If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
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.
Habeas corpus - still in effect unless you're already in El Salvador.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
Unless you're Stephen Miller, who insists that no mistake was made: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrobxubic23
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.
Well one thing is for sure: it's not a coincidence that after they determined that it was impossible to get him back, they've changed the narrative to "no mistake was made" (and begun throwing around the magic word "terrorist" which justifies all sorts of things).
> after they determined that it was impossible to get him back
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 they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens.
He didn't get caught doing anything; he said it, openly, during an interview: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrx6b2gxy2f
Yeah, this is not going to end well for all y'all:
> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
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.
Not caught, he held a press conference and announced that he was going to try to do it.
Actually I stand corrected--he was ALSO caught on tape with a much more chilling version of this statement.
It's not.
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.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.
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.
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
Unfortunately, those people have a lot of practice worshipping a text that they have not read.
> The rubicon has already been crossed
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?
Respect for rule of law and democratic norms. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
> The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
That judge was against the interment of Japanese Americans. He took a stand against anyone deprived of due process throughout his life.
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...
Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
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...
What's your take on the government drone striking American citizens without any sort of trial?
the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
It's starting to like authoritarian is the wrong word.
Totalitarian? not yet, but....
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
Uh yeah, why wouldn't I?
I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.
FYI habeas corpus has been under attack by GOP administrations for nearly a quarter of a century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
It was very depressing (if financially understandable) to see other institutions immediately caving in.
What institutions other than Columbia are caving in?
They will once the administration revokes the visas of half their grad students and shit-can all the international undergrad tuition income.
Every law firm.
Every law firm is hyperbole but I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
> Every law firm is hyperbole
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.)
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
WilerHale and Jenner & BLock are two: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/g-s1-56890/law-firms-sue-trum...
Susman Godfrey.
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...
And University of Washington and University of California on the west coast, although he's not directly threatening them. Rather, his HHS appointment has just quietly pulled all of the funding for their medical and biological research programs.
> How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
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.
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
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)
The point of no return was January 6th 2021!
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.
It could have been water under the bridge if we simply did not re-elect him. But now we have a second term emboldened by de facto total immunity.
It would have been water under the bridge if him and his cronies all got perpetuity starting jan 7th and we never heard of them ever again. Instead the dems chose a demonstration of weakness, and showed that an attempt on our democracy would be punished by a strong worded reprimand, at best.
It wasn't up to dems but courts imho.
Plenty of blame to go around including for the Democrats.
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)
Disagree. Polarisation existed long before Trump. America was going to face this sooner or later. The culture war was always coming.
> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
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.
> By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War.
That may be true. The North won the war, but let the ideology that caused it fester.
I think people frequently forget that the North didn't actually have the firepower to stamp out the ideology.
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.
> who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
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)
What is your definition of "fascists"?
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.
The opening passage of the Wikipedia article:
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?
I feel like most people that are using the term deliberately, are doing so based on reasoning close to Umberto Eco's "Ur-fascism" essay: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
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 get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
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).
> historical fascism
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..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
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.
How did that work the last 10 times we said the things trump wants to do aren't gonna happen. He's saying he will so we should believe him
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-t...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-going-run-third-term-ste...
None of the rest of the stuff happening was going to happen either, I’m sure.
Legal residents are being kidnapped and disappeared into foreign gulags but let’s turn down the temperature, right?
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
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?
The number of times I've read people say "That's alarmist and will never happen", just to see that exact thing happen, is a lot.
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
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.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
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.
We need to start turning the temperature up or this country will be completely lost
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
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?
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
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.
Why do you consider it alarmist? Trump has repeatedly said he would do it, and that he's "not joking" about it.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
Did you read the letter sent from the government to Harvard?
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
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?
Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
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.
The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.
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.
Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.
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.
It's because you sounded like a sealion. That and whataboutism are just adding refuting noises without substance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.
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.
The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.
Because you sound like a concern troll/sea lion. Ask your question better.
Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.
> Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
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...
So not a comparable situation.
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.
Harvard can do whatever they want. They can also not get taxpayer funding for it.
> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
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.
> At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
Not everyone.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
This rings true for much of South America at one point or another. Lots of African nations. Several in SE Asia as well.
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.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
Do you have a better example? Or is that it?
It can take a good long time though. It's Juche Year 114 in North Korea and the Kim dynasty remains firmly in control.
Everyone except those who died in the camps.
Sure... As a different government.
I assume parent is talking about the functional end of this iteration of the United States as a political entity.
> we've come back from 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.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
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.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
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.
> universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds
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.
It’s current year. They might hobble along for a few years without federal funding but they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions.
> they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions
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.
Top researchers prefer federal funding, it’s fairly predictable..till now. It’s messy now so I might be wrong.
> wrong about amyloid plaques
Sorry... you think that Trump is doing this because of suppression of dissent about amyloid plaques?
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
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
> there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population
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.
$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
The 9 billion isn’t specifically just for Harvard “the university”.
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.
> $9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American…
Now do what it gets them.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
Is there any evidence that we've been "blindly" pumping money into academia? Funding agencies are part of the federal budget and don't just get everything they ask for. Then those agencies have all sorts of review procedures for choosing grant awardees.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
This is a logical fallacy of whataboutism. It is perfectly possible to say that the DOD gets too much money as does Harvard.
I would agree if it was not a response to a similar argument about pumping money into alternative. So its consistent to that.
The people who want to hurt Harvard also want to hurt the local schools.
this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa
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
It’s not identity politics to observe that the dilemma you presented (public funding for universities xor local schools) is false.
When the guy lifting your TV starts quoting Marx at you, it's not actually an invitation to engage in philosophical discourse, and no amount of sound economic reasoning is getting your TV back.
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.
@TimorousBestie (I can't reply inline due to comment depth)
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
> I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets
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.
Sure, but you can understand the perspective of someone growing up with zero access to those resources and lives in a rural part of the country hearing your argument and then voting for someone like trump, I would argue that sentiment is one of the forces driving regular people away from democrats and lost them the election in 2024, it is an "ivory tower" perspective and regular americans don't buy it (even if it's true that harvard is a great investment for public money)
I agree the democrats have terrible messaging, but what would really help 'regular' Americans is universal healthcare, free education, and maybe even UBI. As departments get DOGE'd a lot of 'regular' Americans are starting to find out where a lot of federal money goes, to those rural parts of the country.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
First, it's not blind. These big universities are where a ton of research happens. It makes sense that research dollars will end up there.
Second, I agree that local schools (I guess you mean K-12?) should get more money. DOGE is busy cutting that also.
We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.
You seem to be missing the point that federal research grants are not gifts, but instead paying for a service.
If you are looking for someone to take this money and redirect it to local schools I have some bad news for you.
I invite you to write or read a proposal for a multi $M grant before saying that money is being blindly pumped.
I promise you right now that no one in the Trump administration is interested into providing more books to local schools. Quite the opposite
even partially agreeing with anything the trump administration does on this forum makes you a target for downvotes.
let me cred fall. idgaDANG
you say as your comment about downvotes gets downvoted, echo chambers are dangerous to democracy imo
The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
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.
> More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
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.
I read "the changes indicated in this letter" to mean "removing power from non academic activists"
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.
> "removing power from non academic activists"
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.
>An activist isn't someone with power to do something
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.
> 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.
->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.
Yes, discontinuation of DEI is one thing they are asking for. But they aren't (yet) the calling for banning "hispanic homosexuals" or any other DEI group on campus. They aren't asking for discussions about them to be banned. That would be a little awkward, as I'm sure they warn to encourage discussions disparaging them. Nowhere in the section on dismantling DEI do they use the term activists.
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?
>It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues
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.
> Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
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?
I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class are mostly the same racist dumbasses that think being black or hispanic or sexually deviant automatically qualifies you for additional tax payer funds.
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
> I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class
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.
The government is giving them money, the letter is informing them they will stop funding them if those committing crimes (racism is the crime here) are not removed from offices of power within the institution.
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.
Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about that but this isn’t it, this is attempted coercion, and yes, it is fascism.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
You forgot the cost of his golf excursions. (there are a surprising number of Trump golf trackers LOL)
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"
You also forgot the birthday military parade he wants that's been estimated to cost ~$100M.
that's 10 cents per american (still crazy!), but not $30, and $30 is only for Harvard much less how much federal funds go to other schools
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
> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
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.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
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
Small towns overwhelmingly get more federal dollars than they put in. Big cities subsidize small towns.
>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?
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
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.
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
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.
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.