing accept that "their side" does anything someone else might not like. Doesn't matter what side. Most people are not even willing to honestly listen to "the other side's" concerns.
Waters of the US. All the various "woke" issues which harms someone who isn't a minority who sees someone less competent getting business (and then calling them racist when the feel cheated). Immigration or China taking all their jobs. The above is what I can think of just off the top of my head that many people feel democrats have messed up on. (I don't not agree with this entire list, but I'm sure people will shoot the messenger anyway...)
Voters don't really choose a representative. They are given choices. Two choices, of which, let's face it, most people will just pick whichever one is on "their side". Those choices are created by outside forces. And those choices, once chosen, will do... whatever the hell they want. There's no consequence to them doing whatever the hell they want. So it doesn't really matter what the choice is to begin with. You're as likely to get what you want by praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster as by voting. The "choices" are just gonna do whatever the hell they want anyway. Whether you get what you want or not is incidental.
But let's assume you do hold somebody responsible for choosing something they have no control over. What does that mean to "hold them responsible" ? You gonna actually do something? Throw them in jail? Kill them? Probably not. You're probably just gonna say nasty things about them on Facebook. Which you could do at any time, for any reason. So who gives a shit what the argument is? It makes no difference to anything at all. You might as well ask for a valid argument for why the sky is blue. Ain't gonna change the sky.
His electorate's beliefs are whatever he tells them they are. The same is true for the Republican Party. Trump is effectively free to ignore the constitution without consequence.
Much of my extended family would absolutely join a civil war on side Trump to get him into a permanent position of power if given the opportunity. Some of them are in the military. So it’s not unreasonable by world history standards that he could get a subset of the military on his side in a coup scenario.
I think people in large urban centers or outside of the US don’t realize how much certain parts of the country truly worship him above anything else. I know many people like this, I have to see them at family events, so you can’t tell me it’s an exaggeration. I’m not sure there are enough to do anything substantial, but the seeds are there.
You are quite naive, aren't you?
Martial law will be declared, for whatever reason they can come up with. Maybe the "invasion" excuse again, maybe Greenland, maybe Canada, maybe Mexico. But one thing is sure: Trump will be the last president of this democracy iteration.
Shit needs to get ugly fast enough to make the masses take notice or they may just get their way.
> In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”
So DHS revoked the visas for all existing students at Harvard? That doesn't seem quite possible?
Doesn't give them a timeline either.
The best and the brightest from around the world will prioritize top universities at other countries, and this will damage one of the US' biggest attractions and advantages.
Unbelievable.
I didn't expect to see Harvard getting smacked around or humiliated like this.
Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government. And that key figures in government were interested in maintaining and benefiting from that influence.
And a lot of that influence seemed aligned with national interests. (For example, getting things done with prestige connections, domestically and internationally. And the international diplomatic goodwill, when children of the world's wealthy and powerful go to prestigious schools in the US.)
Is some other faction at work now, or is it the same people as before? Are the power networks changing? If the distribution of power is changing, is it partly due to someone willing to sacrifice national power from which all parties benefited (and everyone else wasn't expecting that, or wasn't ready to defend against that from within)? Better questions?
I'm reminded of the infamous George Carlin bit "It's a big club, and you ain’t in it"[1]. Maybe not anymore... and that's a most likely a good thing.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason...
Cue chip on shoulder against old money.
It'll be curious if Yale gets the same treatment (Vance, Bessent) or Princeton (Hegseth) or Penn (Trump).
(if I remember well it's 150-170 pages - and since I don't live in the US the meme "Ain't Nobody Got Time for That" is spot on).
The movie also sent Upgrayedd but left that story arc for a sequel.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-202...
You can understand, for example, most of their tactics about immigration by reading the section on Homeland Security, tariffs by reading the Economy section (by Peter Navarro), and so on. They are in fact hewing pretty closely to the document.
The DHS letter to Harvard specifically says that this is because Harvard's campus has been "hostile to Jews" and "promotes pro-Hamas sympathies".
In other words, this is the Zionist Trump administration attacking Harvard because Harvard allows their students to speak out against the genocide Israel is waging against Palestine. Clearly Trump is Israel First.
"Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students, and otherwise obstruct its once-venerable learning environment. Many of these agitators are foreign students. Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide."
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05/22/harvard-university-loses...
Though I doubt he could find either Israel or China on a map.
Make no mistake, the Republican party (and half the Democratic Party FWIW) is fully captured by the Israel lobby.
The part of the real reason that is made very obvious is that Harvard is not rolling over and doing whatever the regime asks of it, and attacks of the administration on Harvard will continue until that capitulation occurs.
The regime only started asking such things after large Pro-Palestinian protests took place at Harvard. That's absolutely the root cause, especially since Trump took hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from committed Zionists.
I've seen no evidence that they are not. So much for inclusion and acceptance from one of the nations leading progressive institutions.
Harvard and Yale didn't hire the right lobbyists [0][1][2]
The other universities like Dartmouth, MIT, and public university systems did.
One of the side effect of being large endowment private universities meant Harvard and Yale remained extremely insular and concentrated on donor relations over government relations.
For example, MIT across town remained much more integrated with public-private projects compared to Harvard, and ime Harvard would try to leverage their alumni network where possible, but the Harvard alumni network just isn't as strong as it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Also, don't underestimate the Israel-Palestine culture war. Both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli campus orgs have continued to bombard me and other alumni to fight political battles against Harvard leadership for their side. Benefits of signing up to both Islamic orgs and Chabad to broaden my horizons back in the day I guess. Alumni from orgs on both sides are fine targeting the entire university, because fundamentally, Harvard is a very isolated experience where loyalty is to your house, a couple clubs, or your grad program - not Harvard as a whole.
And because Harvard has a lot of HNW alumni, they always try to meddle in some shape or form - Wen Jiabao's best friend funds the Fairbank Center, Kraft funds and hosts events at Chabad, some al Saud branches fund a couple Islamic clubs, a bunch of alt-right leaning Catholic traditionalists fund the Abigail Adams Institute, etc. It's just inter-elite fratricide at this point because no one truly gives a poo about Harvard.
Honestly, Harvard should prevent alumni from funding campus orgs, but they won't do so because donor relations.
[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-is-bombarding...
[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/small-colleges-trum...
[2] - https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2024...
Edit: I am extremely pro-academic freedom. This move is a HORRIBLE affront to free speech and campus autonomy. My cynicism and disillusionment may sound like I support the move by the administration, but it is the complete opposite.
I'm also an (severely disillusioned) alumni of some of the student orgs that are mutually using Harvard the institution as a punching bag to fight their culture wars.
A lot of this is honestly very childish BS done by some petulant alums who were already dicks on campus.
There is very little campus loyalty at Harvard which makes it easier to use it as a punching bag.
And your response is to dismiss it all as a kerfuffle over "bad lobbying" and "inter-elite fratricide"? Really?
Surely there are existing institutions of some form or another you'd like to see not made enemies of the state. You don't maybe see a principle at work here beyond your personal dislike of academia?
> Surely there are existing institutions of some form or another you'd like to see not made enemies of the state. You don't maybe see a principle at work here beyond your personal dislike of academia
Hold up - I'm massively pro-academic freedom and autonomy. I'm just pointing out that there's a fight happening behind this fight that has been going on in a subset of the Harvard alum community that has snowballed into this fiasco.
> That is just shockingly cynical
You don't understand unless you actually attended Harvard. It's a very isolating and cliquish experience which incentivizes you to exist within your echo chamber.
Even joining god damn clubs on campus required "Comping" (basically the same as rushing in frats)
Major reason I spent most of my time at MIT and BU instead - middle class schools tend to have less of a stick up their butt.
Edit: can't reply to you below, but tl;dr I agree with your callout. I edited my initial comment because as you pointed out it did come off as if I had schachenfreude.
> I can say with 100% sincerity that'd I'd feel the same horror if a White House was similarly going after TCU, or Liberty University, or even Yale
I agree. I'm just exasperated by this whole fiasco and that's why my post is so angry in tone
Then maybe you'd like to rephrase your upthread comment which seems very comfortable with a clear and obvious attack on academic freedom and autonomy?
> You don't understand unless you actually attended Harvard.
Class of '96. But really I don't see how that's relevant in the face of the current crisis. I can say with 100% sincerity that'd I'd feel the same horror if a White House was similarly going after TCU, or Liberty University, or even Yale.
It's. Awful. And it's not made less so because some of the students are Zionists, or Palestinian Sympathizers, or Vegan, or whatever it is you're upset about.
The simple answer is that they don't. Alumni are often in powerful positions, but even they are, that is very different from the school itself exerting influence.
* Trump does not care or maybe lacks the understanding of the concept of a network and influence with entities outside the U.s.
* Trump probably figures that he can use this as sort of leverage against negotiations with non-U.s. entities...but using a blunt instrument instead of nuance, or backchannels.
* Trump is foolishly following the guidelines from the architects of project 2025...whether those folks are educated enough to understand value of schools of higher educatioin, or worse, these architects fear having an educated population - regardless if that population are U.S. citizens or folks outside of U.S.
* Trump is behaving like a child having a tantrum, and is demolishing the "swamp" of current political arenas, and re-building it for himself/his party...and Harvard and other entities (that typically might be invited) are not invited in the upcoming new world order.
* Trump has little desire in any/all of this, and this is simply another stab at pushing the envelope of what the U.s. Executive branch can/can not do...much like a child who pushes boundaries to see how far they can get...and if no one pushes back/challenges (at least in meaningful ways), then they will keep pushing until greater power has been obtained.
...of course, it could be a combination of many of the above at the same time as well...and could be other stuff that i didn't note above too. In other words, welcome to the modern U.S. tyranny. ;-)
Israelis are upset at the student protests and are influencing the university to crush them.
Universities thought they were to uphold principles but it turns out that was only cover for doing certain things that made others happy.
Strange times indeed
Turns out the "deep state" is just some made up bullshit to make people distrustful, angry, and easier to manipulate.
> Is some other faction at work now, or is it the same people as before? Are the power networks changing?
Nope, it's always been this dynamic. It's made of people after all. But that doesn't work as well to get people lapping up Trumpty Dumpty propaganda.
Most presidents let the agencies run mostly unsupervised, it seems like. With the agencies now under heavy fire structurally, they may not be able to do what they would normally do to prevent this kind of thing.
I think the whole agency model gives the president way more power than they are meant to have. I guess this exists to serve as a form of blame laundering from the people without term limits to the guy with term limits? But if the president does not play ball, suddenly they have power over things congress would otherwise have power over. Oops.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-3351-...
The people running Y Combinator? They'll donate a few million to the Trump fund, maybe donate a jet or two and hope that gets him to stop for a little bit while claiming this 'isn't what we stand for' and 'i can't believe this happened (to us)'.
Make no mistake, they have no problem with these decisions until it has direct and material impact on them. That's why they invite the people directly responsible for this to their AI Startup school and give them privileged speaking opportunities. They don't care nor do they think that far into the future. Hell, you can go to the AI startup school page now and see them sharing the AI Ghibli shit [1]
During the pandemic, the remote first model lead to a number of fairly successful early stage investments such as Orange Health and BharatX
But, I suspect, if suddenly all international students transferred to MIT, the administration would simply do the same to MIT. So it would become one big game of whack-a-mole, and the smaller players would just bend over to the rules.
International students are cash cows for some institutions. They wouldn't dare to have that cow put down.
So transferring to another college will be fine as long as they pick one that has already kowtowed to Trump. And have never posted to social media or taken any action that could be construed as opposition to the policies of the Dear Leader.
The Trump Administration is targeting Harvard, foreign students (and foreigners, especially non-White foreigners, generally), free speech, due process, limited government, and constraints on executive power, and a whole bunch of other things simultaneously.
"It's this, not that" is the wrong mental model. It is more like, everything, everywhere, all at once.
History is repeating itself as a farce. It's not wild speculation to guess what might happen if these actions continue unchecked. It's education now, but it will be lawyers and judges next, and after that it will be leaders of tech and business. Anyone who brokers power.
It already is this. Their attack on the judicial branch is the most frightening IMO, since it is directly attacking checks and balances.
Some of the request is for video recordings of law breaking. Absolutely for any student visa holder who breaks the law their visa should be reviewed to determine if it should be revoked. And if Harvard has video evidence of this they should turn it over.
Part of the problem here though is that Harvard did not expel students for expellable offenses. If they enforced their policies on all students equally no matter the political position the state department wouldn’t need to revoke the visas by reviewing the materials, as the visa would be revoked because they got expelled.
What do they need from Harvard to determine if an individual has violated their visa? Does the administration not have a list of students on a visa? (Surely they do, given that's their job.) Do they not have evidence of a crime? (Surely they do, otherwise there's no problem. But also apparently not, because they'd just use that.) What's missing?
Because the administration has chosen to include define a range of activity which is not obvious from other sources as incompatible with visa status, including membership in certain student organizations.
> Do they not have evidence of a crime?
"Crime" is not the issue, and, no, they don't, that's the problem -- they want information from Harvard with no basis other than the fact that students are on a visa, so that they can use it for fishing expeditions for excuses to deny visa status.
So he has to deliver at least on two to have meaningful legacy. Because of the idiocy around tariffs - the economy at the midterms will be at best slightly above where he got it. So it leaves immigration and culture war. The border crossings are way down - so halfway there, but deporting meaningful numbers will be hard. Which means that he must deliver on the third issue big. So probably he will continue to bash the soft targets and the institutions that are perceived to be left leaning.
1. Racism
2. Racism
3. Racism
If you are right - then it seems that racism is quite broadly popular among all ethnic groups in USA because Trump made inroads with everyone.
However I don't understand how it's possible to single out a specific university.
Are there precedents for this kind of behaviour?
He's already done this to the Associated Press for ignoring his stupid Gulf of Mexico rename as well as to several law firms for representing democrats.
And yes, Harvard is absolutely a morally dubious institution. Less morally dubious than Trump's movement is, but still.
adamors•3h ago