Don’t miss this bit. Currently enrolled students are going to need to find a new university.
> 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.”
> A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from terminating the legal statuses of international students at universities across the U.S.
yandie · 6h ago
I don't think this decision can force the Department of State to issue new visas for Havard students unfortunately. At least existing students *might* be alright...
semiquaver · 9h ago
This is not the same issue. Judges can be fast, but not that fast. Both the decision and this action against Harvard happened within an hour of eachother.
dragonwriter · 8h ago
> This is not the same issue.
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.
kristjansson · 9h ago
I believe they've taken a different tactic here - attacking Harvard's ability to enroll international students, not the students' status directly.
ceejayoz · 9h ago
The article states "existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status"; this injunction would appear to pause that.
ty6853 · 9h ago
The semester is already over, many of them went home. They'll simply be refused when they try to come back.
Animats · 8h ago
That's a real issue. If you're on a student visa, and were planning on coming back in the fall, leaving the US for the summer may be a bad move. Entry to the US can be denied arbitrarily. Deporting someone is harder.
benlivengood · 7h ago
> Deporting someone is harder.
It used to be harder and mostly seems to be a matter of ICE finding the right door to break down now.
NewJazz · 7h ago
Or the wrong one.
xethos · 4h ago
They've got a deportation order, so somebody is being put on a plane to El Salvador. Whether the name of the person being deported matches the name on the deportation order is another question, but not one ICE seems bothered by anymore
chairmansteve · 5h ago
Not only refused, they may be locked up for a couple of weeks, as has happened to various tourists.
ty6853 · 4h ago
Sure, I was locked up by DHS/immigration, and I am a US citizen. CBP/ICE/HSI doesn't really need much of anything to lock you up, when they did it to me they told me I wasn't even under arrest.
mandeepj · 3h ago
> Sure, I was locked up by DHS/immigration, and I am a US citizen.
Can you expand - what happened?
Terr_ · 3h ago
IANAL but there are different categories like "detained" [reasonable suspicion, for questioning] and "arrested" [probable cause], and that's why the common advice is to just ask "am I free to go", which doesn't get bogged-down on finer-grained distinctions about why you might no be.
ty6853 · 2h ago
Yes chained ("detained") in a jail cell, but not arrested, so no right to lawyer.
firesteelrain · 9h ago
It’s hard to do an injunction if there is currently no harm.
gtirloni · 1h ago
ICE begs to differ.
brazzy · 7h ago
What judges say doesn't matter anymore to this administration. They'll just implement it anyway.
Presumably you mean it would if it were passed into law. The House passes all sorts of bullshit that dies in the Senate.
klipt · 4h ago
Hopefully it dies, but republicans do have a senate majority too.
zappb · 3h ago
They don’t have 60 senators which is required to pass anything besides the budget these days thanks to the filibuster.
acbart · 2h ago
This is the budget reconciliation bill.
jmye · 2h ago
If Republicans believe they will never lose the Senate, they can easily bypass the filibuster without 60 votes. To date, the adults in the room prevented either party from doing this for short term wins, but a) there are no adults in the room and b) it’s arguable the Senate will never again have a non-Republican majority (demographically, not a conspiracy theory).
EGreg · 2h ago
I remember the same was said when GOP lost horribly in 2008 and Dems rode Obama’s coattails. The GOP was supposed to never recover. Demographically they were in a significant minority. Then they hatched REDMAP…
Nevermark · 35m ago
GOT THIS OUt MY SYSTEM. NOW I CAN SLEEP. SAFELY NOWING YOU BRIGHT PEOLE WILL HAVE FIGURED OUT THE SOLTIONS BEFORE A HAL SUN CYCLE.
ONLU READ THIS B(L)OG OF ENTERNAL STENCH AT YOUR OWN PERIL! AND DONT FALL IN, YOU NEVER BE RID OF THE SMELL. FOREVER!
BUT OUR FRIEND SHIP SILL REMAIN INTACT!
=====
Yes, the rules of Senate and Republican districts has been strongly in Republican's favor, and will be increasingly in their favor for many reasons, some many practical.
They are are the elite white, not a frekle. (Ha, had! Sleeplessness is making me silly!)
The low populations states that tend to vote Republican, get the minimum number of House representatives, and equal Senators, despite not meeting proportional citizen populations on the form, and having much fewer constituents. pers Senator for the latter.
So they are structurally better represented.
That is locked in stone.
Then demographic trends give them a widening lead as Democrats voluntarily migrate into dense democratic zones, usually cities, while Republicans remain more distributed. This results in a very effective "crack and pack" situation between districts, heaily under valuing Democratic votes. It would be a sign of major corruption, except the demographic moves are all voluntary.
Finally, power in the Republican party has become highly centralized, including getting local and state political fights to be based primarily on national issues. Natural difference in state situtations no longer results in states having to negotiate with each other.
It also facilitates to party money efficiently moving around, supporting candidates who need help with resources they never earned in any way. But if they vote in line, they get the funding.
There are many other factors. Not all nefarious, just artifacts of happenstance of ancient Constitutional negotiation.
But the result is the same, Republicans are likely to increase their advantages for the next couple decades at least.
The packed Supreme Court is magnifying, if not repreatedly compounding these problems. Money = free speech? Well we have instutionalized that the rich have more free speech.
And that is before all \ Republican states do behave corruptly, tilting voting rules in their favor, and further packing their judicial districts with extremely overt, and often highly unqualified, Republican partisans, who follow orders or have genuinely bought in to "Conservative" ideology (somehow without awareness of its constant churn), right up to a super majority of Republican leaning partisans in the supreme court.
And gneral corrupt government practices are getting more common, thanks in large part to a significant figure who claiming any corrupt before him, justifies his the existence of any corruption before him, his constant embrase of it. With his voters on board, because Trump winning must mean they are winning? Even if those stakes, and Trump University diplomas bombed.
My kids are traumatized. They don't care about parties, but they care deeply about climate change, reasonable efforts for equal treatment of trans peeple (better stated as a priority for treating all people equally). All while they struggle with a perverse economy of richer getting richer, using real estate like bitcoin as a place to "park" money, driving up housing costs for financial reasons that having nothing to do with normal supply and demand curves grounded in housing utility.
Taxation of total land and property perversely cuts taxes for owners of unused property, and increases taxes for those that construct valuable assets on property. It is a wealth tax that happens to really hurt the poor and middle class.
This list of problems goes on and on, despite many of them being identifiable and fixable.
First congress abdicated their own check on the president, Now the judicial system is waffling between maximizing presidential power to ignore/repurpose concressial funden problems, aut the judicial system is intermitently handing power over themselves. Supreme Court's can no longer charge a presicent with treason, no matter how corruptly he uses "official acts" to renrich himself, and create barriers for democratic checks, such as the press, and freedom of attorney's to challenge presendents, bu lawfulling repsresentng clients.
And on to of all that, we have a toxic narcissist who leverages entertaining haose, cerates atrain wreck news cycle, all in the servive is snowing anyone who thought hew would lower inflaction and the debt.
His north star is plaininly self-enrchment, making enefies, and vilifying peopel, and a morbit need for any attention, good or bad. We are a toy to him. Deaths and inustice only service his purpose if he can shock us with his disregard for them.
Que, the "6th dimensional chess" human centapide. Keep eating that crap! Trust the doctor!!
before simple things like a president whose north stars are money and attention, who happens to have years experience with graft and self-promotion.
I think I need to sleep now!
mperham · 9h ago
It doesn’t matter, the damage is done. If you’re an international student, are you going to risk an El Salvador gulag?
IAmBroom · 9h ago
How does prematurely ending your college degree send one to El Salvador's prisons? Most of those foreign students are from well-off families overseas, and supported by such - or supported by their governments.
I think you've confused this action with mindlessly deporting the under-documented.
fullstop · 8h ago
The government has already revoked student visas, the next step is deporting them to El Salvador.
If people are being deported without a hearing, it literally doesn't matter. You or I can be deported if we don't get a chance to prove our status.
cherryteastain · 8h ago
There were many recent instances of even long term US permanent residents being sent to immigration detention centers. Maybe El Salvador gulag is an exaggeration, but being sent to a squalid prison is a very real possibility. Here's one from yesterday [1]. What's preventing them from doing the same to a student?
Also, most people affected by this will not be the son/daughter of the president of a foreign country or a billionaire.
Nationwide injunctions are going the way of the dodo
paulryanrogers · 5h ago
With population outgrowing our capped judiciary, making access to courts increasingly pay to play, this means even less accountability for the executive branch.
mousethatroared · 3h ago
The judiciary doesn't have to be capped. Thats on Congress
kristopolous · 7h ago
Ah yes, this is how we will be competitive - defunding universities, deporting the best and brightest, dismantling education, and cutting off trade.
I mean seriously, if a malicious saboteur was running things, what would the differences be?
neumann · 6h ago
They (the current administration) doesn't want to be competitive. They want to be in full control and willing to destroy any institution, organization or person that opposes them, internal or external.
spacemadness · 4h ago
Can we say "fascism" out loud yet or are moderates still pretending everything is fine?
platevoltage · 1h ago
Luckily Jon Stewart finally came to his senses.
esseph · 3h ago
"But what even does this mean, fascism?"
twists mustache, not really caring about the answer
trealira · 3h ago
You can't say the word because the moderates are supportive of it - they'll say "people like you are why Trump won!", never taking responsibility for their beliefs. The targets of the regime's ire are always unpopular targets: LGBT people, illegal immigrants, government workers, researchers, etc. The educated middle class and the universities are hated by them for being too leftist and elitist; it's only natural they'll try to destroy such institutions now that they're in power and have no reservations on using their power.
kristopolous · 59m ago
Trump won because the moderates wanted to moderate against fascism and so it was either fascists or finger wagging scolds.
Luckily after the midterms the moderates will get elected so they can sit on their hands and do absolutely nothing except punch left
Meanwhile the hard right will go even harder and call the moderates "the radical left" and they'll win the seats back the next election as the moderates punch left again and say that's why they lost.
All these policies will be left exactly in tact. Nothing will be attempted to be rolled back. They'll do effectively nothing at all. Indistinguishable from simply vacating the office for their term.
They have a strong rigorous fundamental belief in doing absolutely positively nothing at all about anything. At all.
Gotta love the Democrats
eli_gottlieb · 1h ago
I tolerate my normie family saying it, but it grates on me because of how many of the constituencies have switched sides by now. For instance, educated professionals were a major base for the original Nazi Party, while nowadays the fascists seem to really loathe that class stratum.
0x5f3759df-i · 7h ago
They’d probably try to be more subtle about it.
scrubs · 6h ago
Whence the salient and more pressing question: why does the gop in the legislative branch take a zero?
We've all had bad bosses ... and that's a problem, but it's 10x worse when the people around know better and do nothing.
paulryanrogers · 5h ago
They're afraid of losing to a primary challenger if they break with Trump. It used to be a Trump endorsement would hurt your campaign. Now a Trump critique is believed to be a scarlet letter. He's got a lock on the racist zealots that make up the most consistent voting bloc in the GOP.
tbihl · 3h ago
They never picked off Newhouse, IIRC.
Aeolun · 5h ago
I think the problem is that half of the country (has been made to) wants to sabotage itself. Therefore, they elect and keep in power someone that gives them exactly what they want.
giardini · 2h ago
Yeah, the way the Democratic Party self-destructed was indeed enlightening and frightening. And they continue to point fingers at each other and present specious arguments why they failed in the last election.
Meamwhile the Republicans, while making headway, aren't doing it in a way that will last beyond the next Democratic administration. I'm speaking of the overuse of executive orders when legislation is what is required.
bko · 5h ago
Harvard doesn't have higher academic standards for foreign students. So I don't think foreign students are any "better or brighter" than their American counterparts.
So if you can find equally qualified American students on the margin shouldn't you do so? I think an American university that benefits greatly from American taxpayers and institutions should primarily benefit American students. If you're picking truly exceptional student, that's one thing. But I don't think that's happening.
jltsiren · 4h ago
Academic standards are kind of irrelevant when it comes to Harvard undergraduate admissions.
Harvard is a tiny university at the absolute top of the prestige hierarchy. As far as they are concerned, every serious (non-legacy/donor) applicant is a truly exceptional student. At least to the extent it can be determined from the admission materials and a short interview. They could choose randomly from all good enough applicants with no noticeable impact on academic standards.
But Harvard is not in the business of educating the most deserving. Instead, they want to educate the ones who will be successful and influential in the future, and to give them the best networking opportunities possible. The standard joke is that if the admissions officer knew that the applicant would become a tenured professor at Harvard, they would reject the applicant for the lack of success. Most Harvard graduates fail to reach that standard, but it's better to choose a likely failure (and an unlikely unicorn) over a certain failure.
PhD admissions are another story. At that stage, Harvard starts caring a lot more about academic potential. They don't want to restrict their recruitment to the US, because Americans are only a small fraction of the people with access to good education. Especially because Americans are reluctant to do a PhD due to the low pay effectively mandated by public research funders.
bko · 3h ago
> As far as they are concerned, every serious (non-legacy/donor) applicant is a truly exceptional student.
I know it's fun to dunk on legacy admissions but legacy students are actually more qualified by objective measures than non legacy. It makes sense that some genetics that predisposes children to an academic environment gets passed on. Not to mention the fact that their parents value education. This holds up even when you compare them against their non legacy peers in the same parental income bracket.
I think in context “legacy” refers to the affirmative action boost given to children of (donating) alumni over better qualified unconnected peers.
rayiner · 4h ago
> But Harvard is not in the business of educating the most deserving. Instead, they want to educate the ones who will be successful and influential in the future, and to give them the best networking opportunities possible
That’s exactly why this consternation about “the best and the brightest” is overblown. Harvard is a nerve center for enabling international elite to rub elbows. E.g. the good-for-nothing son of Bangladesh’s former PM went to Harvard for his MPA.
pen2l · 3h ago
I understand it's cool to slam Harvard these days but it is nonetheless a behemoth when it comes to research output.
Roughly a third of the 50-something of Harvard's Nobel laureates were immigrants by the way.
rayiner · 3h ago
I didn’t say that was Harvard’s only function. But it’s a major one. And the core science research departments are a small share of Harvard’s overall footprint. I wonder how long those departments are going to let the rest of the university use them as human shields.
No comments yet
kristopolous · 4h ago
They don't have lower standards either.
I mean they will now with a candidate pool reduction of 96%...
The rest is kinda wild. I guess Ilya Sutskever should leave? Sergey Brin would have never started Google, Jony Ive would be in the UK, Jensen Huang and Nvidia would be hailing from Taipei, Elon Musk would be in Johannesburg, Linus Torvalds would still be in Finland, the Rasmussen brothers would have launched Google maps in the Netherlands, Satya Nadella would be in Hyderabad, the Broadcom CEO would be in Malaysia...
To me places like Stanford and Caltech are world class schools that happen to be in the US. Over 90% not being American born is what I'd expect from a globally renown world class institution because that's what the world population looks like.
China has many programs to attract top global talent. If you want to fast track the transition from Silicon Valley to Beijing, kicking out the foreigners is an excellent move.
Graduate level coursework at Peking is already in English. All these scholars have to do is get on a plane.
andrekandre · 2h ago
> You're beheading like 50% of the S&P my friend...
just a guess but i'd assume these decisions are being made on an emotional/ideological basis, not long term viability, but maybe i'm missing something obvious...
kristopolous · 1h ago
Everyone's decisions are fundamentally ideological. Some ideologies are just more coherent
eli_gottlieb · 45m ago
> You're beheading like 50% of the S&P my friend...
And that's why we call it MAGA Maoism.
labster · 4h ago
It doesn’t actually matter if the foreign students are better or not: by having a mixed student body, with lots of cultures and backgrounds, students learn more from each other. They learn skills to work with other cultures, and ways of doing things that may be better.
Of course, in America’s future of autarky and Shogunate-style isolationism, those skills will no longer have any value, even to the elite. There’s no need to learn about other countries if everything we need is produced here and no one could ever threaten us once America is made great again. (/s maybe?)
bko · 3h ago
I don't know. A lot of foreign students from Harvard are Chinese. Seems kind of weird that they were found to discriminate against American Asians and then they import foreign Asian students. Goes against the whole we want diversity thing, no?
intended · 1h ago
That sentence is breath taking.
> A lot of foreign students from Harvard are Chinese. Seems kind of weird that they were found to discriminate against American Asians and then they import foreign Asian students.
How do I put this delicately - the Race part is not what is bringing the difference in lived experience.
croes · 5h ago
But foreign students pay foreign money which helps against the deficit.
On top of that many students stay in the US afterwards means a brain plus for the US and a loss their home country. These kind of braun drain is a big advantage for the US they know destroy.
ThunderSizzle · 4h ago
If that was the case, then these funding cuts wouldn't have any effect on Harvard.
croes · 1h ago
If your expenses are based on your income and your income includes government money, cuts on these will have an impact.
Same is true for income from foreign student tuition fees.
fnordpiglet · 8h ago
Which isn’t at all how PhD programs work. This is a supreme dick move to students are going to be forced to leave with an AbD for no other reason than Trumps ego.
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.
anigbrowl · 6h ago
children of the most powerful families across the world
I doubt that most of those people are reliant on student visas.
epolanski · 6h ago
He's 78 and at the end of his political career in few years, he could care less.
loloquwowndueo · 6h ago
He couldn’t care less.
redcobra762 · 6h ago
Or maybe he could care less, but doesn't even bother to care less because caring less would exert effort and he doesn't care enough to exert any effort.
loloquwowndueo · 6h ago
Own the grammar mistake, my dude :)
flexagoon · 4h ago
The grammar mistake was done by a different person
ihsw · 8h ago
[flagged]
8bitsrule · 5h ago
Making the government small enough to drown in the bathtub? (Grover Norquist's goal)
klipt · 5h ago
Big military, big ICE and strong arming universities are not "small government" policies.
Volundr · 24m ago
These are the pieces controlled solely by the executive branch. The goal is total unequivocal control, not anarchy.
bamboozled · 8h ago
Monarchies, dictators, owners of international conglomerates, etc all send their kids to Harvard
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.
lobsterthief · 7h ago
The percentage of Harvard international students who fall into this category is statistically insignificant. It’s not even worth framing.
orlp · 6h ago
It's not about the percentage of Harvard international students who fall into this category, it's about the percentage of students in this category who go to Harvard.
BobaFloutist · 6h ago
Also fairly low. There's plenty of high-prestige institutions in the world.
rf15 · 1h ago
As someone from europe I'd say Harvard and MIT are the #1 prestige institutions, and a lot of people will not settle for less.
goatlover · 7h ago
I don't get how DHS has control over what universities foreign students can attend. Either than can attend school in the US or not. Saying they have to transfer from Harvard to another American university is total abuse of power. Surely there are lawsuits in the works over this.
throwaway219450 · 6h ago
The F/J exhange visa is tied to a specific sponsor (ie the University) for a very specific goal. There are a lot of restrictions on what you can and can't do. If your visa sponsor has its privilege revoked then presumably you have a choice to transfer to a different institute, if one will take you, or leave the country.
There is a mechanism for that transfer built into the visa, which could be used for example if your professor moved institutions and wanted to re-hire you to fulfil the original goals of your exchange program.
It's unclear if this affects all foreign academic staff, many of whom who would be on the J, or just the F visa.
Edit: apparently all exhange visas.
GuinansEyebrows · 7h ago
i'd guess this kind of thing (per-institutional authorization to allow international students) was intended to provide the government a way to revoke that right from "sham" institutions (wonder if Trump University ever had international students?) or ones that otherwise were obviously trying to facilitate students skirting or abusing immigration law.
not that i agree with that anyways (citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah) but it's pretty clear we're currently dealing with a regime that's willing to use ambiguous regulations in malicious ways (no comment on previous regimes, they're all bad, don't call me a HN Democrat or whatever).
skissane · 6h ago
> not that i agree with that anyways (citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah)
Millions of people worldwide have values that are radically different from yours or mine or >99% of people reading this. Consider, a country like Afghanistan-no doubt there are millions of Afghans who oppose the Taliban and are trapped under the rule of a government whose policies and values they radically oppose - and they are denied any realistic outlet to advocate for change using non-violent means-but, at the same time, there are also millions of Afghans who support the Taliban, who think it is great and its values and laws and policies and actions are all wonderful-do you really want millions of pro-Taliban Afghans to be allowed to move to your country if they want to and can afford to do so, and be allowed to vote in your elections as soon as they turn up? This isn’t saying we should ban immigrants or refugees from Afghanistan, only have some kind of filtering process which excludes those with radically opposed values, such as those who are pro-Taliban - and, so nobody thinks I’m singling out Afghans for special treatment, there are several other countries for which the same concern exists (consider e.g. Iran, North Korea), and such a “filtering process” can be designed to work in a way which treats immigrants/refugees of different nationalities/ethnicities/religions equally. But complete abolition of citizenship and immigration control would leave your country at the mercy of chance in terms of protection against takeover by newcomers with radically different values, and although in the short-run you’d escape that outcome (even if they were all free to come, most of them either don’t want to or can’t afford to), in the long-run the odds that you’d succumb to it only go up. And such a policy is fundamentally unstable, in that it would eventually become the cause of its own demise: once these newcomers with radically different values (whatever those values might be) take over, their new values will cause them to reinstate immigration and citizenship controls, to prevent anyone else doing to them what they did to you.
That’s not to say I agree with what the Trump administration is doing here - I actually sympathise with some conservative criticisms of Harvard, but this isn’t a gentle federal nudge in the right direction, it is attacking Harvard with a legally dubious sledgehammer - but just because an administration abuses immigration laws (something many governments around the world have done many times before) doesn’t change the fact that some degree of legal control of immigration and naturalisation is the right thing to have in principle
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
The US had no immigration laws for the first 100 years, during which time many of our ancestors came here. The only reason we had any immigration laws to begin with was racism against Chinese people. Now we are making up other excuses for it, based on no evidence whatsoever.
skissane · 1h ago
> The US had no immigration laws for the first 100 years,
The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalisation to “free white persons” of “good moral character” - yes, it didn’t technically bar immigration from people who didn’t meet that criterion, but it reduced them to an underclass who were denied citizenship - and this was prior to the 14th Amendment, so there was no constitutional right to birthright citizenship even for their children born in the US.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (still on the books but long dormant until recently revived by Trump) gave the federal government the power to deport citizens of countries at war with the US - effectively banning them from immigrating. The Alien Friends Act of 1798 allowed the President to deport any foreigner based on the President’s subjective determination that they were “dangerous”- however, it expired in 1800 and was not renewed.
In the early years of US independence, there were state laws enabling deportation of immigrants - e.g. in 1794 Massachusetts responded to the “problem” of poor Irish immigrants with a state law authorising their deportation back to Ireland, and several were actually deported under this Act. While nowadays, state-level deportation laws would surely be struck down as intruding into an exclusive federal domain, the lack of broad federal deportation statutes for much of the 18th/19th centuries left open a (since closed) constitutional space in which state-level deportation laws could exist
Even prior to US independence, British law gave the colonial authorities the power to deport people they viewed as undesirable - rarely exercised, but it legally existed - and the main reason they rarely exercised it was they didn’t get many “undesirable” immigrants turning up
Note I’m not defending these laws - judged by today’s standards they were racist and deeply unfair - just pointing out that the “first 100 years” of the US wasn’t as “open borders” as you paint it as having been
And while no doubt historically (and even today) many immigration laws have been racist in their terms, motivation, or implementation - I don’t think the idea of having some restrictions on immigration is inherently racist. Almost every country on earth (even non-Western) nowadays has laws saying people convicted of very serious crimes cannot immigrate without special permission - is it “racist” if Botswana says to someone just released from serving a 20 year prison sentence for terrorism “sorry, we don’t want you”?
LightHugger · 7h ago
Chesterton's fence is way too relevant, when it comes to the "citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah" part.
GuinansEyebrows · 6h ago
well, it'd be relevant if i was actually discussing the idea of immediately abolishing all borders and countries, which i'm definitely not doing here.
FpUser · 6h ago
It seems that the amount of fences is growing up exponentially. To the point that we are all corralled. Not so long time ago people could move from country to country relatively freely. Now it is a fucking tragedy
instagib · 5h ago
Or gain legal status another way. Marriage, business, lottery, another college, etc.
achristmascarl · 10h ago
I wonder what avenues there are for Harvard to challenge this; it looks like the mechanism the Trump Admin used was for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to cancel Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification [0] which is managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [1].
Does ICE just have full discretion over SEVP? Can they do this to any school for whatever reason they want?
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1372, the SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) program requires schools to report data on international students including what DHS has been asking for.
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
dmvdoug · 7h ago
The actual statute provides the categories of information schools must provide about their students. It’s not a “whatever we happen to ask for” list. See 8 U.S.C. § 1372. Needless to say, “protest activity” is not included.
firesteelrain · 6h ago
We do not know yet what Harvard did and did not respond to. All we have is their word. If they didn’t provide what was required after DHS demanded what was legally required to be provided then DHS is on solid legal ground. I can’t really defend not providing something that isn’t called out as part of the law though
dmvdoug · 5h ago
No, we gave the SEVIS revocation letter demanding a handful of categories of information, one of which is “protest activity.” And they are already required under the statute to provide one category of information requested: “any disciplinary action taken by the institution against the alien as a result of the alien’s being convicted of a crime or, in the case of a participant in a designated exchange visitor program, any change in the alien’s participation as a result of the alien’s being convicted of a crime.”
My main point, though, was this: (1) the information required to maintain SEVIS program is statutorily defined, so the government doesn’t get to arbitrarily expand that and then punish a school for noncompliance; and (2) we know of at least one category requested information that they are not allowed to ask for and that implicates nothing other than the exercise of a student’s First Amendment rights.
firesteelrain · 5h ago
My point is we don’t know if they actually provided all the info that is statutorily required and/or the government is saying within those statutory rules you still didn’t provide it so by law it’s revoked (for now). We only have statements from both sides.
Seeing as it’s private most likely won’t see it via FOIA
dmvdoug · 4h ago
Nah, this one is going to federal court for sure. It’ll all come out. But part of the rules are also that schools must provide the relevant information within 30 days of the start of an alien’s academic term. There’s a whole system set up to handle this. The system is not, government, go ask for this set of information whenever you feel like it and if the school doesn’t hop to it immediately, you may suspend. It says that if a school does not provide the information within the relevant period before the term starts, it shall be suspended. There is no discretionary wiggle room for the government to be like, well, I don’t think you’re giving me enough, or you’re not being cooperative enough.
firesteelrain · 4h ago
Actually, that interpretation isn’t quite correct. The 30-day reporting window you’re referring to applies to initial SEVIS data entry and student registration at the beginning of each term-things like confirming enrollment, course load, address, etc. That’s under 8 CFR § 214.3(g)(2) and (l)(2), which govern routine reporting timelines for active F-1/M-1 students.
But the April 16 DHS request to Harvard wasn't routine. It invoked 8 CFR § 214.3(g)(1), which covers ad hoc or investigative information requests by DHS. That section gives DHS broad power to request any time the records needed to assess a student’s compliance with immigration status.
dmvdoug · 3h ago
Yes, I was being sloppy. Nevertheless, they can still only request that particular set of documents. And it’s not to assess a particular student’s status but the school’s compliance with the program requirements. (They can of course check individuals to make sure they’re also complying.) And just from the face of the letter to Harvard you can see they’re going way beyond the enumerated categories of information. Not to mention intermingling other SEVP-unrelated complaints (DEI! Antisemitism!) as to why Harvard is being targeted.
Our immigration system is so profoundly screwed up, and there is no doubt the executive agencies have wide powers to draw on, but they’re not even trying to provide a fig leaf of legality. It’s straight, “Comply or suffer!”
firesteelrain · 3h ago
yes, there are clear problems with the scope and political context of the request. But the legal framework does give DHS room to request information tied to student status compliance, even outside of term-start reporting. The question now is how much of that request was actually lawful, and how much was political theater cloaked in regulatory form.
dgfitz · 5h ago
Rights don’t exist if you’re not a citizen. Isn’t that the whole crux of the debate? Glossing over that part, and as a former lawyer you should know better, means everything.
dmvdoug · 4h ago
You’re wrong about that. It doesn’t say “Congress shall make no law, unless it targets non-citizens.” The First Amendment is a constraint on what governments may do.
dgfitz · 4h ago
Wish I had a way to privately get your digits. We accidentally seem to be knocking heads, and I bet you’re a great person to grab a coffee with. East coast?
dmvdoug · 3h ago
Probably my now 70 hours of being awake, honestly, sorry if I’m being snippy. Deep South gang, rise up!
eli_gottlieb · 42m ago
And all we have is DHS' word that Harvard didn't provide what was required. This is simply ridiculous and everything needs to be easier for the public to double-check so we can call bullshit in the right direction.
throwawaymaths · 8h ago
yep. the laws have been written to be broad... my best guess would be the best legal argument Harvard could claim would be that it construes the existing law as a bill of attainder (a law targetted at an individual or group of individuals called out by person -- versus called out by some category of actions -- that is judged without trial)
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
Could Harvard be eligible for damages?
ty6853 · 10h ago
The actual letter explains they can regain status by ratting out their students.
It will quietly be done, although likely in a way that make it look as if Harvard hasn't.
yongjik · 10h ago
Maybe, but I doubt it. Trump is not a mafia boss - time after time he showed that his words cannot be trusted. If Harvard makes a concession, there's no guarantee that Trump will "forgive" it.
Look how China is dealing with Trump. Trump announces tariffs, China returns Boeing planes, tariffs somehow comes down.
cozzyd · 9h ago
It's too bad Barron was too dumb to enroll at Harvard so his admission couldn't be rescinded
nicoburns · 9h ago
As a sovereign nation, China is in a somewhat different position than Harvard which is subject to US law.
jaybrendansmith · 3h ago
Penn should support Harvard and publicly revoke Trump's degree. Bullies only understand force.
tbihl · 3h ago
What force does that possibly employ?
When you revoke the degree of a sitting president, that costs him...?
staticautomatic · 1h ago
It costs him the only thing he cares about: his ego
thaumasiotes · 8h ago
> Trump is not a mafia boss - time after time he showed that his words cannot be trusted. If Harvard makes a concession, there's no guarantee that Trump will "forgive" it.
> 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?
yongjik · 8h ago
The point I'm trying to make is: if Trump bullies you, and you make a concession, Trump will feel no obligations to pay you back and may bully you further. China played hardball (up to some degree - I'm sure there were backstage talks), and that apparently made Trump "respect" China more.
mcphage · 9h ago
> The actual letter explains they can regain status by ratting out their students.
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.
Everything Columbia University did and what they got in return.
throwawaymaths · 3h ago
i was hoping for an example out of this particular domain (because i cant think of one), but it'll do.
dionian · 8h ago
'ratting out' how? this implies they did something wrong
Aeolun · 5h ago
If you provide information to an actor when you have a clear indication that said actor will then take disproportionate action against the one on which you provide information, how is that not wrong?
ty6853 · 7h ago
Ratting out in my mind means informing authorities in a way that something negative might be expected to happen to the subject.
For instance, I don't think smoking weed is wrong, but if I go tell an officer you have weed in your car, I have ratted you out despite nothing 'wrong' happening.
bilbo0s · 7h ago
Doesn't matter anyway.
Pretty much a guarantee that Harvard will choose to stay the course. This is the quintessential organization that thinks along the lines of, "100 years from now Harvard will still be Harvard. And Trump will be one of the answers on a middle school history exam".
Expect escalation.
neilv · 9h ago
Can someone ELI5 the power networks involved here?
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?
Hilift · 7h ago
> For example, getting things done with prestige connections, domestically and internationally. And the international diplomatic goodwill
What you describe is relatively recent development of US foreign policy. In 1959, John F. Kennedy purchased a copy of The Ugly American for all of his fellow US Senators. After Kennedy was elected, many foreign service programs were initiated to leverage soft power. That was JFK's legacy.
Prior to that, the US acted much in the same way as it is today. It came up with Bretton Woods, along with the UK. The people that ran the world were the Averill Harrimans and Prescott Bushes.
In 1956, the US basically told the UK it wasn't going to back the Prime Minister (Anthony Eden) with regards to the Suez Canal. That was probably a sobering indication that the UK was going to be a supplicant in the relationship. The US also returned Vietnam to France (as was policy after WW2), which of course precipitated 20 years of war in southeast asia.
The end of the WW2, and the discovery of the infiltration of Russian agents in the dead Roosevelt administration put Truman in panic mode. The iron curtain and cold war basically turned foreign policy into a huge power grab after the war to position against a perceived threat.
Much thanks for the jfk link. New info. Interesting info to me at least.
I will add a little nuance or my take. Balance as always is key. Toxic feminity or hopes/prayers/empathy holism alone is hardly an answer. Would it kill the dems to get some street smarts? No!
csomar · 22m ago
In my opinion the reason why they are getting smacked is because they are powerful. This is textbook 101 dictatorship power grab in action. Harvard in the US is law. If they can't fight this, probably nobody else can or will.
dragonwriter · 8h ago
> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.
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.
neilv · 8h ago
I mean that alumni are invested in the prestige of the alma mater, and in the network they have through that. Also, that some people at the universities are very connected, and can get a lot of people on the phone.
9dev · 8h ago
But why stick your head out? The people you’re referring to got where they are now by being ruthless, egocentric, power-hungry opportunists; these kinds of people don’t risk their careers over some vague sense of gratitude for their Alma mater.
lenerdenator · 8h ago
Some might feel like challenging the silverback because, well, they're ruthless, egocentric, power-hungry opportunists.
On the other hand this could just be seen as aristocracy battling it out over who's more aristocratic while the rest of us trudge on, so...
cde-v · 7h ago
Any alumni in a position of power to do something isn't interested in the prestige anymore, they already got their use out it.
xhkkffbf · 8h ago
A friend is a big Harvard alum. He says that most of his classmates are very unhappy with the direction of the university. So in his circle the alumni may be cheering this on. Maybe not the extremism but the general idea of telling Harvard that it needs to get back to truth-seeking.
dontdoxurself2 · 7h ago
The fund-raising email the President of Harvard sent us after the gov pulled federal funding begins: "Dear Alumni and Friends,
In recent weeks, thousands of you have sent encouraging messages, asked thoughtful questions, provided candid feedback, and made generous new gifts to the University. Many of you also shared deeply moving stories of how Harvard changed and shaped your lives. Your outpouring of appreciation and support reinforces the importance of our institution and what it represents. Thank you for your commitment to the University and its ideals." It goes in at length, and as the international recipient of a full-ride scholarship you can bet I was happy join in and double my annual gift. Just as trump was able to raise money from his various trials, so to Harvard draws sympathy from this: and while trumps's supporters are many, Harvard's supporters are rich, so it comes out in a wash and is effectively just melodrama to wind us all up with. The Harvard network is wide and varied so while I am sure there are some like your "big Harvard alum" who are cheering attacks on a major source of their own and their country's prestige, but in my circle of conservative alumni friends I have heard exactly the opposite reaction: even those who were still card-carrying Republicans were already apoplectic about the tariff debacle's impact on their net worth so all this petty virtue-signaling against the alma-mater that launched them on their successful careers hasn't done anything to heal the growing rift...
bilbo0s · 7h ago
Not a single alum I've talked to is happy about what Trump is doing.
That said, it's not only the Harvard issue that is giving everyone pause, it's the direction of the Administration in general. In fact, for a lot of them, Harvard is the least of the problems the US will be facing the next 20 years due to this Administration. Europe is moving. China is moving. And neither are moving in the direction we thought they were moving prior to Trump coming into office.
My general feel on conservative Harvard/MIT alums is "Buyer's Remorse". A fair sentiment likely shared by most of the nation at this point. I keep hoping that maybe it gets better? At some point, someone, somewhere has to realize the economy, at minimum, has to be brought back in hand. When that happens, maybe we see more movement on these other issues. If it doesn't happen, we'll see movement on new political leadership over the next few election cycles.
j_maffe · 8h ago
[flagged]
lurk2 · 7h ago
[flagged]
lurk2 · 5h ago
Those of you who took the time to flag this completely innocuous comment should take a moment to review the site guidelines as you are abusing the mechanism.
You and others in this thread are using HN for political or ideological battle, which is against the guidelines. It's inevitable in a thread of this nature that people are going to do this, but if you want to herald the guidelines, which we appreciate, we need you to also make a sincere effort to observe them.
lurk2 · 3h ago
> You and others in this thread are using HN for political or ideological battle
You look to be an admin so you can do whatever you want, but I would point out that the only post I made that expressed an opinion is still up [0]. I don’t really have a strong opinion about the issue. I find that I only ever get flagged on HN when I ask clarifying questions on threads like these, presumably because people simply don’t like to be questioned about the claims they are making.
Yes I'm a moderator here. These politics-based threads are the most difficult for us to manage, because, whilst mainstream politics stories are generally considered to be off topic here, if a story contains "significant new information" and the weight of community sentiment supports having a thread about it, we'll allow it. But then too many people treat the presence of a political topic on the front page as an open door to post whatever they want, without any regard for the guidelines at all. Then we have to spend time adjudicating between different people making accusations against other community members about breaking the guidelines, when, really, the entire thread is against the guidelines, so the whole matter is kind of moot.
> I only ever get flagged on HN when I ask clarifying questions on threads like these
We can't know exactly why people flag things, but it may be because it comes across as stirring up controversy with plausible deniability. It looks like you're trying to bait another user into making a comment that is controversial and could be attacked (or considered to be breaking the guidelines), whilst being seen as being a neutral participant yourself.
Of course we can't know your true intention, all we can know is the consequences of this kind of conduct when we see it.
So, given that you seem to care about the guidelines, which we appreciate, we ask you to demonstrate a sincere intent to observe them yourself and also to avoid baiting others into breaking them.
JCattheATM · 7h ago
It boggles my mind that anyone with, apparently and allegedly, such a high tier education, would be against the actions Harvard has been taking this year.
They are literally just fighting for basic academic freedoms.
epolanski · 6h ago
People go to Harvard because they want a prestigious career, not because they have an insatiable palate for knowledge that somehow in 2025 they can't satisfy in any other way.
zdragnar · 7h ago
Allowing students to (allegedly) be harassed on the basis of their race is what is under contention, not the broader notion of academic freedom.
JCattheATM · 7h ago
That's the excuse being used, sure.
GoatInGrey · 6h ago
Harvard really tarnished it's reputation when the president, under oath, said that calls for the genocide of Jews would comply with their code of conduct "depending on the context". The president did end up resigning a year ago, though they have a lot of work to do to come back from that.
While what the Trump admin is doing is wrong, Harvard has given them ample cover for their actions. It would be intellectually lazy to assert, even implicitly, that Harvard has no responsibility over the current state of affairs.
matthewdgreen · 2h ago
As a person of Jewish descent I am sickened by the way this administration is twisting the definition of antisemitism to mean things that have nothing to do with antisemitism. Antisemitism is real: devaluing it into bullshit is going to lead to the deaths of millions.
JCattheATM · 6h ago
They don't, because the Trump admins actions are completely unwarranted, and completely overkill, and in no way can be defended or supported.
That Harvard still has work to do is basically an entirely irrelevant point.
delichon · 7h ago
Bill Ackman may be the most visible. Billionaire hedge fund manager. He's a Jew who is horrified by the school's tolerance for pro Hamas protests. He was a big Democrat supporter before that, including for Obama, Booker, and Cuomo.
Bill Ackman made his bed with Trump and will now have to deal with the fact that his fate is tied to whatever random whims Trump has over the next 1,340 days.
I suppose there is a possibility that on January 21, 2029 this country won't be viciously angry about the past four years, and everyone associated with it. But I wouldn't want to bet on that.
skeeter2020 · 6h ago
it seems what all of these powerful, big thinkers are actually mad about is a school's tolerance for <anything>, the very thing that graduates of prestigious institutions don't need to like but should understand.
jml78 · 7h ago
It is just crazy to me…..fuck Hamas but Israel committing genocide should be condemn by our govt, not openly supported.
fossuser · 7h ago
Yeah this is also my read, people are horrified by the university behavior and generally supportive of the administration on this stuff. The 'elite' schools are becoming a counter signal it'll be embarrassing to have attended.
ckemere · 7h ago
This is an explanation from my department chair which I've expanded. In the context of a university, there are four main power groups - the alumni, the faculty, the students, and the board of trustees. (Within each group of course are subfactions.) The actual power balance between these groups is never precisely certain (it's an unobservable "latent variable"). Whenever large events happen that involve the university, we get observations that allow us to estimate the latent variable better.
In the case of Harvard, I think the current observations are most consistent with the following: the Board of Trustees, faculty, and students have currently aligned in their goals - which we might summarize as (1) maintaining independence from the government and (2) the ability to hold/teach specific "controversial" viewpoints (benefits of diversity, anti-colonialism, potentially other "progressive" concepts). I suspect that within the factions the relative importance of these two goals is not balanced. The fact that the coalition has survived much longer than, e.g., Columbia, is somewhat surprising.
My suspicion is that the answer to your question is that the persistent "smacking around" is only in part due to the external factors other replies have mentioned. I think a major piece of the situation can be explained by a change in the power dynamic with the alumni. Under normal circumstances, the faculty presumably hope to maintain long lasting influence over their alumni, which the board of trustees leverage to bring in more money and influence to the university. The current situation suggests that the high-power/high-$$$ portion of the alumni who are in a position to leverage the public conversation about what's going on are not doing it. This implies that the strength of that edge of the power graph is much weaker than it was expected to be. I think it remains to be seen whether this is true. Further observations that would support that would be reduced donations, public complaints, etc. Conversely, increased fundraising and more public support would suggest the opposite.
The key point about the university power network is that USUALLY, the best situation is to avoid situations that actually reveal too much information. Everyone would prefer to believe they have more power than they do. Obviously the alumni are composed of factions, and presumably a large fraction of the potential participants are also members of other organizations with latent power networks and participating in this particular situation would involve expending capital in these other networks with potential reduction in power. Some alumni that have spoken up (i.e., Ackman) are clearly unaligned with the current coalition, and this MAY reflect the fact that the wealthy/powerful group of alumni that have sustained Harvard are really unhappy with the current stances of the university and would like it to shift (return?) to a different set of ideologies. But it's also possible that he represents a minority, and the rest are just nervous about getting involved.
My conclusion from this analysis is that things will persist as they have, with everyone who might be involved hoping that lawsuits will be successful in resolving the situation with the minimum of their involvement. If this approach is unsuccessful, I think we'll end up in a situation where we get a much better observation of the power balance between alumni, faculty, and board (I think the students rarely have as much power as they think they do!).
intended · 1h ago
> This implies that the strength of that edge of the power graph is much weaker than it was expected to be
Funnily, 2 Harvard profs have written the easiest way for me to point out that the media / Information economy in America is broken. (Network Propaganda)
Which would explain why Alumni dont have power, or for that matter any experts. This is fundamentally why Trump is in power, and why decisions that have zero connection to scientific fact or even reality.
Either everyone starts talking in terms of the reality being litigated on Fox and other related networks on the Right, or people find a way to actually engage in a fair debate. Democracy is fundamentally conversation.
sandspar · 2h ago
It feels like a situation where alumni are holding their breath. It reminds me of that moment in basketball games where the ball bounces around the rim - will it go in or will it bounce out? If I'm on the sidelines of that game, then I'm not going to vocalize until the ball settles.
pfannkuchen · 8h ago
One explanation might be that the objects of their influence are nested within agencies.
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.
ethbr1 · 8h ago
The intent of agencies was three-fold:
1. As the US grew and the workload required to govern it grew, Congress' ability to directly and quickly manage the country was outpaced. Consequently, agencies served as the grease between Congress' high-level actions/funding and the low-level implementation.
2. Due to the ever-adversarial nature of Congress, it was recognized that most Congresses operated slowly, and consequently didn't have the capacity to micromanage at the level required for direct control.
3. Circa 1900, civil service reform by the then-progressive wing of the Republican party pushed for greater isolation of the expertise that drove good government outcomes (in civil service employees) from politicians (administrators).
The flaw Trump revealed was that the President has too much direct power over the civil service, if he chooses to ignore tradition.
This wasn't always the case, and laws that previously restrained the President's ability to fuck with the civil service were substantially relaxed in the 60s - 80s (?).
tbihl · 2h ago
Conversely, the flaw of the civil servant plan during Trump 1 was that stonewalling the top of your org chart can really bite you if he sticks around too long or, maybe worse, comes back.
In any case, the President will keep having too much power until Congress starts taking theirs back.
onetimeusename · 7h ago
I am not entirely sure what you mean but I will disagree with other commenters that there are no factions at war with each other. If you look at the prosecutors who went after Trump in the past few years, they were disproportionately Harvard Law grads. So that is Merrick Garland, Matthew Colangelo, Alvin Bragg, and Jack Smith. I do think that law schools in particular have cultivated a particular political view and are not independent or nonpartisan but I very much disagree with what Trump is doing.
I think there are almost certainly factions here. I personally think Trump is targeting Harvard because of the above reason. Overall I think the situation is quite bad but that isn't what you asked.
alephnerd · 8h ago
> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.
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's impact on campus alumni relationships. 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.
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.
jsemrau · 4h ago
>Harvard and Yale didn't hire the right lobbyists.
I don't think it's as simple as this. To my knowledge, Dr. Sian Leah Beilock handled the protests of the past 2 years much better than their counterparts.
alephnerd · 4h ago
Oh easily! But the issue is Brian Ballard (their GOP lobbyist) stepped on a lot of feet and pissed people (primarily David Sacks) off, leading him to get metaphorically slapped by the Trump admin.
So they're frozen out from K-Street in the medium term.
On top of that, a couple extremely active and very wealthy alumni have continued to maintain a grudge and have an ear in the admin
And finally, it's an easy anti-establishment win.
Finally, this is specifically a Harvard College thing - the alumni of other schools at Harvard are much less... let's say idealistic.
Jtsummers · 8h ago
Dartmouth is a smaller target without the name recognition of Harvard, and MIT has stronger ties to the MIC without the strong public image of a liberal institution. Harvard is a test case (what can this admin do) and a symbol almost in its own category for Trump's followers.
alephnerd · 8h ago
Harvard (the University, not it's alums) has had a near nil presence on K-Street for a looooong time - and their primary lobbyist with the GOP has been on Trump's bad side for sometime after he pissed off David Sacks.
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 for your culture war (whichever way you lean).
eli_gottlieb · 32m ago
>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.
When you put it like that... should I make some popcorn?
ajross · 8h ago
That is just shockingly cynical. We're facing a situation where a sitting government feels empowered to go to war against an elite university solely over the speech it doesn't like to hear on its campus.
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?
bananalychee · 8h ago
Fighting antisemitism is clearly not the true motive behind this ideological "war", just as denazification was clearly not the motive for Russia's invasion of Ukraine; it's just a convenient excuse to target institutions such as Harvard that are unwilling to distance themselves from the progressive left.
JCattheATM · 7h ago
Exactly this. It's nothing but an attempt to punish them for not kissing the ring. If only we had another arm of government able to hold this clearly corrupt behavior to account....
ethbr1 · 7h ago
There would have been a stronger one if Ruth Bader Ginsburg had retired at a time that supported a 5/4 ideological balance on the Supreme Court.
Instead of the hubris to hold onto the job until death and thereby subsequently undo many of the things she spent her life fighting for.
Finding a successor and handing over your power is one of the most important responsibilities of the powerful, when they have a say.
anigbrowl · 5h ago
Instead of the hubris to hold onto the job until death and thereby subsequently undo many of the things she spent her life fighting for.
A bit off-topic, but this seems to be an ongoing problem for the Democratic party. They just lost an important vote on a budget bill in the House by a single vote, because Gerry Connolly wasn't willing to give up his House seat and instead clung on until he (very predictably) died of cancer a few days ago.
intended · 1h ago
This is drama, a republican congressperson was asleep for the bill. This is producing storylines to sell during the mid terms.
Dont believe it for a second. The Republican Party moves in lockstep.
JCattheATM · 7h ago
Yeah, that was a pretty bad decision, but the bigger issue is still a population that votes based on misinformation and 'alternative facts'. Until that is resolved, if it even can be at this point, then this tribal and sometimes cultish behavior is only going to become more prevalent, in turn doing more damage to the country.
Personally, I think we've started on a path to self-destruction that can't be reversed.
AceyMan · 1h ago
> Personally, I think we've started on a path to self-destruction that can't be reversed.
Do you mean, 'we' as in the US, or 'we,' as in humanity?
[either way, I'm not saying you're wrong :( ]
ModernMech · 7h ago
Pretty bold to blame RBG without spending a breath on Mitch McConnell, who stole an appointment from Obama because he said it was too close to the election to fill the seat; and then rushed to fill the seat vacated by RBG even though it was so close to the election. Treating the court with that kind of partisan contempt is the reason why the court is as partisan as it is.
UncleMeat · 7h ago
There is different blame.
I expect McConnell to be an advocate for harm. But RBG could have made a decision that made it impossible for the GOP to flip her seat in the way that she did. I expect people that are ostensibly fighting for the same things as me to act in ways that help achieve that.
ethbr1 · 5h ago
Indeed. It's pretty stupid in game theory to make a move that's beneficial only if your opponent also then makes a choice against their self interest.
JCattheATM · 7h ago
Yeah, McConnell really acted like scum by doing that. But it's fair to say RBG didn't help things.
alephnerd · 8h ago
I'm a severely disillusioned alum of a couple of the campus orgs really driving some of this.
> 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 or the grad schools like HKS and HBS 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
ajross · 8h ago
> Hold up - I'm massively pro-academic freedom and autonomy.
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.
alephnerd · 5h ago
> 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?
On it! I agree with you 100% - it's horrid.
> But really I don't see how that's relevant in the face of the current crisis
There are some interpersonal relations and egos that got mixed into this, along with a very cynical anti-establishment play. It takes a couple bad apples to spoil the batch, and that's what it feels like has happened. I was a Gov secondary during the Obama years so I bumped into a lot of the people who ended up on either side of the political and cultural divide. I feel digging into that helps explain how this has really snowballed. It's been a rolling crisis for a couple years now.
> 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
I agree, but ignoring some of the ego and personal clashes that has caused this crisis means you lose the bigger picture.
jostmey · 5h ago
For every person that went through these elite schools, they must have rejected five or more other people. These schools pride themselves on turning people away. Perhaps, they have far more enemies than friends, explaining their seeming lack of influence in this situation
tbihl · 3h ago
They absolutely prize having large pools of applicants to reject. Admission percentage is a prestigious statistic.
fuzzfactor · 7h ago
If you've been aware of Trump at all since the 1970's he's always been vastly inferior to anyone who takes academic effort seriously. And he knows it, his whole life, a lot better than anyone else, that's way longer than the general public who didn't really become aware of it until the '70's.
Even though he went to a prestigious school himself he's not the kind to make an academic pursuit resembling anything like truly sensible Presidents. The complete opposite of the league of actual accomplished Harvard men like Bush and Obama. What a weenie, Trump is probably just jealous and hates himself and everyone else because he'll never measure up to people having average-to-above-average intellect & integrity. Completely on brand to whine like a child with the most amplified voice he's ever had. So that's what he's going to do instead of something worthwhile for the citizens.
Animats · 8h ago
> Can someone elucidate the power networks involved here?
Major players, regarding the Gaza/Hamas issue:
- Harvard itself. The administration, not the faculty or students.
- The US Eastern Establishment, the Ivy League and its graduates. They once ran the US, and still run finance, but are less influential politically than a few decades ago.
- The Netanyahu faction in Israel. Understanding this requires more info about Israeli politics than is worth posting here. Wikipedia has a summary.[1] There are a huge number of factions. Netanyahu leads a coalition. The coalition seems to need an enemy to hold it together.
- MAGA. "Project 2025" is the MAGA playbook. Despite some denials, the Trump administration has mostly been following that playbook.
- Israel's lobby in the US, starting with AIPAC. American Jews as a group average left of center, but the Israel lobby is hard-right.
- Major donors to Harvard. Some are closely associated with the Israel lobby and vocal about it. Others aren't.
- The US courts. Anyone can bring a case to court, and courts have to do something about it.
- Trump.
Minor players:
- Fox News. 23 of Trump's appointees came from Fox News. The MAGA base listens to Fox News.
- The United Nations. Provides some aid, but hasn't been able to do more than that.
- US Congress. Has the real power, but is too divided to do anything with it.
- Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They're the ones most affected, but lack any real power at this point.
It's not even suggested that they be represented in international meetings.
Fox and the rest of the media network is the main player. They spend the energy required to present an alternative reality for their base, and have insulated their viewers from any discussion on a shared common reality.
Furthermore, they are effectively part of the Republican Party. So they create and maintain a political reality which is purpose built to achieve political goals.
The underlying assumption of western liberal democracies is that participants can figure things out together. You cannot figure things out when you have one side intentionally creating alternate narratives to stymie conversation and debate, to shore up negotiating power for the leaders of their bloc.
tcgv · 7h ago
It’s less a shift in power networks and more about Trump using existing presidency tools more aggressively. Harvard didn’t lose influence, it’s being targeted because it's outspoken and symbolic. The immigration authority falls under the executive branch, so the president can act unilaterally, without needing broader support.
soupfordummies · 8h ago
It's hard for me to see this as anything more than "they resisted Trump, that pissed him off and now he's further retaliating."
Side question I've been wrestling with to whoever feels like commenting:
At what point would you look at our current US situation and say "yep, we're now in a dictatorship"
TheOtherHobbes · 7h ago
At least a couple of months ago.
jachee · 7h ago
The day Kilmar Abrego Garcia was supposed to be brought back, but defiantly wasn’t.
neogodless · 6h ago
You know, usually I'd assume this was a misspelling of "definitely" but this time, I'm really not sure.
lenerdenator · 8h ago
Dictatorships require at least some sort of state monopoly on violence. That's how power ultimately works.
As of now there's no way for the state to enact such a monopoly in the US.
ImPostingOnHN · 7h ago
the usa is seeing the state employ that monopoly right now:
- against opposing members of the legislative branch (lamonica mciver)
- against opposing members of the judicial branch (hannah dugan)
- against opposing members of the executive branch (ras baraka, andrew cuomo)
- against opposing private organizations (harvard, institute for peace)
- against opposing private individuals (chris krebs)
- against defenders of opponents (multiple lawfirms)
- not to mention rewarding private individuals who employed private violence against political enemies -- we saw this during duterte (ashli babbitt, the rest of the insurrectionists)
if there is no monopoly on violence in the usa, who else exactly is the monopolist permitting to use it?
jachee · 7h ago
The proletariat has the capacity to violently resist (See: Butler,PA), but the Venn overlap among those with the most firepower and those who actually support the oppressors is two concentric circles.
simonh · 8h ago
Agreed, dictatorship is a gross exaggeration. Sliding toward fascism? Sure. Would Tump like to do away with election? He’s said he does, that they won’t be necessary.
multjoy · 7h ago
In the bill that has recently been passed, the republicans have inserted a clause that means no administration official can be found guilty of criminal contempt by the federal courts.
This will mean that the courts are literally powerless against the administration's malfeasance. The executive will be able to do what they like, and even if this bill doesn't pass the senate, SCOTUS will likely strike down as unconstitutional any appointment by the courts of a private attorney to prosecute criminal contempt because it has been stuffed with useful idiots.
This isn't sliding towards fascism, this is speed running 30's Germany.
eli_gottlieb · 26m ago
SCOTUS was packed even before Trump's first term. This is speed-running the cherry on top of a sundae that was already made.
philistine · 9h ago
You're overthinking this. The university is vocal about keeping its independence. That's enough to warrant retaliation from this president.
outside1234 · 7h ago
It's also the pinnacle university, at least in optics.
It is like getting Zuck to kneel and donate $1M. Once he did that, everyone else donated a $1M and peaced out.
Alupis · 8h ago
Or, perhaps more simply, the days of the "Good Ol' Boys" who all went to the same power school and use that as a way to influence politics are over?
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.
Going by Occam's razor, grandparent's hypothesis is more likely to be correct than yours.
helpful_friend · 9h ago
Harvard (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the Ivy League) collects a lot of federal money, this comes with certain conditions around treating people fairly without respect to skin color, ethnicity, or religion.
A regular corporation with the same fact pattern of discrimination would be looking at a billion+ dollar fine.
this is just Harvard losing some special privilges and being expected to act reasonably fairly like any other publicly funded institution.
They're not actually so scientifically productive that we should tolerate discrimination in order to get the fruits of their research.
mxuribe · 8h ago
I think its a few reasons/things here...(some already noted in some way by others)
* 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. ;-)
ethbr1 · 8h ago
Most of Trump's behavior makes sense when you realize his dealmaking strategy is bullying:
1. Exert maximun possible pressure
2. Strike the best deal possible
Reasons only matter in the sense of selecting initial targets. Once into dealmaking, it's anything and everything thrown at an opponent.
You can see this in terms of what stops him: equal counterpressure (China) or consequences (US stocks and treasuries being dumped)
Similarly, once a deal is struck, reasons again don't matter.
anigbrowl · 5h ago
The problem is that deals made under duress have little lasting value. The bullied party feels little moral compunction to uphold the terms a moment longer than necessary, plus they will naturally be skeptical of the bullying party's commitment to do so in the future.
ethbr1 · 5h ago
Oh, it's absolutely asinine. Which is why international geopolitics and real estate differ.
FireBeyond · 7h ago
> 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
They may or may not be educated, but they're openly and actively against an educated populace for a multitude of reasons, from resistance to their ideas, to "get to work and start having babies for Christ". They will openly say that the first preference for a male school leaver/graduate should be to find a job, not further education.
vondur · 6h ago
I'm going to guess there may be a great deal many people who are Harvard Alumni who agree with the Trump Administration on this.
NoImmatureAdHom · 7h ago
Many people associated with the University are pretty happy about it getting smacked down.
Shameless, wrong, and overtly illegal discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and creed, suppression of free speech, even the compelling of speech have all been de rigeur for Harvard for the past decade.
I just wish they would use a scalpel rather than a sledge hammer.
NoImmatureAdHom · 7h ago
If you're downvoting, could you tell me why? I'm curious.
I'm just telling it like it is, as far as I can tell.
acdha · 5h ago
It’s a short but sweeping claim without a citation in sight. That’s a recipe for a flame war but it probably won’t lead to a useful discussion since anyone who would respond is simply guessing at what you’re even talking about or whether you actually arrived at that position through research rather than simple partisan loyalty.
FridayoLeary · 2h ago
Nice. But none of the anti - trump comments bother with evidence. I hate what aboutism but this is too blatant. Everyone who follows the media even a little bit is fully aware of what OP is talking about. Very ugly things are taking place under the guise of DEI and other such dishonest terms.
firesteelrain · 5h ago
On HN they eschew talking about downvotes, friend.
daveguy · 8h ago
> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.
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.
No comments yet
tveita · 6h ago
Disregarding whatever surface-level motivations Trump might have, let's look at some things attacking Harvard accomplishes.
1. Maybe most importantly, attacking academic institutions is part of the fascist coup playbook. [1] That could really be enough motivation on its own - these steps have lead to the desired outcome before, if you follow them closely enough they will probably work again. Just like the seemingly out-of-the-left-field framing of DEI, of all things, as the big Enemy that is corrupting art, science and the American people itself. It seems crazy, but notice how well it's working.
2. It's another vase to throw in the air, forcing you to catch it, cartoon-style. People who care and believe in process will spend time and energy going through the court system to limit the damage done, but the defenders will lag behind, their focus divided, while the attackers can just keep breaking bigger and bigger things, since they not care much what damage they do to people or their country.
3. It lets them target pro-Palestine protesters gradually starting from the most extreme. The genocide in Gaza can go a lot further. It is mutually beneficial for Trump, Netanyahu and Putin to divide both domestic and international outrage between them (see point 2.) By the time the full scale of the atrocities are clear, arresting and prosecuting protesters for "antisemitism" will be routine. And if you're not willing to stand up and protest, and therefore be removed, chances are you won't stick your neck out when they instate "temporary" changes to federal elections - only out of some extreme necessity, of course.
The Project 2025 people and the Yarvinists agree that elite universities like Harvard are spreading the “woke mind virus” and must be destroyed. They consider their movements a revolution, not an iteration on the status quo.
zombiwoof · 9h ago
Project 2025 is about uneducated people now having power and trying to stop other people from becoming educated
anigbrowl · 5h ago
I think the people who work at the Heritage foundation are very well educated, they're just also very cynical.
HenryBemis · 9h ago
I downloaded the file (must still be somewhere in my "Downloads" folder with many other forever-unread PDFs). I would suggest for anyone living in the US, to find and read that because this is (more or less) what will happen in the/your country in the next 3.5 years.
(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).
alecst · 8h ago
It's around 900 pages. In NYC we have a study group to go over it -- we've covered just a handful of chapters. But most people can get a lot out of just reading the opening section.
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 plan.
You don't need to read the file. It's history repeating itself. Just read about China during the cultural revolution or Cambodia during the 70s.
No comments yet
losteric · 8h ago
Project 2025 is only the “part 1” doc, and they’re tracking to wrap most of it up this year.
blitzar · 8h ago
Skip the reading (it's too hard) - watch the documentary version instead, Idiocracy (2006)
0cf8612b2e1e · 8h ago
Totally different situation. President Camacho found the smartest man in the world to fix his problems.
blitzar · 8h ago
Good point. In our timeline America found the dumbest man in the world to fix its problems.
imoverclocked · 8h ago
To be fair, they took the two most average Americans and sent them to the future in the movie. We skipped steps and chose someone the most average person could completely understand today. Apparently, the future is now.
The movie also sent Upgrayedd but left that story arc for a sequel.
tormeh · 9h ago
Isn't a lot of the appeal of Trump that he does not owe anything to these power networks? Others in the Republican party may do so, but Trump has the Republican party well under control, and so doesn't have to listen to anyone. Trump has drained the previous swamp and erected a new one, and Harvard never got an invitation.
simonh · 8h ago
The previous swamp hasn’t gone anywhere, your just not noticing it due to the enormous size of the new one.
nova22033 · 6h ago
Bill Ackman is mad at Harvard for allowing the Palestine protests. He switched his support to Trump for that one reason. This is the payoff.
magicalist · 2h ago
> Bill Ackman is mad at Harvard for allowing the Palestine protests. He switched his support to Trump for that one reason
Ackman voted for Trump in 2016.
iAMkenough · 8h ago
If you speak out against the government, the government will retaliate. Simple as that.
>>notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds
imoverclocked · 8h ago
You are describing the inability for dissent as normal. In fact, it's considered an international human right. Despite it also being in our constitution, the Trump Administration's actions resemble your comment closely.
lupusreal · 9h ago
I see more than a hundred comments in this discussion already but no mention of Israel. Is everybody trying to avoid saying it?
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.
dzdt · 9h ago
The stated reasons are not the real reasons. None of this is above-board. If you pay too much attention to what phony reasons are stated you will just be lead around by your nose.
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.
logicchains · 8h ago
>Harvard is not rolling over and doing whatever the regime asks of it
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 was recently banned from r/worldnews over a comment which I thought was relatively innocuous. Anyway, that made me start investigating and smelling things and suddenly when you see it, it's hard to ignore. r/worldnews is completely, unmistakably compromised. It's the third largest subreddit with about 50 million subscribers. The situation is so vivid and clear that it's unthinkable that owners are unaware that it is compromised, from moderations to the dominant commenting user base. So what in the world is happening and how did it come to be this way? Spez et al were compromised? How?
The most charitable and perhaps the most rational explanation is that the 'propaganda' effort is impressively, surprisingly, exhaustively grassroots [1] and that's why reddit's overlords cannot simply contain it -- after all, it's real people, very committed and very real indeed. Although I would think that even if this were true, were reddit's operators uncompromised, they'd at least feel compelled to investigate the moderators of the subreddit which has a readership of 50 million, because even if the activity is organic, what's going on crosses a certain threshold of what should be permissible, if only for the richness of debate and discussion. I won't approach the complex topic of whether grassroots led propaganda effort constitutes something that is illegitimate and whether it warrants management, moderation, or some sort of penalty.
I'm not extremely educated about the complex history of Israel and jewish people, though I'm trying to learn more these days. Knowing what I know so far: It is a unique group of people for sure, and 2000 years of oppression, I think, has resulted in a special kind of cohesion that even when scattered throughout the world, they partake in strong self-advocacy. In my experience, this kind of self-advocacy doesn't exist with any other group.
I apologize if my comment reads prejudiced or inappropriate, please tell me if it does, certainly and obviously it is not meant to be.
> The regime only started asking such things after large Pro-Palestinian protests took place at Harvard.
The regime didn't even exist until after those protests, so let's not go too post hoc here.
benlivengood · 7h ago
Trump is also an authoritarian and so is committed to strengthening existing regimes he sees as "strong". Presumably on the assumption that they will be "allies" or at least give him something back. Pro-Palestinian protests are very anti-authoritarian (next thing you know, those same protesters will be against mass U.S. deportations) and so a priority target for suppression.
esafak · 9h ago
Though I would not have guessed, it seems more about China:
"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."
Trump cares less about the Uyghar's than the Jews.
Though I doubt he could find either Israel or China on a map.
duskwuff · 8h ago
Precisely. This administration's concern for the Uyghurs is skin-deep; it's essentially just a justification to punish any unauthorized connections to China. The actual details of the conflict (for instance, that the Uyghurs are ethnically Muslim) aren't relevant to them.
wat10000 · 9h ago
That's part of it, but another large part is that Republicans are hostile to higher education in general, and this serves as a convenient excuse.
decimalenough · 9h ago
I don't think the Trump admin gives a rat's ass about Jews. It's an excuse for legal action, in the same way that "fentanyl" was the excuse for tariffs on Canada.
Y-bar · 9h ago
You're probably right, they seem to care more about Israel and not Jews (or Palestinians), and especially care about "Israel as a concept" and to use it as a means to an end.
rodgerd · 7h ago
You're correct that Christian Zionists only care about Jews to the extent that the right number of them will be in Israel to be killed as part of the End Times prophecies based off of Revelations. But they are fanatical supporters of the state of Israel because they see it as necessary to bring about the rapture.
josefresco · 8h ago
Top donor in the last 3 elections (combined) to Trump is Adelson Clinic/Miriam Adelson. She didn't spend all that money for nothing.
No comments yet
lupusreal · 9h ago
This is one part of a large pattern of Republicans trying to end-run around the First Ammendment specifically to defend Israel from criticism. For instance, in Texas they make school teachers sign contracts that include terms forbidding criticism of Israel. Republicans have also been extremely reliable supporters of unconstitutional Anti-BDS laws.
Make no mistake, the Republican party (and half the Democratic Party FWIW) is fully captured by the Israel lobby.
curt15 · 6h ago
>For instance, in Texas they make school teachers sign contracts that include terms forbidding criticism of Israel
The ability to criticise authority is a defining right of America. How are these teachers supposed to teach the First Amendment?
FridayoLeary · 8h ago
>The DHS letter to Harvard specifically says that this is because Harvard's campus has been "hostile to Jews" and "promotes pro-Hamas sympathies".
I've seen no evidence that they are not. So much for inclusion and acceptance from one of the nations leading progressive institutions.
GuinansEyebrows · 7h ago
far be it from me to defend harvard but it's on the accuser to provide positive evidence for their claim, not the defendant to provide negative evidence against the claim.
WASHINGTON – Today, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered DHS to terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.
This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.
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.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” said Secretary Noem. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
On April 16, 2025, Secretary Noem demanded Harvard provide information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. Secretary Noem warned refusal to comply with this lawful order would result in SEVP termination.
This action comes after DHS terminated $2.7 million in DHS grants for Harvard last month.
Harvard University brazenly refused to provide the required information requested and ignored a follow up request from the Department’s Office of General Council. Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the U.S. government.
I think a fair answer might be that this immediate action is primarily about Israel, and Harvard's toleration and apparent support of organizations that the US government considers to be terrorists. Harvard has quite consciously taken an antagonistic approach here, and the government feels it is responding in kind.
Secondarily, it's about the way that elite schools have aligned themselves with the progressive politics associated with the Democratic party. Harvard is the target here because they are strongest, not necessarily because they are the most liberal. If the government can humble Harvard, they expect that all the weaker institutions will fold without a fight.
jimt1234 · 6h ago
> Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.
Remember when people were really mad about weaponizing the government? I guess that's okay now. Good to know.
nkurz · 2h ago
I'll take this opportunity to mention that I don't think the DHS press release should be taken as "authoritative" on anything other than the government's intentions. As you point out, the administration is being wonderfully clear that they intend to make an example of Harvard and punish those who would side with them.
I'm glad that despite being immediately being voted to a negative score and pushed to the bottom, some people like you are reading the link. If the goal is to understand what Harvard is up against, I think it's really useful to read what the government is actually claiming. I wasn't expecting that many people here would be persuaded by it!
supportengineer · 6h ago
>> Are the power networks changing?
Yes and this can't be overstated. Interests that were previously aligned are now going to fracture. Everything is up for grabs now.
cadamsdotcom · 6h ago
@neliv I’d like to encourage you to do a few searches and maybe ask an LLM for that ELI5 - and include what you learned!
tomhow · 5h ago
I think it's fine to ask these kinds of questions, in the hope that the HN audience may include individuals with particular insights. A response like this has the same ring to it as posting a link to LMGTFY, which is disallowed here.
ithkuil · 8h ago
The us government, using the appropriate mechanism like passing laws etc, can change the policies like they see fit.
However I don't understand how it's possible to single out a specific university.
Are there precedents for this kind of behaviour?
cosmicgadget · 8h ago
It's called a bill of attainder and it's prohibited by the Constitution. Courts have said this also applies to executive orders though it's not as crystal clear.
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.
hdhxgsc · 6h ago
Bill of attainder is a legislative action. Doesn’t apply to the executive branch.
NewJazz · 4h ago
The commenter literally stated that it has been applied to executive orders by courts
lobsterthief · 7h ago
No; it’s illegal but he controls the justice department and is attempting to silence the courts. He’s singling them out because they refused to bend the knee. This is not okay. And it is not normal.
duxup · 11h ago
Government policy in the form of personal grudges rather than law and good policy.
No comments yet
Rapzid · 8h ago
And when Harvard sues the administration will call on the over 1 billion in pro-bono "fighting antisemitism" legal work they extorted from the nations largest law firms.
paxys · 9h ago
Harvard as an institution is older than the USA. It will survive 4 years of a lunatic's presidency.
daedrdev · 8h ago
This is quite literally the appeal to tradition or inertia fallacy. Just because they've been around for a while does not mean they are not facing an existential threat. Every structure humans create will one day collapse. This certainly looks difficult for Harvard and could be their end because there is no divine protection, only the decision that will be made by an extremely conservative Supreme Court and the willingness of authoritarian minded government employees in the trump admin to listen to the courts.
kurtis_reed · 8h ago
Things that have been around for a long time are the ones most likely to continue to exist, it's not a fallacy.
shnock · 7h ago
They are not, that is expectation of future performance based upon past. Reality is too complex and dynamic for that.
NoPicklez · 2h ago
Reality is complex and dynamic, and through all of that Harvard's endurance pre-dates the US, therefore I would expect it to endure a 4 year term of Government. Not to say with a 100% certainty, but I would expect it to with a greater degree of confidence than many other things, based on its history.
However I wouldn't extend that line of thinking to stock markets, superannuation etc.
The longer something has been around, the more likely it's going to be around in the future.
hypeatei · 9h ago
I'm glad we're testing the guardrails by making our country unappealing the best talent in the world and wasting government resources on a revenge tour.
intended · 54m ago
I would hope that people with a better reading of history understand how necessary it is to fight lunatics in power.
tintor · 9h ago
or 8+ years
sva_ · 9h ago
He will already have serves his second (and therefore last) term, or what do you mean?
Huh, that page actually seems to admit that the third term is not valid:
> Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.
Or perhaps I misunderstand what they mean with "rewrite the rules".
r5Khe · 7h ago
They know it's not valid. That's why they want to rewrite the rules.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 7h ago
Sure, but it’s still couched in legal theory that seeks to legitimize it. That phrasing suggests the rules need to be changed to legitimize it, which tracks with my understanding but not the rhetoric.
HEmanZ · 8h ago
I find it unlikely but…
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.
yoyohello13 · 7h ago
Yeah the amount of people I heard praising God when he was elected was disturbing. People literally believe he is a messiah. It's terrifying.
goatlover · 5h ago
I hope they realize how profoundly un-American it would be to fight a civil war to install a king/dictator in power.
Rudybega · 8h ago
He has spoken repeatedly about running for a third term.
thinkcontext · 8h ago
I took it to mean whoever succeeds him could be just as bad.
segfaultex · 9h ago
Trump has repeatedly asserted he wants to run for a "third term" and his base worship him.
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.
Aeolun · 5h ago
You do realize that the last time he was voted out an angry crowd literally stormed the capitol to overturn the election? What more can they do with better preparation?
h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 8h ago
You are assuming Trump will step down?
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.
pstuart · 9h ago
Their goal is for forever+ years.
Shit needs to get ugly fast enough to make the masses take notice or they may just get their way.
vediflo · 9h ago
As it’s going, probably 8 years.
jimmydoe · 5h ago
Lack a kings in the history is major problem. Four years are far from enough to fix it.
sorenjan · 8h ago
Trump is not the problem, he's a symptom. Don't forget he got reelected, together with a republican congress who does everything he tells them to do.
rs186 · 5h ago
This. If Trump is suddenly gone for whatever reason, the succeeding President is going to continue with the MAGA/Project 2025 agenda. Trump may be dumb and stupid, but imagine a US President who is young, energetic and speaks coherently that continues with the same agenda. (Hint: look at DeSantis and what happened in Florida.)
ar813 · 11h ago
If they can do this to Harvard, what hope do other universities have?
HEmanZ · 10h ago
They’re trying to make an example of Harvard so they don’t need to force anyone else to tow the line. Other universities will self censor.
chrisweekly · 8h ago
nit: fyi it's "toe the line"
ty6853 · 11h ago
Most the universities will do the thing asked in order to re-instate their student visa certification. i.e. provide intel needed to deport any students that they believe have opinions that are not in the interest of national security.
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.
vel0city · 9h ago
> they believe have opinions that are not in the interest of national security
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.
TimPC · 7h ago
This is the country of free speech zones away from the main event in the early 2000s and sending WWI dissenters to jail in 1914. You’ve long pretended to have freedoms you’ve never actually been given and this is hardly new.
goatlover · 4h ago
More like those freedoms get violated on occasion in the name of national security, because administrations are largely able to get away with it during certain crisis.
bloomingeek · 8h ago
Great question, right to the heart of the matter. First higher learning, somewhere down the line, ordinary people? In my small world, I'm very clear I'm anti-trump on every issue. As an ordinary person, how long before I get on some Stalin type radar? If trump lobbies for and gets a third term, will there be an awakening to how far the abuse will go?
archagon · 6h ago
I expect some government AI will soon be trawling through the databases of every social media network and assembling a political profile of every US resident. (They’re already starting to do this for tourists and visitors: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479045-us-government-i...)
vjvjvjvjghv · 7h ago
Seems most universities don't really care as long as the money keeps flowing. They jumped quickly on the DEI bandwagon and they will quickly hop off too.
SoftTalker · 7h ago
Many already have.
ivape · 10h ago
Can they really do this? You're telling me this is real and not one of those "just for show" things that have no real teeth and will eventually get overturned by a judge?
adamors · 10h ago
Checks and balances are just words. So yes, they can and will do everything they want.
mmooss · 8h ago
> Checks and balances are just words.
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.
alpaca128 · 8h ago
They deported a man to El Salvador against a court order and then ignored an order from the Supreme Court to return him.
mmooss · 6h ago
That's one person. While it's very important, it doesn't at all mean the courts don't exit.
> order from the Supreme Court to return him.
The Supreme Court did not order that.
Edit: If you object to these things, realize you are helping the Trump administration by spreading exaggerated fears about what's happening. They want people to believe they are super-powerful, unstoppable, inevitable; it intimidates people into inaction. Also, without accurate information, people can't make good decisions and act - you are helping a propaganda campaign (unwittingly). And finally, spreading fear is not what good, responsible leaders - or teammates - do.
mlyle · 7h ago
> The Trump administration obeys the courts
We have multiple judges beginning contempt proceedings against the administration, so this is open to debate.
And, there's recent action in the budget bill to attempt to defang judges' contempt powers, seemingly in response.
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued"
cosmicgadget · 7h ago
Would you consider habeas corpus a critical element of rule of law?
mmooss · 6h ago
There's been loose talk, but no violations of habeas corpus orders.
cosmicgadget · 6h ago
Have there been violations of the priciple of habeas corpus?
That is happening, but it's a narrow instance. It doesn't mean there aren't serious issues, but the GGP said, "Checks and balances are just words." Obviously that is not true.
Also, Trump is relying on Congress to pass bills, for example. It's not rule by decree.
bloomingeek · 8h ago
[flagged]
more_corn · 10h ago
I mean Harvard will fight back in court. The courts are last bastion. Once the executive branch stops following what the courts order the checks and balances are gone.
dragontamer · 9h ago
How is the Supreme Court's 9-0 decision in favor of returning Garcia working out?
The courts have been beaten months ago. We are well into crazy train territory.
ty6853 · 9h ago
Lol Rubio told Xinis on national TV he was intentionally stonewalling any information to her, and she took it like a bitch and just kept rolling with keeping most their 'secrets' under seal (despite earlier talking big game of exposing them to sunlight).
The courts aren't even trying, they could order someone into contempt, but they won't.
CamperBob2 · 8h ago
"Ninth Circuit? Never heard of them. How many divisions do they have?"
bloomingeek · 8h ago
We are in a non-constitutional crazy train territory, which will continue unless the right leaning voters do something about it at mid-terms. We're in the beginning of a very dangerous era.
tick_tock_tick · 7h ago
Absolutely they have explicit powers to do this. Harvard is refusing to comply with the requirements of the visa program that allows them to bring student into the country so the administration is removing Harvard from the program.
There is little to no chance of this getting overturned.
FireBeyond · 6h ago
That's a weird way of phrasing things. Harvard isn't "bringing students into the country" in the way an employer might relocate an employee.
People want to study in the US, and the administration is revoking Harvard's ability to be on the list of study destinations.
The students want to go to Harvard, it's not that Harvard wants the students (of course they do, but that's not the direct concern here).
HamsterDan · 6h ago
There is a 99% chance of this getting overturned.
Harvard will sue, lose in court, and then give DHS everything they want at which point they'll get their visas back.
They just want to pretend to be the victim for a while so that their overwhelmingly far-left faculty don't leave.
DrillShopper · 9h ago
> will eventually get overturned by a judge
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.
ModernMech · 11h ago
Yea, that’s the message they are trying to send.
remarkEon · 1h ago
Ctrl + F "Yarvin" only returns one comment. Kind of surprised, neutering Harvard's power has been one of that guy's main objectives for what feels like, well, forever at this point. He finally has his man.
sva_ · 10h ago
> When a University’s SEVP certification is revoked, currently enrolled international students must choose between transferring to a different institution, changing their immigration status, or leaving the country, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement website.
It's crazy they're punishing tons of students who don't even have anything to do with these protests
sorcerer-mar · 9h ago
It’s also crazy (read: unconstitutional) to punish students who do have everything to do with these protests.
emsign · 8h ago
This is exactly how division works. Threaten all and they turn on each other. "Why me? I'm not the one you want! Take them!" It's not so much about the Gaza protests, that's just another occassion to normalize division and mistrust within all parts of society.
Terr_ · 10h ago
s/crazy/deliberately evil/g
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.
The target is Harvard University and the Woke Masterminds Who Are Destroying America.
The champions of One True America are just using international students as pawns to force Harvard's hand.
arunabha · 4h ago
The truly depressing thing is, a lot of people are actually happy about this action. How did things get so bad, so quickly?
People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast. It's one thing to understand that intellectually, quite another to witness it first hand.
Hopefully, the judiciary will block this particular madness, but then again, given the concerted effort over the past decade by Republicans to appoint right wing judges, the odds are not that great.
csomar · 11m ago
> People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast.
If you want an indication why the US could go into dictatorship mode, look no further than to what is happening now. Dictatorship coups are extremely fragile in the initial phase. The very recent example is South Korea. It only takes a few determined people to sabotage the coup. In the same fashion, Trump would immediately stop if enough people where to take it to the street. So far, the silence is extremely loud.
tstrimple · 3h ago
> How did things get so bad, so quickly?
It didn't. Conservatives in this country have explicitly been headed this direction since they decided to never let another Nixon happen. Not that they would prevent another criminal Republican. But they would ensure that Republicans are never punished for behavior like this. It led to Fox News and Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, etc. The writing has been on the wall in plain sight for everyone to see for literally decades. The people who have been pointing it out and stating this is exactly where the country has been headed are called radicals and casually dismissed. The only reason Romney lost is because he didn't lean into the hatred his base was demanding[1]. Trump delivered what they wanted.
I believe that this is entirely the correct answer.
If anyone has any counter arguments, I would genuinely love to read them.
intended · 40m ago
I dont, and instead would build on this argument further.
There is no political winning, at any time in the future, unless the structural issue with information and news ecosystems is dealt with. The best evidence I have seen, shows that news consumption on the right in America is sealed, and has no traffic with the center or left.
There is no future for ANY liberal democracy, if there is no fair debate between its citizenry. We aren’t even fighting for the table stakes of informed citizenry, but we are talking about the scraps of not debating fantasy.
This isn’t even about misinformation; the total consumption of misinformation as a portion of total content can only shift so much, given the number of hours in a day. It’s not the production of more misinformation which matters - it is the championing of misinformation by leaders that makes it a ‘fact’.
This then decides the talking points for debates. The side which has to do research that requires interrogating reality - slower, probabilistic, uncertain processes - is inefficient when competing with a party that can create facts.
The reason that the Stanford Internet Observatory and other content moderation arms are being targeted, is because for all their warts and issues, these teams were trying to ensure a fair market place of ideas, and as a result ended up slowing the spread of narratives on the right. Or potential new recruits.
djoldman · 6h ago
I was curious how this could legally be done. It's through this:
As far as I can tell, the headlines are not quite accurate. From my reading, a more accurate description would be that one cannot obtain a student visa to go to Harvard.
So presumably, if someone could acquire legal residence in another way, they would be free to attend Harvard.
csomar · 10m ago
Well, good thing they can do that for the small price of $5 million.
throwaway219450 · 2h ago
Yes ish, see my other comment.
Foreign students normally enter via a non-immigrant visa (F1), or rather they are eligible to apply for that visa at an embassy, if a registered sponsor supports it. The visa permits a request for entry into the country for the purpose of study (at a port of entry). The most important document that you need day to day is a DS-2019 and you must remain "in F1 status" in the SEVIS system for the duration of your program. If you don't leave the US, you don't need another visa even if your original one expires, the university can issue you a new DS-2019 annually until your end-of-program date. That's up to 5 years dependent on the category. If you leave after your visa expires you have to renew it out of the country, which is normally straightforward (using the dropbox system).
The government has not prevented foreign people from studying or working at Harvard, they have withdrawn their ability to maintain status while at Harvard. Hence why they can transfer to another institution.
sgnelson · 4h ago
This is Fascism. With a Capital F.
cozzyd · 11h ago
I wonder how many foreign heads of state have children at Harvard
ty6853 · 11h ago
It's likely foreign heads of state can obtain a different visa for their children, if they are even on student visas to begin with.
They will be accommodated.
kitsune_ · 11h ago
Insane how freely the US is giving away its status as a brain drain magnet (context: I'm European).
dudinax · 9h ago
Has there ever been an empire that committed suicide at the height of power?
jandrewrogers · 9h ago
All of them. "Height of their power" is a retrospective take.
bobbylarrybobby · 8h ago
Doesn't mean their death was by suicide, though.
yubblegum · 8h ago
Is it is really Trump holding a 'box cutter' to America's throat, or is it a 'controlled demolition' of an "empire" that presents obstacles for a grand plan for the future of global governance ..
[p.s. bravo to the one who downvoted as soon as I hit submit! Wow, that was quick. Bots on HN?]
hkpack · 8h ago
It is not a suicide.
We are in a global war, and US and the west is taking damage.
acheong08 · 6h ago
Dodged a huge bullet coming to Europe instead of the US. Was considering moving there for work/startup but at this point, I'd literally rather go to China
gosub100 · 5h ago
maybe look inside your own country and find out why it sucked so much you left.
croes · 11h ago
They still are, they just flipped the poles.
legitster · 9h ago
Anyone who thinks they are immune or on the "good side" of this political movement is naive. Harvard has cranked out plenty of powerful conservatives, but it doesn't matter because their "crime" is that they have hurt the current administration's feelings. This is going well beyond one party winning - this is a cult of personality.
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.
callc · 8h ago
> It's education now, but it will be lawyers and judges next
It already is this. Their attack on the judicial branch is the most frightening IMO, since it is directly attacking checks and balances.
edaemon · 8h ago
To illustrate your point, three of the current justices on the Supreme Court earned their law degree from Harvard: Jackson, Gorsuch, and (Chief Justice) Roberts.
bamboozled · 8h ago
It's already been lawyers and judges, not going great...
RhysU · 6h ago
Does Harvard now start accepting individuals from the domestic student waitlist?
geodel · 6h ago
Yeah, now it is time to admit those "poor, persecuted Asian Americans"
dathinab · 6h ago
this is so absurd authoritarian
the core of free speech isn't if you can insult officers or similar in the larger picture irrelevant things, but the freedom of teaching, education, books etc. And freedom doesn't just means "its theoretical possible" but the absence of suppression, retaliatory actions and similar
PaulHoule · 11h ago
As a staffer at Cornell and person who lives in the area, I worry most about losing students from mainland China. Whether this is an arbitrary Trumpism or the lid blows off in Taiwan matters little.
philip1209 · 11h ago
I heard University of Illinois bought a policy to protect against losing cash tuitions from Chinese grad students. Perhaps other universities have done the same.
busyant · 10h ago
> I heard University of Illinois bought a policy to protect against losing cash tuitions from Chinese grad students
Hilarious if it's the CCP, who would probably have the greatest incentive to sell such a policy.
PaulHoule · 9h ago
I think it is more undergrads than grads that pay money, but I think that depends on the field.
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.
philip1209 · 9h ago
MBAs are a cash cow
omnee · 10h ago
Trump is acting in the manner of all previous authoritarians: What is good for him is what's good for the country and the laws that align with this are proper, and those that do not will be ignored or changed where possible. The rule of law is anathema to authoritarians, and hence why they detest it. As individuals we might even feel the same about some laws. But in totality, the rule of, law and not by law is the foundation of our society, because its benefits are immense and usually taken for granted.
hermitcrab · 9h ago
"To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law"
So much for "law and order" - this is about sycophancy toward an authoritarian who chooses his own rules.
rjbwork · 9h ago
That's what "conservatives" mean by "law and order". You obey them so they can put you in your place. They want to impose upon the rest of us, not be imposed upon.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 9h ago
AKA Wilhoit's Law
“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.”
lenerdenator · 8h ago
In a fight between two morally dubious parties, why can't both lose?
And yes, Harvard is absolutely a morally dubious institution. Less morally dubious than Trump's movement is, but still.
tantalor · 9h ago
TRO in 5, 4, 3...
cosmicgadget · 8h ago
Yeah this seems like it'll follow the script of the AP and Perkins Coïe.
inverted_flag · 9h ago
Remember when Trump said you should get a green card with your diploma? Wasn't even a year ago:
I do find it kind of absurd that we invite people to come study in the USA, let them work on a visa at our corporations to gain experience, and then send them home.
No comments yet
Terr_ · 11h ago
So now the Presidency is punishing institutions that refuse to create and share spy-dossiers on what their adult students are using their free-speech for.
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."
insane_dreamer · 9h ago
It's not just enrolling new students:
> 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.
busyant · 7h ago
They didn't revoke the visas. They revoked Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students.
I mean ... it's still nuts, but slightly different.
Instead of breaking the "keys" (visas) that unlock the doors to Harvard, they're just putting glue in the locks.
I am going to get downvoted and flagged because I will bring up a topic that is not to be discussed here:
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.
adamors · 10h ago
It could be Gaza protesters sure but it could be anyone. Previously legal residents were deported for minor traffic violations.
They’re trying to hit some targets for deportation numbers and shipping home “criminal” foreign students is an easy win.
vediflo · 9h ago
Of course it's about the Gaza protestors, let's not pretend otherwise.
ivape · 10h ago
No, it can't be anyone. Please don't do this. This is about the Palestinian situation. They tried to pressure the TikTok purchase so they change their algorithm to show less Gaza deaths. It is simply about that, and there is also a money trail of top donors that corroborate this. They also made a show of arresting the Columbia Palestinian organizer. They are not looking for illegal Mexicans in the Ivy League.
ceejayoz · 9h ago
Authoritarian regimes aren't exactly known for going "ah, good, we've done enough oppression now!"
Yes, the Admin is even more pro-Israel (and by that I mean pro-Israeli gov/Netanyahu) than previous ones. But it's also using accusations of anti-Semitism at these universities as a cover to generally bring these "liberal" institutions to heel (as outlined in Project2025).
So it's not really about Gaza, Palestinians, or Jews. It's about control.
Sure, but do you think that if nothing had ever happened in Gaza, the Trump administration wouldn't have found some other pretext to go after higher education, and foreign students in particular? They're defunding research programs all across the board and are sending people to gulags for having tattoos.
howard941 · 8h ago
Another day, different shit. This is what flooding the zone means.
oldpersonintx2 · 11h ago
DHS said that in addition to barring enrollment of future international students, “existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”
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
woggy · 8h ago
I don't see the US surviving the Trump administration.
Spivak · 8h ago
We basically get two chances if you want to follow the normal procedure. Swing congress during the midterms and lock him up for the remainder of his term and or elect a democrat in four years who will tear up the stack of executive orders and make the rounds apologizing to everyone.
input_sh · 7h ago
There are many autocrats around the world, look up what happened to free elections after they came into power.
Spoiler alert: they quickly deteriorate and the next 3-4 cycles become far less free than the election cycle that put them into power.
cosmicgadget · 8h ago
We won't even get those chances if either Roberts or Barrett roll over.
anigbrowl · 5h ago
I mean both of those options (minus the locking up) were tried last time. Even if Democrats were to win elections as described, another round of apologies and saying nice things about institutionalism is not going to cut. I felt pretty sure Trump had a good chance of being re-elected from 2022 onward, Democrats simply didn't want to believe that a large part of the electorate are assholes or that they would need to change up their policy/electoral/comms game. Some of them still don't want to believe it.
kurtis_reed · 8h ago
Oh please
woggy · 6h ago
I think you have your head in the sand.
This Harvard thing is just one example. Just saw a report this morning (Aus time) of an Australian detained, stripped, and held overnight in a US federal prison. She was just coming in to visit her husband.
Who the hell will want to come to the US now? You are going to suffer a massive reverse brain drain. You got a 30% tariff tax, kidnapping of random people off the street including US citizens, blatant and overwhelming corruption at the highest levels, weaponizing of government to target people, institutions and private companies.
Good luck in the midterm 'elections'.
kurtis_reed · 5h ago
Wanna bet?
bananapub · 9h ago
that's underselling it - they're also making it so every single existing interrnational student has to leave the US very soon, and in the meantime can be kidnapped by ICE.
TrackerFF · 9h ago
They can (try and) transfer to another college / university.
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.
decimalenough · 9h ago
The Trump administration is not targeting the students, they're targeting Harvard. The students are collateral damage.
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.
dragonwriter · 8h ago
> The Trump administration is not targeting the students, they're targeting Harvard.
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.
HEmanZ · 11h ago
I feel US higher education, which brain drains the rest of the world, is easily one of the best strategic advantages it could have for the next 100 years.
Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.
mrtksn · 9h ago
The action by itself comes as a punishment which imply that this is indeed great resource but because Harvard was a naughty boy means that can't have it.
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.
kitsune_ · 8h ago
Oxford, Cambridge, ETHZ, EPFL, etc. are probably salivating right now.
nextos · 6h ago
Oxbridge suffered a lot of collateral damage from Brexit because of EU funding cuts and massive loss of EU staff and EU students, who now have to pay foreign fees (4-5x regular home fees). An increase in fees also made it prohibitively expensive to hire EU PhD students.
The situation is slowly recovering, as the UK has now first-class access to EU funding programs and there is an open negotiation to bring back home fees for EU students. However, visas are becoming more restrictive and the exceptionally high fees associated with them might be again increasing, which is putting off potential new employees.
Besides, I am not sure Oxbridge has sufficient extra spots for overseas students diverted from the US due to its peculiar tutorial system. There are lots of top EU universities that could collectively benefit from this as they are much cheaper and larger: Heidelberg, TUM, KU, DTU, KI, KTH, etc.
comrade1234 · 6h ago
Harvard is liberal arts, so maybe Oxford.
wat10000 · 9h ago
Even if it stopped immediately, we'll still get a lot fewer of these people. The US is now a country where anonymous government thugs can snatch foreigners off the street and put them in jail for saying the wrong things. Even if we stop doing that today, what's to say we won't start it up again at any time? Who's going to risk that just to go to an American university? Our universities are good but not that good.
thaumasiotes · 9h ago
> I bet you, if this continues for some more time USA will no longer receive the best and the brightest.
International students are heavily selected for wealth rather than brightness.
mrtksn · 8h ago
There's certainly an allotment for the rich and connected(Erdoğan's son studied at Harvard and he is a meme for his brains in Turkey, having trouble to understand his father's commands on leaked police surveillance tape. Turks don't say ELI5, they say ELI Bilal - the Harvard boy) but hardy its the majority. Maybe for BS and on some lighter majors, definitely not on the real deal.
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.
rauljordan2020 · 5h ago
Nope! Harvard and some of the top ivies offer full, need-blind financial aid to all students, especially international. I attended and did not have to spend much at all, coming from a poor country. Many such cases and it is a lifeline for gifted students in developing countries
CamperBob2 · 8h ago
Be that as it may, look at the names on any random research paper or journal article that originates from any randomly-chosen American university, and see what they tell you.
xeromal · 9h ago
Yeah, getting the worlds top brainiancs and enticing them with a good education and having some of them build their lives here is one of our greatest imports.
blooalien · 9h ago
"The worlds top brainiacs" were a huge part of what "Made America Great" in the first place. The MAGA "leadership" is doing the exact literal polar opposite of the stated mission of their slogan (and with far more than just education; wrecking the economy, alienating our allies, destroying freedom of speech, enabling and even encouraging pollution [and trying to even mandate it in California apparently] ... the list goes on).
Waterloo, McGill, and U of Toronto admissions offices should be spending the entire day tomorrow calling the full international Harvard roster ASAP.
xemoka · 9h ago
If Canada wasn't having it's own immigration and post-secondary issues, this would be great. But no, we already shot ourselves in the foot with that...
hangonhn · 9h ago
Honestly as an American, I would seriously consider how my daughter can go to these top Canadian or EU schools.
OutOfHere · 9h ago
Consider ETH Zurich too, although if truth be told, K12+4+2 education is 100% obsoleted now by AI; only PhD is still very relevant.
InitialLastName · 9h ago
The AI didn't tell you that the idiom is "if truth be told", so how useful is it really?
ben_w · 9h ago
By the time LLMs are routinely writing, or even proof-reading, the majority of Hacker News comments, it's already game over for the internet.
Eth is hard-core science and engineering like mit. Harvard is liberal arts.
tonfa · 8h ago
Tho non trivial for non-swiss educated people to enter (and need German fluency for bachelor).
UncleOxidant · 9h ago
This is essentially cultural revolution from the right.
bogwog · 9h ago
Education is obsolete thanks to AI. US is just ahead of the curve as usual.
(/s in case it wasn't obvious)
onlyrealcuzzo · 9h ago
I'm sure all the foreigners denied entry to Harvard will be happy to attend Trump University instead.
/s in case not obvious
thg · 8h ago
They couldn't even if they wanted to, because that scam was shut down in 2011.
joshstrange · 9h ago
> Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.
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.
femiagbabiaka · 9h ago
It's not even clear that higher education produces liberals. Half of Trump-land went to Ivy Leagues.
aeternum · 9h ago
What is taught matters a lot. Suppose a foreign adversary were able to infiltrate key US higher education institutions and subtly change the curriculum to be pro-communism and avoid STEM subjects.
HEmanZ · 8h ago
Suppose a foreign adversary were able to infiltrate the key US institution that determines if higher education institutions have been infiltrated and subtly accuses them of being pro communist?
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.
aeternum · 7h ago
Competition is a beautiful system so let those independent institutions compete without the government playing favorites by funding some and not others.
ReptileMan · 8h ago
Trump was elected roughly on 3 issues - economy, immigration and culture war.
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.
jmclnx · 8h ago
No :) The 3 issues are
1. Racism
2. Racism
3. Racism
kurtis_reed · 4h ago
I find steelmanning to be more intellectually fulfilling than strawmanning.
If you are a Republican and didn’t sign up for this, can you please write your representatives about impeachment? This is getting ridiculous. We’d be much better off with a president Vance.
dragontamer · 9h ago
> We’d be much better off with a president Vance.
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?
morkalork · 9h ago
His defense of those lies was incredible. According to him, it is perfectly fine to make up and repeat fabrications because they advanced the narrative they wanted to push, full stop. The truth doesn't matter, no regrets.
hydrogen7800 · 7h ago
You were downvoted, but here is him saying exactly that:
A lot of smart people believe a lie told often enough.
hobs · 8h ago
Do you think he believes the lie that he said he knows isn't true and then walked back and talked about as if it was true? Are you the smart person whose been told the lie enough?
scoofy · 9h ago
Donald Trump is genuinely an idiot and deeply and obviously corrupt. I don’t like Vance, I’m still going to be mad at his agenda, but he’s generally intelligent. He’s not going to run the country into the ground because he doesn’t understand how fixed income securities work or give away national security to fly in an obviously bugged luxury plane for funsies.
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.
jasonjayr · 9h ago
Why haven't any of the other intelligent and uncorrupt republicans done anything to prevent the "running the country into the ground"?
There has to be more than a few of them, right? They could halt or correct this agenda at any time they choose.
scoofy · 9h ago
The Trump administration is a loyalty-based hierarchy. The intelligent advisors know that it is better for there careers do demonstrate loyalty than actual do anything to improve his policies. This is not rationalists paradigm, it’s a survivalist paradigm.
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.
rchaud · 6h ago
Lots of people are "intelligent", yet you would never want to be under their rule.
Vance is a useful stooge handpicked by Peter Thiel. If push comes to shove, do you think his Yale degree is going to give him any backbone if he's ordered to do something that violates the Constitution? Did Yale provide John Yoo with one when he wrote legal memos justifying the torture of detainees held without charge in Guantanamo 20 years ago? Yoo was ready to ignore the Geneva Conventions then, and Vance is ready to deport US citizens now.
dkarl · 8h ago
> he’s generally intelligent. He’s not going to run the country into the ground
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.
scoofy · 8h ago
I grew up in a wildly religious family, and was in wildly conservative areas for part of that time. There are a lot of people who want to roll back social and cultural change for good-faith religious reasons. I think are wrong for thinking these things. However, they still also want to have a strong and prosperous nation. My point is not to say that I want the future they want. It's to say I also don't want the future they don't want. We can meet in the middle, where the world is less shitty, even though it's still shitty.
LexiMax · 5h ago
> There are a lot of people who want to roll back social and cultural change for good-faith religious reasons.
What makes you believe that they are engaging with their religious views in good faith?
I know a great many friends and acquaintances that take their religious studies seriously. I also have met a great many more whose approach is far more cavalier, simply using their beliefs to justify their existing biases and gut feelings, as well as justifying and excusing their own anti-social behavior.
awnird · 7h ago
"An imaginary man in the sky told me to hate you" is not a good-faith reason.
scoofy · 5h ago
Unfortunately, it is if you really believe it.
dragontamer · 4h ago
> 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
+-------
I'm not thinking that Religion is the problem here.
dkarl · 8h ago
I think you're describing a part of the Republican Party that is now almost irrelevant, one that kept expecting the voters to turn against Donald Trump. They're the ones who thought, what the hell is Trump doing sucking up to Putin? Our voters are patriots who have no hesitation about calling the United States the greatest nation on earth. Surely they're going to be shocked at Trump fawning over a sad sack country like Russia. Surely patriotic voters are going to be offended at the president of their precious eagle scream U! S! A! showing open admiration for an ex-superpower with a ruined economy, zero cultural capital, a laughingstock of a democratic system, and a crumbling military with zero global reach.
That point of view still exists in the Republican Party, but it has been eclipsed by something sadder and smaller-minded. Liberal progressives have long used national greatness as a lever on patriotic conservatives, telling them, look, our "national greatness" comes from our embrace of education, cultural change, new people, new ideas. If conservatives love our supposed national greatness, they should embrace the progressive liberal ideals that built it. Now, it's like the Republican Party has been taken over by conservatives who... decided the liberals were right? It's like they gave up and said, y'all are right, national greatness requires education, continual learning and self-criticism, openness to new ideas and new people, and acceptance of creative destruction, both economic and cultural. They accepted that, grieved, faced the choice with clear eyes, and decided that national greatness isn't worth the cost. They look at Russia and see a country that is marinating in its own chauvinism, and they want that instead.
scoofy · 7h ago
The Republican party is, in fact, a coalition. When parts of that coalition become alienated enough, and that is very much happening right now, then we have a chance to coordinate with our coalition.
You sound like you don't know any decent Republicans who are really upset at what's happening. I do. They ought to be encouraged to speak up.
busyant · 6h ago
> The Republican party is, in fact, a coalition.
It really isn't anymore. I agree that there are many decent "old-time" Republicans, but they've been neutered and/or they've "self-deported" themselves from politics.
Romney might've been able to run and split the vote.
Bush the younger could've put his thumb on the scale, too.
Murkowski says "we are all afraid" [of MAGA].
Many traditional Republican congressmen have simply bowed out and not sought re-election.
McCain is dead.
The only one that I can think of that actually stood up is Liz Cheney.
To use a programming phrase, the country is in an "error state" and has been since 2017.
I don't know what the re-set is.
dralley · 7h ago
A lot of the "alienated" Republicans already split from the party. They're no longer in the coalition. The fundamental demographics of the party are different than they were 10-20 years ago. And this is a continuous process.
The fact of the matter is that "the party" is MAGA now, there is effectively no internal resistance, and mounting one is basically intractable. Trump won the primary with 80% of the vote despite "strong" opposition.
platevoltage · 9h ago
If you are a Republican, you DID sign up for this. None of this has been kept secret.
chrisandchris · 9h ago
Sometimes you sign up for things, because the advertisment did look great. But then, at one point, you want to cancel that subscription.
platevoltage · 9h ago
My point is, this was the advertisement. If you thought it looked great, you signed up for it. And if you didn't vote for this, but you voted for something ridiculous like banning around dozen people from playing sports, well, I have the same amount of sympathy for you too.
eximius · 9h ago
Yes and no. It seems obvious it was the advertisement but I know people who voted for Trump that are otherwise fairly liberal. They were either grossly uninformed, misinformed, or simply _didn't believe_ the reporting about various issues.
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".
platevoltage · 1h ago
I'm not buying it. The guy was president for 4 years, tried to steal an election, and before all of that, challenged Obamas eligibility based entirely on his name and the color of his skin.
Being "grossly uninformed" is no excuse anymore.
akudha · 7h ago
Shouldn’t voters at least try in good faith to inform themselves? How else can we expect democracy to work?
For example - The day after Brexit - so many people regretted voting to leave. They could’ve thought about it 24 hours earlier, no? “I was misinformed, uninformed” sounds lazy and shallow, isn’t it? How hard can it be to spend an hour less on Netflix and an hour more learning about what’s on the ballot?
cosmicgadget · 8h ago
Dude's last major act was to turn a mob loose on Congress in order to get SCOTUS to repeat 2000. It wasn't obscure news.
Anyone pikachufacing here is a liar.
baggachipz · 9h ago
If that's the case, you're an easily-duped sucker of a customer and deserve to lose your money.
UlisesAC4 · 4h ago
How funny this comment is, when we take into consideration of us being on an industry full of dark patterns.
intermerda · 9h ago
But you're not allowed to call them low-informed, uneducated, or any slightly negative/offensive qualifier. Otherwise you get the "this is why Trump won" lecture.
mdhb · 9h ago
Lots and lots of people accurately predicted this multiple years out at this point. They were continually dismissed as alarmists by supposedly “serious people”.
blooalien · 9h ago
~raises hand~ Been there, Done that...
(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.)
alabastervlog · 7h ago
I've been like fuckin' Nostradamus since early in the Dubya admin just because I skim GAO and CBO reports on big legislation sometimes, can read graphs, take the things Republicans say they want to do seriously, and have a half-decent grasp on 20th century history, including the latter half of it.
mdhb · 8h ago
There is something I think that a lot of people find very self soothing by just refusing to see what is actually in front of them so that they don’t have to actually do anything about it. There is a certain satisfaction that people get by telling others they are overreacting.
more_corn · 8h ago
This was all advertised. And you can’t cancel a subscription for a president. You got it for for years, more if he figures out a way to stay.
Braxton1980 · 9h ago
And yet some have held that subscription for years..
intermerda · 9h ago
I used to think that the Republican officials just put on a mask and perform kabuki for their Dear Leader. But the signalgate texts proved otherwise. This kind of thinking has penetrated deep into the party. It's not going away. Not with Vance.
JeremyNT · 2h ago
When people show you who they are, believe them.
This is what the Republican party is about.
henrikschroder · 8h ago
If you've ever waded into ragebaity online discussions, for example Europeans taunting Americans about the lack of public healthcare or basic worker rights, there will always be a loud contingent of Americans spouting counter-arguments based in American Exceptionalism, claiming that everyone else somehow, magically, has the US to thank for its standard of living.
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.
marktangotango · 9h ago
The influence and dominance of conservative media is striking. They have sane-washed and explained away things that would have ended 10 other politicians careers. Trump is Asimovs "mule". His appeal to large groups of people is inexplicable. Vance is certainly NOT that. It's open question how much success the Mule's successor would have. Surely momentum and conservative media will carry him far (should that come to pass).
Destroying universities has been his schtick since long before he was a VP candidate.
He has stated that he believes 4-year degrees make people dumber.
I'm constantly amazed by how many people don't know that waging wars on Universities has been Vance's thing for years.
dekhn · 10h ago
The probability of impeachment succeeding at this time is effectively zero.
anigbrowl · 9h ago
Anything difficult is effectively impossible until you decide to begin working on it.
ceejayoz · 9h ago
Sure, but there are "get your kid to eat veggies" levels of "effectively impossible", and then there's "quantum teleport into the bank vault" levels of it.
This is more like the latter. There aren't many signs of us hitting the bottom thus far.
IAmBroom · 8h ago
The ONLY time a sitting POTUS has been politically removed from power by the mechanism of impeachment, or even seriously handicapped by it, was after the GOP constituency began howling at their congresspeople about the egregious behavior of the POTUS. They resisted caring up until that moment, and that was 50 years ago.
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.
CGMthrowaway · 9h ago
A few million to Fusion GPS would be a good start
insane_dreamer · 9h ago
Even if it were possible for Dems to get control of the house and impeach the prez, there is no way that Senate will convict unless the GOP Senate goes back to becoming the GOP instead of the MAGA-GOP, which seems extremely unlikely.
lesuorac · 9h ago
Its interesting, you don't have enough republicans united to pass any of the agenda as law instead of executive orders but you also don't have 3 republicans willing to break to impeach for doing stuff they don't want (otherwise they'd pass it as law).
dragonwriter · 8h ago
> Its interesting, you don't have enough republicans united to pass any of the agenda as law instead of executive orders
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.
InitialLastName · 9h ago
a) You need 2/3 of senators to vote to convict, so you would need ~20 Republicans to get on board.
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".
insane_dreamer · 4h ago
Impeachment (in the senate its conviction, technically) requires 2/3 majority. So a few republicans breaking ranks isn't going to cut it. This is why impeachment over the Jan 6 coup attempt failed even though 7 "old guard" Republicans (i.e., Cheney) voted in favor.
scoofy · 10h ago
It’s zero if nobody actually says anything. The legislature has the power to reign in the president. They only have to threaten a bipartisan impeachment.
fzeroracer · 9h ago
Unfortunately I don't see a route where Republicans vote for impeachment, ever. They're already refusing to listen to constituents, hiding from their elected duties and letting Trump freely crash the economy on a whim.
DrillShopper · 9h ago
Republicans will not give up power unless doing so saves their fortunes or saves their lives.
msabalau · 9h ago
Even if impeachment is off the cards, is it impossible to imagine that there could be any sort of impact from Republican lawmakers hearing Republican voters that, or other things are not what they voted for or want?
dekhn · 9h ago
Not at this time, and I don't see it changing enough in 3 years to make any difference. The fear of being attacked by MAGA is still very high, I think the (older) republican leadership has decided to just wait this out.
patagurbon · 10h ago
Impeachment of Kristi Noem could be more likely to succeed though.
more_corn · 8h ago
Impeachment is the wrong tactic at this moment. Eroding support of the less hardline members of the party is key. Call your reps and say I didn’t sign up for this: [specific list of things]
bongoman42 · 9h ago
Most Republicans around me are extremely happy with this.
scoofy · 8h ago
The politicians that matter most are the marginally elected representatives for their party, and they care about the marginal voter in their district. The median Republican does not matter when it comes to impeachment and removal. What matters is about one standard deviation in views left of the median.
HamsterDan · 6h ago
Harvard is a systematically racist institution. They even went to the Supreme Court to fight for the right to discriminate against white and Asian students.
Republicans and Trump-voting independents signed up for this. They want to see Harvard treated the same way it treats others.
watwut · 9h ago
Republicans signed up for this. Some of them want plausible deniality, but that is about it.
cmurf · 8h ago
People need to write their representatives. Volume of responses is what Congresscritters respond to.
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.
rchaud · 6h ago
> People need to write their representatives. Volume of responses is what Congresscritters respond to
Maybe in reruns of The West Wing. America is a long way past that now.
alaxhn · 8h ago
What is the better path forward? Republican voters led by their representative Trump were unhappy about certain policies and events at Ivy league institutions. Voters have the right to feel this way and elect representatives to carry out their views even if this is not how you feel as a feature of democracy. Proxies of the representatives of the voters reached out to a few institutions requesting changes to be made or else face consequences. The institutions said "we are unwilling to make all of the changes that you would like to see because we think they are not reasonable". The administration's response is now to try and hurt these institutions (Harvard for now) by going after their pocketbook.
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.
iambateman · 8h ago
Btw, I am a University employee who serves (among other things) children affected by parents who abuse drugs.
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.”
alaxhn · 8h ago
I don't have first hand experience with your situation and I would imagine that you believe you are doing a great thing for society and I don't want to disparage thats so I don't intend my comments to speak to your specific institution or situation. I apologize if you see my comments this way.
---
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.
iambateman · 6h ago
I think where we agree is that we need to reduce the social costs of college, one way or another.
But we don’t agree on how that should happen.
The underlying problem as I see it is that there aren’t enough slots for students in schools that are socially viewed as “reputable.” It’s not much different from beachfront property in that way.
We’ve allowed schools to build up a “mystique” for generations that a Harvard education or a state school education was the only ticket to the upper middle class…of course it’s expensive. As long as there are waitlists a mile long at nearly every state school, we will never see meaningful reduction in costs. The other way to fix that issue is to insist they build a plan to enroll 30% more students over 5 years.
alaxhn · 5h ago
US College enrollment peaked in 2012 and has been declining every since. It is projected based on demographics to continue declining. I'm not buying that a shortage of slots is responsible for the increased cost. This could be true at select institutions (e.g. Harvard like you mention) but I don't agree that the data supports the overall trend across the board.
JacobThreeThree · 4h ago
Replace "Harvard" with "Trump University" in this conversation, and I believe many HN types would have a different opinion of the policies. The argument is, if educational institutions can't be ideologically neutral, why should they get the benefit from grants, tax free endowments, and a tax funded international customer acquisition pipeline? Especially as they become outrageously expensive debt traps, with worse ROIs.
I don't agree with this international student, and other policies, or implementations, and you can't run government like you run a "move fast and break things" startup, which seems to be how the administration is operating.
But, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, and try to separate Trump's execution from the underlying ideological sentiment.
tclancy · 8h ago
Please. They don’t care about higher education. These aren’t old-school white shoe Republicans. These are the people teaching the “truth” about the 2020 election in Oklahoma public schools. If our schools have lost any edge, it’s since Trump came back to power.
alaxhn · 8h ago
I am one of "them" and I care deeply about higher education which is why I am very sad that we could not achieve reform without resorting to measures such as threatening the international student admission process. I don't know anything about the people teaching the “truth” about the 2020 election in Oklahoma public schools but if this is happening I agree with you it is very wrong.
"If our schools have lost any edge, it’s since Trump came back to power."
I completely 100% disagree with this statement. My partner is an education at a University and remote learning had a huge negative impact on our schools and student outcomes. US academic achievement has been flat for decades despite spending and pupil rations going way up https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Public schools in certain areas of the country are a complete failure for every student enrolled https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/at-13-baltim... (I choose an example of a left leaning area but obviously there are right leaning examples as well!)
Let me propose what I see as a couple of common sense reforms. Mandate the availability of pre-k nationwide starting at 4. Increase the school year from 180 days to 195 days by reducing the length of summer. If needed make this optional at first. Allow professors to fail students who have not learned the course material and make it illegal for the department to pressure professors to offer the students a way to pass the course.
briankelly · 6h ago
In what way does this or anything else Trump has done or indicated to do advance the state of education towards the goals of the reform you are talking about?
alaxhn · 4h ago
I also don't think I claimed that "Trump has done or indicated to do advance the state of education". His administration has addressed grievances that I agree with but they have not introduced the positive reforms that I would support.
briankelly · 2h ago
Fair enough, but this did read that way to me:
> why I am very sad that we could not achieve reform without resorting to measures such as threatening the international student admission process
Workaccount2 · 9h ago
The problems at Harvard and other high ed organizations are real. They've become pretty unhinged and concentrated, they really need to work on getting back to "open forum for discussing all ideas" rather than the "Open forum for discussing all correct ideas" that they have drifted into. I can see it first hand through my mother, who works at a major school.
That being said, republicans decided to chose an M1 Abrams tank to kill the pesky mice in the system.
scoofy · 8h ago
That isn't actually relevant to the policy being discussed.
Workaccount2 · 8h ago
Trump is a child, he doesn't have diversified, compartmentalized thoughts. Harvard is "woke" and he will use any avenue to blast shells at it.
Don't give the guy the credit of being a reasonable adult.
therouwboat · 8h ago
But Trump adminstration is so much worse here, they ban stuff based on word lists and kick people with wrong ideas out of the country.
alaxhn · 8h ago
In the hiring process for these institutions, until recently you had to write a "Diversity Statement" which was evaluated as part of the hiring process. This was an attempt to keep people with the "wrong ideas" out of the hiring pool. Similarly the H1B process asks you a long list of questions that you are required to answer "correctly" in order to be admitted. If you fail, you are kicked out.
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).
twoodfin · 8h ago
I think it’s also reasonable to want to see some assurance that Harvard has reckoned with the frankly racist and discriminatory admissions policy that was well-documented in the filings for Students for Fair Admissions @ SCOTUS.
ModernMech · 8h ago
The point of a diversity statement for the candidate to ruminate on their teaching practices with respect to a diverse classroom, which is a fact of the job rather than a political or ideological matter.
Most people in the course of their job do not closely work with people of diverse backgrounds. People who work at universities will work with people of all backgrounds and abilities. It’s not just about race or gender, but language, mobility, mental disabilities, and so forth. People in roles that deal with so many diverse people need to be able to articulate how in a statement. That’s not unreasonable or political, but just a reality of the job.
alaxhn · 7h ago
To a gun advocate the point of a concealed carry would be self defense which is a reality of living in certain areas rather than a political or ideological matter. Nevertheless it is ok for a political parties to have opinions about whether concealed carry is right or wrong and some would say that "civilized" countries have made gun ownership very difficult because the pros may outweigh the cons.
Likewise the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process and if your response is going to be "this is not up for discussion because it is not a political or ideological matter" well... they are going to disagree with you and if they are in charge might respond by cutting funding and support for your institution. That's just a reality of living in a democracy.
ModernMech · 6h ago
> the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process
Most of these people haven't read a single "diversity statement" and cannot articulate what exactly the hiring process at a university is, and what actual role these statements play in the process. It's mostly ideological posturing about something that sounds scary to them. I'm not saying this isn't up for discussion, but the discussion better be around what the facts are and not the boogey man "the right" created.
At the end of the day the people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students need to articulate and demonstrate that they can do this task. There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers than an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"? They don't have an answer, all they know is they don't like the current process, even though they can't explain what it is.
alaxhn · 5h ago
> It's mostly ideological posturing about something that sounds scary to them.
I think it's fair to be frustrated that a lot of political discourse is driven by appealing to fear rather than discussing facts in goodwill but I'm not sure that's isolated to only one particular party. I do think we tend to notice when people we don't like are not operating in good faith and tend to look the other way when people we do like are not operating in good faith so to someone firmly on one side of the spectrum it can definitely look like the opposition is particularly slimy.
> people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students
I don't remotely understand how this is relevant to whether a particular instructor should be hired or not. If I need to learn math, then I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with. We can take a look at example diversity statements online https://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/_files/examples-submitted-... and we will notice people feel empowered to talk about their sexuality, race, gender etc but they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US" but if you swap words to a new value in the relevant categories i.e. "I am a Latinx queer woman from Mexico" this suddenly becomes relevant to the exercise. If changing the color, sexuality, gender, or place of origin for an applicant is relevant to the outcome then this seems like a discriminatory process (https://www.justice.gov/crt/nondiscrimination-basis-race-col...).
I do think it's perfectly ok for people to disagree with me here and I expect that if their representatives get in power we will see funding and priorities shift back towards more required diversity statements while also shifting to allow admissions processes to take into account things like race, sexuality, and gender etc which is just the reality of living in a democracy.
ModernMech · 3h ago
> I'm not sure that's isolated to only one particular party.
Of course, but I haven't brought up parties, you did. I'm taking an apolitical position from the perspective of an educator looking to just do their job free from interference of political parties. I'm not sure what you do, but I don't suppose you'd enjoy "the left" or "the right" barging in and micromanaging your hiring committee, thinking they know how to do your job better than you.
> I don't remotely understand how this is relevant
Exactly, and that's kind of my point. You are very eager to quote the law at me, but you aren't first willing to spend the time to actually understand the reason for the diversity statements, how they are used, and why they might be necessary at all.
I think that has to do with this:
> I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with.
You are looking at this from the perspective of a student, who view the job of the instructor as to teach. But the job is not to just teach, it is actually to be a member of the faculty, which comes with may other. One of our primary directives is to build a community that is conducive to learning. And how we do this is by selecting top students for admittance based on scholastic achievement, regardless of background.
Turns out when you do this, and you cast a wide net, a lot of different people end up in your classroom. Get past the culture war nonsense and put yourself in the shoes of an instructor of a math class of 100 students...
85 are from the US, 15 are immigrants and speak English as a second language. For some of them it's the first time in another country.
3 of them have ADHD. 1 is autistic. 8 have a learning disability. 5 have a motor disability. 1 is undergoing treatment for a major medical issue. 20 of them are neurodivergent in some way. 30 of them are suffering symptoms of depression. 1 of them is a psychopath. 30 are first generation students. 35 are low income. 1 is trans.
Your job is to help all those people succeed at math. How might this affect a math instructor? Here are some ways:
- Have you chosen your course materials to take into account low income individuals that can't afford a $200 textbook? Are they accessible by people with disabilities, for example are they available in electronic form?
- Is your lecture style and content appropriate for people from various backgrounds? For example, if all of your material relates back to local anecdotes, are foreign students going to perform well? Does your use of sarcasm and idioms make your content inaccessible to students who do not speak English as a first language, or who do not readily recognize sarcasm?
- What are your course policies for students with learning disabilities? How do you handle the fact that some students need 2x time than others? How do you structure your exams so that students who can't take them during the test time are able to? How do you handle students who have permission to miss instruction to deal with medical treatments?
The classroom is where the culture war meets reality. Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations they will never find themselves in. But in the classroom, things get real. For example, when a trans student asks you to call them by their preferred pronoun, what do you do in that situation? For most professors it's not a hypothetical, it's just something that happens on the job. So you need to have a real answer for these things, and not a political answer or a talking point.
The diversity statement is a really good way to open up a dialogue about these topics. So let's look at the diversity statements you brought up, and what you had to say about them:
> they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US"
Because the purpose here isn't to recite some sort of identity credentials, but to articulate how one approaches diversity. Many people take the route of talking about how their experience as some sort of minority has given them a unique perspective. If a white male feels they have something similar to say, at least I know I would be happy to read that. Today men are a minority on many campuses and this is becoming an issue. Many faculty I know would love to hear more about that.
But I fail to see anything egregious in these examples. From these letters we learn that people have experience running programs for underserved youth, running a lab that people from all backgrounds join, starting programs that build community, etc. These are all good things that are articulated, and reading these statements makes me want to meet them and ask them more questions!
Anyway, you dodged this question:
There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers that an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"?
If diversity statements are wrongthink, then how do you vet candidates?
alaxhn · 1h ago
I think we could nitpick each other's position but at the end of the day we just have philosophical differences so I won't dive into every detail before making my broader point.
> I'm taking an apolitical position
We've been over this already.
Just because you do not wish that your position is political doesn't make it so.
> Your job is to help all those people succeed at math.
Yes. Well our job is at least to help some of them succeed at math because they won't all succeed statistically https://umbc.edu/stories/math-awareness-needed-to-raise-math... "For instance, in 2022, only 31% of graduating high school seniors were ready for college-level math – down from 39% in 2019.". We disagree on how best to accomplish this but metrics (e.g. PISA, NAEP or any way we have come up to evaluate this) indicate we have not achieved any incremental progress in decades even though cost per pupil has dramatically increased (e.g. student teacher ratio has declined dramatically). So I might humbly suggest that the approaches we have taken so far have not been successful.
> Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations
Are you trying to suggest that most of us who disagree with you and others like you haven't set foot in a classroom? This is unhinged.
> There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers that an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"?
It's likely that many of your goals regarding language, cultural, and "disability" (I put this in quotes because some are real and other times people pretend to have a "disability" in order to turn in their homework late) cannot be met in a way that is acceptable to the right so you need to either drop these goals or accept that you are going to lose funding in support if you attempt to accomplish these goals.
"We" are asking you to drop things that "we" consider harmful. Initially "we" attempted to negotiate (https://president.columbia.edu/news/our-next-steps, https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...) but "we" were rebuffed. I believe the strategy now is a to make a few prominent examples of what will happen if "your" side is unwilling to budge on "your" position regarding things like diversity letters in the hiring process in the hopes that the next tier of institutions has a change of heart or at least pretend to for a few years. You and I have a difference of opinion much like I might have a difference of opinion with a fundamentalist christian who wants to use taxpayer money to teach about creationism. I and many others like me will happily vote for candidates who will take a sledgehammer to any institution that wishes to institute things like diversity statements. Now that "we" are in power the onus is on educators to decide if this is the hill they want to die on. I still find it very sad that we couldn't reach a compromise that left American institutions in a strong position to be scientific leaders in their space but unfortunately the levers available to political leadership are crude and time is short (I would also argue that "my" leadership is headed up by a geriatric unintelligent narcissist who does a lot of damage when he lashes out but I guess that can't be helped right now).
I hope you have a great rest of your day - I'm done here but I do wish you all the best!
Curtis Yarvin really needs to become a household name in a know-thy-enemy sort of way.
That should've happened back when J.D. Vance was even announced as Trump's VP pick. That should've happened even more back when Yarvin attended Trump's inaugural gala as a guest of honour.
miffy900 · 6h ago
From the wikipedia article:
> Curtis Yarvin began constructing the basis of the ideology in the late 2000
Ah yes of course this dude is involved. The more I read about Curtis Y, the more I believe he suffers from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness.
input_sh · 6h ago
No work of fiction prepared me for the most influential "intellectual" to be a dude with a Substack blog that acts as a how-to guide on how to overturn a democracy, which is then followed by the most powerful country in the world a full election cycle after it started being written.
CamperBob2 · 5h ago
At this point, if it turns out Yarvin's real name is Randall Flagg, I wouldn't even blink.
jorblumesea · 7h ago
neo-fascism because eggs were expensive, nice job American voters.
jaoane · 7h ago
It's not surprising that people chose being able to afford food over intellectualism.
chneu · 6h ago
Lol no. White Americans are upset that theyre being held responsible for our racist and bigoted past.
Trump is a result of white Americans having to deal with our racist past and the reaction.
Unfortunately nobody likes to be told their success is built on slavery and theft, so we wind up with this wild backlash.
This is a tantrum from white Americans who don't want to be called racist, transphobic, even though they are.
A month or two ago a podcast, I believe Radiolab, straight up asked the woman who was responsible for many of the book bans in the US. Her reply was seriously that she didn't want her kids to feel bad for what their ancestors did.
It's seriously just a tantrum from white Americans who want to deny our history. That's the most American thing I can possibly imagine.
I wish I was kidding but that's really what it is. White Americans get suuuuper upset if you bring up these things.
Remember when Hilldog called trump supporters "deplorables" and his ratings shot up?
suzzer99 · 6h ago
They chose transphobia and xenophobia over intellectualism. Eggs were just an excuse to nudge them in the way their amygdalae wanted to go. See: Trump telling his base to suck it up on egg prices, and suddenly no one cares anymore.
jorblumesea · 7h ago
Americans can afford food. We are nowhere close to 19th century french peasant levels of problems.
Imagine throwing 300 years of democracy and tradition out the window because food prices went up 30%. It went up all over the world but America is the only place that is actively throwing bricks through our own windows.
reads more like a childish temper tantrum than any coherent political move.
geodel · 6h ago
I think poet Maya Angelou got this right with:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Seems like lot of voters weren't feeling good in previous administration.
chneu · 6h ago
Newt Gingrich dropped the famous "feels over reals" line on CNN.
"You have your facts on the left and we have our facts on the right" is basically what he said. Along with "If people feel one way then that's real." He isn't wrong, but he openly admitted to manipulating people to get them to feel certain ways.
it's hard to tell if you're acknowledging the false dichotomy, or advocating for one side of it.
munchler · 7h ago
The name is as dumb as the movement. Do they not realize that the word “enlightenment” has the word “light” right there inside it? It’s like asking for cold hot water.
makeitdouble · 7h ago
Using cognitive dissonance is a tried and true way to stop people from thinking too much about what you're really trying to say.
Braxton1980 · 9h ago
I get flak for hating Republican voters with the general feeling of most people being that voters are not responsible for the officials THEY elected to represent them.
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.
Boogie_Man · 9h ago
In what way would you like to hold them responsible? If there are reprisals for voting, do we live in a liberal democracy?
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.
Braxton1980 · 12m ago
>If there are reprisals for voting
That's what's happening now..
>"hold responsible" you mean "be mad at them"
You make it sound simplistic. I mean calling them out, demanding an explanation. You have friends who support this then let them know you think they are wrong.
All these horrific regimes throughout history, how did it happen? The majority of people agreed with it or was a vocal minority left alone because most people just wanted to avoid conflict?
I call this selfish. It's like hoping the problem gets solved later that way you get to maintain your relationships.
ceejayoz · 9h ago
> In what way would you like to hold them responsible?
Being shamed into a little introspection wouldn't hurt.
firesteelrain · 9h ago
This goes both ways.
Braxton1980 · 6m ago
Why would you feel the need to state this? Obviously it would and it should. If Trump was a Democrat and the same situation was occurring then Democrat voters should be called out
vaidhy · 9h ago
Voters face the consequence for their voting. So, in that meaning, they are responsible for the actions of the representatives.
Braxton1980 · 4m ago
What Republican voter is facing consequences for this specific situation?
I do appreciate this notion as I read articles of government workers fired who supported Trump (why a person working for the government would vote Republican is beyond me).
Many of Trumps actions attack those that would either likely never vote Republican or can't vote (illegals, groups on special visas that lost them, foreign students, etc)
onlyrealcuzzo · 9h ago
Except sometimes the first order consequences are far greater than second order, and you vote for people who have first order consequences on others.
vaidhy · 9h ago
yes, but that is just a form a political attrition war
woopwoop · 9h ago
Most people don't think hard or carefully about politics, and their political views are a very tiny fraction of what they give to the world (this is true even for most people who do think hard and carefully about politics, by the way). Their vote is never pivotal, and their views do not shape any major institutions.
0xbadcafebee · 8h ago
Why would you want a valid argument for holding a voter responsible for the actions of representatives? Arguments have nothing to do with it. Just hold them responsible, or not, for any reason. It makes no difference.
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.
orochimaaru · 9h ago
Exactly what “consequence” are you talking about? Voting by design is protected from retribution.
There are consequences that can follow in response to protected actions that don't rise to the level of prohibited retribution.
For example I can give a speech in a public square where I advocate some completely stupid conspiracy theory and I do it in the most offensive language possible pissing off everyone who hears, and be protected by the First Amendment.
That doesn't stop you from inferring from that speech that (1) I'm an idiot and (2) I'm a very unpleasant person to be around and then based on those inferences declining to hire me if I apply to you for a job. Neither idiots nor assholes are protected classes so you are free to discriminate against me. That you learned that I'm an idiot and asshole through my First Amendment protected speech shouldn't be relevant.
If someone lets it be known who they voted for and their reasons something similar could happen.
tormeh · 8h ago
It's more of an ethical question. Were the people who voted for Hitler bad people because they voted for a bad person? I'd argue that they were. You can't just vote for a horrible person and then say you had nothing to do with the consequences. I'm not the one you replied to, but I assume this is something family related, a la "just because grandpa voted for Trump doesn't mean he's a bad person".
bluGill · 8h ago
People didn't have good choices. There was plenty to not like about the Democrats as well. You can argue who is worse, or even if the concerns are valid, but there are plenty of things many people don't like about how the democrats use their power. As such what was a voter to do?
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...)
cycomanic · 8h ago
This is not a "both sides are bad" issue. Literally one side was openly advertising a culture revolution and remaking the US into a fascist state and the other side was using policies to improve minority participation in institutions. Even if you were completely opposed to "woke" issues, the alternative was voting for a dictator.
bluGill · 6h ago
Quit shooting the messanger and think. if you cannot understand your ophonents you are no better than them.
krapp · 8h ago
People may not have had a good choice, but they had an obvious choice. The status quo of a Harris term - even considering the likely negatives, her pandering to the right and pro-Zionist stance - would have been objectively preferable to Trump. What is a voter to do? Not vote for the greater evil because they aren't in love with the lesser evil.
bluGill · 6h ago
They strongly disagree. This is not a debate here - I didn't vote for Trump for a number of reasons. However I make an effort toiundertand because that is the first step to try to figure out how to win. When you just name call you ensure you lose
orochimaaru · 7h ago
Well, it’s not the popular vote but the electoral college. There may be plenty of people in blue states who voted for Trump because they were fed up with democrats having foisted an unelected candidate on them. They would for the most part know that the vote kinda doesn’t count - e.g. if you live in CA or IL. In this case you’re mostly voting to make a point.
So with the current system, that varies. If it’s a popular vote, then I’d say you have a point.
Aperocky · 9h ago
Are they not?
pedroma · 6h ago
I would just never vote if that's the case.
j_timberlake · 3h ago
What about the Dems who primaried Hillary and Biden, ruining the 2016 and 2024 elections? All they had to do was pick someone at least mildly likable and not so old that they'd bomb a 2nd election.
Jensson · 8h ago
> 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.
Does that apply to Gaza as well? Or is it just when people you don't like vote?
There is a reason we don't do this, why we didn't punish everyone who voted for Hitler etc.
squigz · 9h ago
I'm a bit confused what you're suggesting here. In what way should people be "held responsible for the actions of representatives"?
shiandow · 9h ago
That does sound a bit iffy. Not to mention that the ability to vote for who you want without repercussions is rather important to a democracy.
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?
josefritzishere · 9h ago
I find Trump's behavior to be incoherent. In some quarters he's virtually an anarcho-capitalist. In others, like this, he's anti-capitalist, intensely regulating a private business for no actual benefit.
dudinax · 9h ago
Because he's not either of those things. He's a self serving tyrant. He has no philosophy of governing the state because he doesn't care about governing the state.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 9h ago
There is no coherent ideology. Only what he thinks is good for him at the present moment, which may in some cases be influenced by the most recent person he spoke with.
cosmicgadget · 8h ago
He doesn't conform to a political ideology, everything he does is for personal benefit/gratification and punishing his enemies. In this case Harvard didn't capitulate to his oversight demands.
Rapzid · 8h ago
Trump honest to God thought the literal letters "MS13" were tattooed on that guy's hands and Terry Morgan was gaslighting him..
I don't think Trump is really running the show here.
jleyank · 9h ago
What will the HN crowd do when Y Combinator's banned from foreign participants?
anonymousDan · 9h ago
As if the powers that be at YCombinator wouldn't roll over for Trump like all the other tech quislings.
criddell · 8h ago
Would you characterize Harvard as rolling over for Trump?
anonymousDan · 6h ago
No, the opposite!
alephnerd · 8h ago
YC has been funding and mentoring foriegn startups for a long time.
During the pandemic, the remote first model lead to a number of fairly successful early stage investments such as Orange Health and BharatX
fzeroracer · 9h ago
The HN crowd here? A mixture of 'I told you so' posts, some fascists posting with glee that their perceived enemies are getting kicked in the knees and probably a few centrists desperately still trying to find a way to spin it in a positive manner.
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]
write blogposts about how the real threat has always been wokeness
apercu · 9h ago
If you voted for this admin, please go get your own flag and give me mine back.
boothby · 9h ago
Careful what you wish for, the last change to the US flag appears to have been accomplished through an executive order. If isn't a red field with a gold T in the middle come July, I'll be moderately surprised.
As always, a reminder that this administration has Silicon Valley money and people up and down its roster. The founders should refuse to take money from the VCs that support this regime, and the engineers should refuse to work for portfolio companies. Things will change quite rapidly if that becomes the norm.
bananapub · 9h ago
can't wait to hear what all those earnest "Worried About Free Speech In Universities" right wingers will have to say about this, now it's just not getting heckled for being an arsehole
Loughla · 8h ago
The problem is your argument expects them to be arguing in good faith. Which they are not doing.
gigatexal · 7h ago
Trump: I’m dumb and want to make everyone else dumb too so I can be the smartest among the dumb dumbs. I know! I’ll prevent the best and brightest from abroad who pay full tuition to attend the best American universities because I’m a xenophobe. I’m so smart!
MAGA destroying universities smh.
snvzz · 2h ago
Reminder every international student that attends Harvard is a national one that cannot.
Trump is simply saying let's focus on our own people.
platevoltage · 1h ago
If that was the case, this would be applied to every university. You can't be that naive to believe Trump wants to focus on our own people given how he's ravaged social safety nets.
hollerith · 1h ago
What social safety net has he ravaged and how? Please remind me.
platevoltage · 1h ago
I probably should correct my tenses. I was referring to his "Big Beautiful Bill.", which only a Republican controlled senate stands in the way of.
hollerith · 1h ago
Thanks. I see that the bill tightens the criteria for getting Medicaid.
guywithahat · 7h ago
Honestly I'm just mad at Harvard, they're playing chicken with their students future to try and one-up Trump. They should just end their DEI programs and comply with federal law, it's literally that simple.
For my entire life Republicans have been too scared to do anything that may hurt the economy, and so while Democrats took over major institutions by banning their competition, Republicans just rolled over. It's good to see they're actually standing up for themselves this time around
magicalist · 6h ago
> They should just end their DEI programs and comply with federal law, it's literally that simple.
Columbia tried to comply with their made up "federal law" requirements to try to get their funding restored and instead got more cut, so...
This might not be a bad idea. Setting up satellite institutions in other countries as backup, for example.
j_timberlake · 4h ago
Academia let itself get too political these last 10 years and deserved some kind of reckoning for it, yet somehow this manages to be so shameless that it makes academia look like the good guys standing up to an oppressive regime.
Which means Harvard leadership actually has more reputation to gain by fighting this than by backing down, very similar to all those tariffed countries.
platevoltage · 1h ago
So academia being political was a bad thing, but now it's a good thing. How does that make any sense?
> 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.
It used to be harder and mostly seems to be a matter of ICE finding the right door to break down now.
Can you expand - what happened?
No comments yet
ONLU READ THIS B(L)OG OF ENTERNAL STENCH AT YOUR OWN PERIL! AND DONT FALL IN, YOU NEVER BE RID OF THE SMELL. FOREVER!
BUT OUR FRIEND SHIP SILL REMAIN INTACT!
=====
Yes, the rules of Senate and Republican districts has been strongly in Republican's favor, and will be increasingly in their favor for many reasons, some many practical.
They are are the elite white, not a frekle. (Ha, had! Sleeplessness is making me silly!)
The low populations states that tend to vote Republican, get the minimum number of House representatives, and equal Senators, despite not meeting proportional citizen populations on the form, and having much fewer constituents. pers Senator for the latter.
So they are structurally better represented.
That is locked in stone.
Then demographic trends give them a widening lead as Democrats voluntarily migrate into dense democratic zones, usually cities, while Republicans remain more distributed. This results in a very effective "crack and pack" situation between districts, heaily under valuing Democratic votes. It would be a sign of major corruption, except the demographic moves are all voluntary.
Finally, power in the Republican party has become highly centralized, including getting local and state political fights to be based primarily on national issues. Natural difference in state situtations no longer results in states having to negotiate with each other.
It also facilitates to party money efficiently moving around, supporting candidates who need help with resources they never earned in any way. But if they vote in line, they get the funding.
There are many other factors. Not all nefarious, just artifacts of happenstance of ancient Constitutional negotiation.
But the result is the same, Republicans are likely to increase their advantages for the next couple decades at least.
The packed Supreme Court is magnifying, if not repreatedly compounding these problems. Money = free speech? Well we have instutionalized that the rich have more free speech.
And that is before all \ Republican states do behave corruptly, tilting voting rules in their favor, and further packing their judicial districts with extremely overt, and often highly unqualified, Republican partisans, who follow orders or have genuinely bought in to "Conservative" ideology (somehow without awareness of its constant churn), right up to a super majority of Republican leaning partisans in the supreme court.
And gneral corrupt government practices are getting more common, thanks in large part to a significant figure who claiming any corrupt before him, justifies his the existence of any corruption before him, his constant embrase of it. With his voters on board, because Trump winning must mean they are winning? Even if those stakes, and Trump University diplomas bombed.
My kids are traumatized. They don't care about parties, but they care deeply about climate change, reasonable efforts for equal treatment of trans peeple (better stated as a priority for treating all people equally). All while they struggle with a perverse economy of richer getting richer, using real estate like bitcoin as a place to "park" money, driving up housing costs for financial reasons that having nothing to do with normal supply and demand curves grounded in housing utility.
Taxation of total land and property perversely cuts taxes for owners of unused property, and increases taxes for those that construct valuable assets on property. It is a wealth tax that happens to really hurt the poor and middle class.
This list of problems goes on and on, despite many of them being identifiable and fixable.
First congress abdicated their own check on the president, Now the judicial system is waffling between maximizing presidential power to ignore/repurpose concressial funden problems, aut the judicial system is intermitently handing power over themselves. Supreme Court's can no longer charge a presicent with treason, no matter how corruptly he uses "official acts" to renrich himself, and create barriers for democratic checks, such as the press, and freedom of attorney's to challenge presendents, bu lawfulling repsresentng clients.
And on to of all that, we have a toxic narcissist who leverages entertaining haose, cerates atrain wreck news cycle, all in the servive is snowing anyone who thought hew would lower inflaction and the debt.
His north star is plaininly self-enrchment, making enefies, and vilifying peopel, and a morbit need for any attention, good or bad. We are a toy to him. Deaths and inustice only service his purpose if he can shock us with his disregard for them.
Que, the "6th dimensional chess" human centapide. Keep eating that crap! Trust the doctor!!
before simple things like a president whose north stars are money and attention, who happens to have years experience with graft and self-promotion.
I think I need to sleep now!
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...
I mean seriously, if a malicious saboteur was running things, what would the differences be?
twists mustache, not really caring about the answer
Luckily after the midterms the moderates will get elected so they can sit on their hands and do absolutely nothing except punch left
Meanwhile the hard right will go even harder and call the moderates "the radical left" and they'll win the seats back the next election as the moderates punch left again and say that's why they lost.
All these policies will be left exactly in tact. Nothing will be attempted to be rolled back. They'll do effectively nothing at all. Indistinguishable from simply vacating the office for their term.
They have a strong rigorous fundamental belief in doing absolutely positively nothing at all about anything. At all.
Gotta love the Democrats
We've all had bad bosses ... and that's a problem, but it's 10x worse when the people around know better and do nothing.
Meamwhile the Republicans, while making headway, aren't doing it in a way that will last beyond the next Democratic administration. I'm speaking of the overuse of executive orders when legislation is what is required.
So if you can find equally qualified American students on the margin shouldn't you do so? I think an American university that benefits greatly from American taxpayers and institutions should primarily benefit American students. If you're picking truly exceptional student, that's one thing. But I don't think that's happening.
Harvard is a tiny university at the absolute top of the prestige hierarchy. As far as they are concerned, every serious (non-legacy/donor) applicant is a truly exceptional student. At least to the extent it can be determined from the admission materials and a short interview. They could choose randomly from all good enough applicants with no noticeable impact on academic standards.
But Harvard is not in the business of educating the most deserving. Instead, they want to educate the ones who will be successful and influential in the future, and to give them the best networking opportunities possible. The standard joke is that if the admissions officer knew that the applicant would become a tenured professor at Harvard, they would reject the applicant for the lack of success. Most Harvard graduates fail to reach that standard, but it's better to choose a likely failure (and an unlikely unicorn) over a certain failure.
PhD admissions are another story. At that stage, Harvard starts caring a lot more about academic potential. They don't want to restrict their recruitment to the US, because Americans are only a small fraction of the people with access to good education. Especially because Americans are reluctant to do a PhD due to the low pay effectively mandated by public research funders.
I know it's fun to dunk on legacy admissions but legacy students are actually more qualified by objective measures than non legacy. It makes sense that some genetics that predisposes children to an academic environment gets passed on. Not to mention the fact that their parents value education. This holds up even when you compare them against their non legacy peers in the same parental income bracket.
https://mleverything.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-legacy-adm...
That’s exactly why this consternation about “the best and the brightest” is overblown. Harvard is a nerve center for enabling international elite to rub elbows. E.g. the good-for-nothing son of Bangladesh’s former PM went to Harvard for his MPA.
https://www.harvard.edu/about/history/nobel-laureates/
https://www.nature.com/nature-index/research-leaders/2024/in...
https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/history-hms/timeline-disco...
https://www.harvard.edu/in-focus/innovation/
Roughly a third of the 50-something of Harvard's Nobel laureates were immigrants by the way.
No comments yet
I mean they will now with a candidate pool reduction of 96%...
The rest is kinda wild. I guess Ilya Sutskever should leave? Sergey Brin would have never started Google, Jony Ive would be in the UK, Jensen Huang and Nvidia would be hailing from Taipei, Elon Musk would be in Johannesburg, Linus Torvalds would still be in Finland, the Rasmussen brothers would have launched Google maps in the Netherlands, Satya Nadella would be in Hyderabad, the Broadcom CEO would be in Malaysia...
You're beheading like 50% of the S&P my friend...
Not to mention say, the faculty of engineering at places like MIT https://www.eecs.mit.edu/role/faculty-cs/
To me places like Stanford and Caltech are world class schools that happen to be in the US. Over 90% not being American born is what I'd expect from a globally renown world class institution because that's what the world population looks like.
China has many programs to attract top global talent. If you want to fast track the transition from Silicon Valley to Beijing, kicking out the foreigners is an excellent move.
Graduate level coursework at Peking is already in English. All these scholars have to do is get on a plane.
And that's why we call it MAGA Maoism.
Of course, in America’s future of autarky and Shogunate-style isolationism, those skills will no longer have any value, even to the elite. There’s no need to learn about other countries if everything we need is produced here and no one could ever threaten us once America is made great again. (/s maybe?)
> A lot of foreign students from Harvard are Chinese. Seems kind of weird that they were found to discriminate against American Asians and then they import foreign Asian students.
How do I put this delicately - the Race part is not what is bringing the difference in lived experience.
On top of that many students stay in the US afterwards means a brain plus for the US and a loss their home country. These kind of braun drain is a big advantage for the US they know destroy.
Same is true for income from foreign student tuition fees.
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.
I doubt that most of those people are reliant on student visas.
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.
There is a mechanism for that transfer built into the visa, which could be used for example if your professor moved institutions and wanted to re-hire you to fulfil the original goals of your exchange program.
It's unclear if this affects all foreign academic staff, many of whom who would be on the J, or just the F visa.
Edit: apparently all exhange visas.
not that i agree with that anyways (citizenship is stupid, borders are stupid, countries are stupid blah blah blah) but it's pretty clear we're currently dealing with a regime that's willing to use ambiguous regulations in malicious ways (no comment on previous regimes, they're all bad, don't call me a HN Democrat or whatever).
Millions of people worldwide have values that are radically different from yours or mine or >99% of people reading this. Consider, a country like Afghanistan-no doubt there are millions of Afghans who oppose the Taliban and are trapped under the rule of a government whose policies and values they radically oppose - and they are denied any realistic outlet to advocate for change using non-violent means-but, at the same time, there are also millions of Afghans who support the Taliban, who think it is great and its values and laws and policies and actions are all wonderful-do you really want millions of pro-Taliban Afghans to be allowed to move to your country if they want to and can afford to do so, and be allowed to vote in your elections as soon as they turn up? This isn’t saying we should ban immigrants or refugees from Afghanistan, only have some kind of filtering process which excludes those with radically opposed values, such as those who are pro-Taliban - and, so nobody thinks I’m singling out Afghans for special treatment, there are several other countries for which the same concern exists (consider e.g. Iran, North Korea), and such a “filtering process” can be designed to work in a way which treats immigrants/refugees of different nationalities/ethnicities/religions equally. But complete abolition of citizenship and immigration control would leave your country at the mercy of chance in terms of protection against takeover by newcomers with radically different values, and although in the short-run you’d escape that outcome (even if they were all free to come, most of them either don’t want to or can’t afford to), in the long-run the odds that you’d succumb to it only go up. And such a policy is fundamentally unstable, in that it would eventually become the cause of its own demise: once these newcomers with radically different values (whatever those values might be) take over, their new values will cause them to reinstate immigration and citizenship controls, to prevent anyone else doing to them what they did to you.
That’s not to say I agree with what the Trump administration is doing here - I actually sympathise with some conservative criticisms of Harvard, but this isn’t a gentle federal nudge in the right direction, it is attacking Harvard with a legally dubious sledgehammer - but just because an administration abuses immigration laws (something many governments around the world have done many times before) doesn’t change the fact that some degree of legal control of immigration and naturalisation is the right thing to have in principle
The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited US citizenship by naturalisation to “free white persons” of “good moral character” - yes, it didn’t technically bar immigration from people who didn’t meet that criterion, but it reduced them to an underclass who were denied citizenship - and this was prior to the 14th Amendment, so there was no constitutional right to birthright citizenship even for their children born in the US.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (still on the books but long dormant until recently revived by Trump) gave the federal government the power to deport citizens of countries at war with the US - effectively banning them from immigrating. The Alien Friends Act of 1798 allowed the President to deport any foreigner based on the President’s subjective determination that they were “dangerous”- however, it expired in 1800 and was not renewed.
In the early years of US independence, there were state laws enabling deportation of immigrants - e.g. in 1794 Massachusetts responded to the “problem” of poor Irish immigrants with a state law authorising their deportation back to Ireland, and several were actually deported under this Act. While nowadays, state-level deportation laws would surely be struck down as intruding into an exclusive federal domain, the lack of broad federal deportation statutes for much of the 18th/19th centuries left open a (since closed) constitutional space in which state-level deportation laws could exist
Even prior to US independence, British law gave the colonial authorities the power to deport people they viewed as undesirable - rarely exercised, but it legally existed - and the main reason they rarely exercised it was they didn’t get many “undesirable” immigrants turning up
Note I’m not defending these laws - judged by today’s standards they were racist and deeply unfair - just pointing out that the “first 100 years” of the US wasn’t as “open borders” as you paint it as having been
And while no doubt historically (and even today) many immigration laws have been racist in their terms, motivation, or implementation - I don’t think the idea of having some restrictions on immigration is inherently racist. Almost every country on earth (even non-Western) nowadays has laws saying people convicted of very serious crimes cannot immigrate without special permission - is it “racist” if Botswana says to someone just released from serving a 20 year prison sentence for terrorism “sorry, we don’t want you”?
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...
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
My main point, though, was this: (1) the information required to maintain SEVIS program is statutorily defined, so the government doesn’t get to arbitrarily expand that and then punish a school for noncompliance; and (2) we know of at least one category requested information that they are not allowed to ask for and that implicates nothing other than the exercise of a student’s First Amendment rights.
Seeing as it’s private most likely won’t see it via FOIA
But the April 16 DHS request to Harvard wasn't routine. It invoked 8 CFR § 214.3(g)(1), which covers ad hoc or investigative information requests by DHS. That section gives DHS broad power to request any time the records needed to assess a student’s compliance with immigration status.
Our immigration system is so profoundly screwed up, and there is no doubt the executive agencies have wide powers to draw on, but they’re not even trying to provide a fig leaf of legality. It’s straight, “Comply or suffer!”
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.
When you revoke the degree of a sitting president, that costs him...?
> 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.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/politics-elec...
For instance, I don't think smoking weed is wrong, but if I go tell an officer you have weed in your car, I have ratted you out despite nothing 'wrong' happening.
Pretty much a guarantee that Harvard will choose to stay the course. This is the quintessential organization that thinks along the lines of, "100 years from now Harvard will still be Harvard. And Trump will be one of the answers on a middle school history exam".
Expect escalation.
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?
What you describe is relatively recent development of US foreign policy. In 1959, John F. Kennedy purchased a copy of The Ugly American for all of his fellow US Senators. After Kennedy was elected, many foreign service programs were initiated to leverage soft power. That was JFK's legacy.
Prior to that, the US acted much in the same way as it is today. It came up with Bretton Woods, along with the UK. The people that ran the world were the Averill Harrimans and Prescott Bushes.
In 1956, the US basically told the UK it wasn't going to back the Prime Minister (Anthony Eden) with regards to the Suez Canal. That was probably a sobering indication that the UK was going to be a supplicant in the relationship. The US also returned Vietnam to France (as was policy after WW2), which of course precipitated 20 years of war in southeast asia.
The end of the WW2, and the discovery of the infiltration of Russian agents in the dead Roosevelt administration put Truman in panic mode. The iron curtain and cold war basically turned foreign policy into a huge power grab after the war to position against a perceived threat.
https://www.thehistoryreader.com/us-history/ugly-american-jf...
I will add a little nuance or my take. Balance as always is key. Toxic feminity or hopes/prayers/empathy holism alone is hardly an answer. Would it kill the dems to get some street smarts? No!
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.
On the other hand this could just be seen as aristocracy battling it out over who's more aristocratic while the rest of us trudge on, so...
In recent weeks, thousands of you have sent encouraging messages, asked thoughtful questions, provided candid feedback, and made generous new gifts to the University. Many of you also shared deeply moving stories of how Harvard changed and shaped your lives. Your outpouring of appreciation and support reinforces the importance of our institution and what it represents. Thank you for your commitment to the University and its ideals." It goes in at length, and as the international recipient of a full-ride scholarship you can bet I was happy join in and double my annual gift. Just as trump was able to raise money from his various trials, so to Harvard draws sympathy from this: and while trumps's supporters are many, Harvard's supporters are rich, so it comes out in a wash and is effectively just melodrama to wind us all up with. The Harvard network is wide and varied so while I am sure there are some like your "big Harvard alum" who are cheering attacks on a major source of their own and their country's prestige, but in my circle of conservative alumni friends I have heard exactly the opposite reaction: even those who were still card-carrying Republicans were already apoplectic about the tariff debacle's impact on their net worth so all this petty virtue-signaling against the alma-mater that launched them on their successful careers hasn't done anything to heal the growing rift...
That said, it's not only the Harvard issue that is giving everyone pause, it's the direction of the Administration in general. In fact, for a lot of them, Harvard is the least of the problems the US will be facing the next 20 years due to this Administration. Europe is moving. China is moving. And neither are moving in the direction we thought they were moving prior to Trump coming into office.
My general feel on conservative Harvard/MIT alums is "Buyer's Remorse". A fair sentiment likely shared by most of the nation at this point. I keep hoping that maybe it gets better? At some point, someone, somewhere has to realize the economy, at minimum, has to be brought back in hand. When that happens, maybe we see more movement on these other issues. If it doesn't happen, we'll see movement on new political leadership over the next few election cycles.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You look to be an admin so you can do whatever you want, but I would point out that the only post I made that expressed an opinion is still up [0]. I don’t really have a strong opinion about the issue. I find that I only ever get flagged on HN when I ask clarifying questions on threads like these, presumably because people simply don’t like to be questioned about the claims they are making.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44068235
> I only ever get flagged on HN when I ask clarifying questions on threads like these
We can't know exactly why people flag things, but it may be because it comes across as stirring up controversy with plausible deniability. It looks like you're trying to bait another user into making a comment that is controversial and could be attacked (or considered to be breaking the guidelines), whilst being seen as being a neutral participant yourself.
Of course we can't know your true intention, all we can know is the consequences of this kind of conduct when we see it.
So, given that you seem to care about the guidelines, which we appreciate, we ask you to demonstrate a sincere intent to observe them yourself and also to avoid baiting others into breaking them.
They are literally just fighting for basic academic freedoms.
While what the Trump admin is doing is wrong, Harvard has given them ample cover for their actions. It would be intellectually lazy to assert, even implicitly, that Harvard has no responsibility over the current state of affairs.
That Harvard still has work to do is basically an entirely irrelevant point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman
I suppose there is a possibility that on January 21, 2029 this country won't be viciously angry about the past four years, and everyone associated with it. But I wouldn't want to bet on that.
In the case of Harvard, I think the current observations are most consistent with the following: the Board of Trustees, faculty, and students have currently aligned in their goals - which we might summarize as (1) maintaining independence from the government and (2) the ability to hold/teach specific "controversial" viewpoints (benefits of diversity, anti-colonialism, potentially other "progressive" concepts). I suspect that within the factions the relative importance of these two goals is not balanced. The fact that the coalition has survived much longer than, e.g., Columbia, is somewhat surprising.
My suspicion is that the answer to your question is that the persistent "smacking around" is only in part due to the external factors other replies have mentioned. I think a major piece of the situation can be explained by a change in the power dynamic with the alumni. Under normal circumstances, the faculty presumably hope to maintain long lasting influence over their alumni, which the board of trustees leverage to bring in more money and influence to the university. The current situation suggests that the high-power/high-$$$ portion of the alumni who are in a position to leverage the public conversation about what's going on are not doing it. This implies that the strength of that edge of the power graph is much weaker than it was expected to be. I think it remains to be seen whether this is true. Further observations that would support that would be reduced donations, public complaints, etc. Conversely, increased fundraising and more public support would suggest the opposite.
The key point about the university power network is that USUALLY, the best situation is to avoid situations that actually reveal too much information. Everyone would prefer to believe they have more power than they do. Obviously the alumni are composed of factions, and presumably a large fraction of the potential participants are also members of other organizations with latent power networks and participating in this particular situation would involve expending capital in these other networks with potential reduction in power. Some alumni that have spoken up (i.e., Ackman) are clearly unaligned with the current coalition, and this MAY reflect the fact that the wealthy/powerful group of alumni that have sustained Harvard are really unhappy with the current stances of the university and would like it to shift (return?) to a different set of ideologies. But it's also possible that he represents a minority, and the rest are just nervous about getting involved.
My conclusion from this analysis is that things will persist as they have, with everyone who might be involved hoping that lawsuits will be successful in resolving the situation with the minimum of their involvement. If this approach is unsuccessful, I think we'll end up in a situation where we get a much better observation of the power balance between alumni, faculty, and board (I think the students rarely have as much power as they think they do!).
Funnily, 2 Harvard profs have written the easiest way for me to point out that the media / Information economy in America is broken. (Network Propaganda)
Which would explain why Alumni dont have power, or for that matter any experts. This is fundamentally why Trump is in power, and why decisions that have zero connection to scientific fact or even reality.
Either everyone starts talking in terms of the reality being litigated on Fox and other related networks on the Right, or people find a way to actually engage in a fair debate. Democracy is fundamentally conversation.
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.
1. As the US grew and the workload required to govern it grew, Congress' ability to directly and quickly manage the country was outpaced. Consequently, agencies served as the grease between Congress' high-level actions/funding and the low-level implementation.
2. Due to the ever-adversarial nature of Congress, it was recognized that most Congresses operated slowly, and consequently didn't have the capacity to micromanage at the level required for direct control.
3. Circa 1900, civil service reform by the then-progressive wing of the Republican party pushed for greater isolation of the expertise that drove good government outcomes (in civil service employees) from politicians (administrators).
The flaw Trump revealed was that the President has too much direct power over the civil service, if he chooses to ignore tradition.
This wasn't always the case, and laws that previously restrained the President's ability to fuck with the civil service were substantially relaxed in the 60s - 80s (?).
In any case, the President will keep having too much power until Congress starts taking theirs back.
I think there are almost certainly factions here. I personally think Trump is targeting Harvard because of the above reason. Overall I think the situation is quite bad but that isn't what you asked.
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's impact on campus alumni relationships. 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 don't think it's as simple as this. To my knowledge, Dr. Sian Leah Beilock handled the protests of the past 2 years much better than their counterparts.
So they're frozen out from K-Street in the medium term.
On top of that, a couple extremely active and very wealthy alumni have continued to maintain a grudge and have an ear in the admin
And finally, it's an easy anti-establishment win.
Finally, this is specifically a Harvard College thing - the alumni of other schools at Harvard are much less... let's say idealistic.
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 for your culture war (whichever way you lean).
When you put it like that... should I make some popcorn?
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?
Instead of the hubris to hold onto the job until death and thereby subsequently undo many of the things she spent her life fighting for.
Finding a successor and handing over your power is one of the most important responsibilities of the powerful, when they have a say.
A bit off-topic, but this seems to be an ongoing problem for the Democratic party. They just lost an important vote on a budget bill in the House by a single vote, because Gerry Connolly wasn't willing to give up his House seat and instead clung on until he (very predictably) died of cancer a few days ago.
Dont believe it for a second. The Republican Party moves in lockstep.
Personally, I think we've started on a path to self-destruction that can't be reversed.
Do you mean, 'we' as in the US, or 'we,' as in humanity?
[either way, I'm not saying you're wrong :( ]
I expect McConnell to be an advocate for harm. But RBG could have made a decision that made it impossible for the GOP to flip her seat in the way that she did. I expect people that are ostensibly fighting for the same things as me to act in ways that help achieve that.
> 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 or the grad schools like HKS and HBS 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.
On it! I agree with you 100% - it's horrid.
> But really I don't see how that's relevant in the face of the current crisis
There are some interpersonal relations and egos that got mixed into this, along with a very cynical anti-establishment play. It takes a couple bad apples to spoil the batch, and that's what it feels like has happened. I was a Gov secondary during the Obama years so I bumped into a lot of the people who ended up on either side of the political and cultural divide. I feel digging into that helps explain how this has really snowballed. It's been a rolling crisis for a couple years now.
> 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
I agree, but ignoring some of the ego and personal clashes that has caused this crisis means you lose the bigger picture.
Even though he went to a prestigious school himself he's not the kind to make an academic pursuit resembling anything like truly sensible Presidents. The complete opposite of the league of actual accomplished Harvard men like Bush and Obama. What a weenie, Trump is probably just jealous and hates himself and everyone else because he'll never measure up to people having average-to-above-average intellect & integrity. Completely on brand to whine like a child with the most amplified voice he's ever had. So that's what he's going to do instead of something worthwhile for the citizens.
Major players, regarding the Gaza/Hamas issue:
- Harvard itself. The administration, not the faculty or students.
- The US Eastern Establishment, the Ivy League and its graduates. They once ran the US, and still run finance, but are less influential politically than a few decades ago.
- The Netanyahu faction in Israel. Understanding this requires more info about Israeli politics than is worth posting here. Wikipedia has a summary.[1] There are a huge number of factions. Netanyahu leads a coalition. The coalition seems to need an enemy to hold it together.
- MAGA. "Project 2025" is the MAGA playbook. Despite some denials, the Trump administration has mostly been following that playbook.
- Israel's lobby in the US, starting with AIPAC. American Jews as a group average left of center, but the Israel lobby is hard-right.
- Major donors to Harvard. Some are closely associated with the Israel lobby and vocal about it. Others aren't.
- The US courts. Anyone can bring a case to court, and courts have to do something about it.
- Trump.
Minor players:
- Fox News. 23 of Trump's appointees came from Fox News. The MAGA base listens to Fox News.
- The United Nations. Provides some aid, but hasn't been able to do more than that.
- US Congress. Has the real power, but is too divided to do anything with it.
- Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. They're the ones most affected, but lack any real power at this point. It's not even suggested that they be represented in international meetings.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Israel
Furthermore, they are effectively part of the Republican Party. So they create and maintain a political reality which is purpose built to achieve political goals.
The underlying assumption of western liberal democracies is that participants can figure things out together. You cannot figure things out when you have one side intentionally creating alternate narratives to stymie conversation and debate, to shore up negotiating power for the leaders of their bloc.
Side question I've been wrestling with to whoever feels like commenting: At what point would you look at our current US situation and say "yep, we're now in a dictatorship"
As of now there's no way for the state to enact such a monopoly in the US.
- against opposing members of the legislative branch (lamonica mciver)
- against opposing members of the judicial branch (hannah dugan)
- against opposing members of the executive branch (ras baraka, andrew cuomo)
- against opposing private organizations (harvard, institute for peace)
- against opposing private individuals (chris krebs)
- against defenders of opponents (multiple lawfirms)
- not to mention rewarding private individuals who employed private violence against political enemies -- we saw this during duterte (ashli babbitt, the rest of the insurrectionists)
if there is no monopoly on violence in the usa, who else exactly is the monopolist permitting to use it?
This will mean that the courts are literally powerless against the administration's malfeasance. The executive will be able to do what they like, and even if this bill doesn't pass the senate, SCOTUS will likely strike down as unconstitutional any appointment by the courts of a private attorney to prosecute criminal contempt because it has been stuffed with useful idiots.
This isn't sliding towards fascism, this is speed running 30's Germany.
It is like getting Zuck to kneel and donate $1M. Once he did that, everyone else donated a $1M and peaced out.
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...
A regular corporation with the same fact pattern of discrimination would be looking at a billion+ dollar fine.
this is just Harvard losing some special privilges and being expected to act reasonably fairly like any other publicly funded institution.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-163976813
They're not actually so scientifically productive that we should tolerate discrimination in order to get the fruits of their research.
* 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. ;-)
1. Exert maximun possible pressure
2. Strike the best deal possible
Reasons only matter in the sense of selecting initial targets. Once into dealmaking, it's anything and everything thrown at an opponent.
You can see this in terms of what stops him: equal counterpressure (China) or consequences (US stocks and treasuries being dumped)
Similarly, once a deal is struck, reasons again don't matter.
They may or may not be educated, but they're openly and actively against an educated populace for a multitude of reasons, from resistance to their ideas, to "get to work and start having babies for Christ". They will openly say that the first preference for a male school leaver/graduate should be to find a job, not further education.
Shameless, wrong, and overtly illegal discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and creed, suppression of free speech, even the compelling of speech have all been de rigeur for Harvard for the past decade.
I just wish they would use a scalpel rather than a sledge hammer.
I'm just telling it like it is, as far as I can tell.
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.
No comments yet
1. Maybe most importantly, attacking academic institutions is part of the fascist coup playbook. [1] That could really be enough motivation on its own - these steps have lead to the desired outcome before, if you follow them closely enough they will probably work again. Just like the seemingly out-of-the-left-field framing of DEI, of all things, as the big Enemy that is corrupting art, science and the American people itself. It seems crazy, but notice how well it's working.
2. It's another vase to throw in the air, forcing you to catch it, cartoon-style. People who care and believe in process will spend time and energy going through the court system to limit the damage done, but the defenders will lag behind, their focus divided, while the attackers can just keep breaking bigger and bigger things, since they not care much what damage they do to people or their country.
3. It lets them target pro-Palestine protesters gradually starting from the most extreme. The genocide in Gaza can go a lot further. It is mutually beneficial for Trump, Netanyahu and Putin to divide both domestic and international outrage between them (see point 2.) By the time the full scale of the atrocities are clear, arresting and prosecuting protesters for "antisemitism" will be routine. And if you're not willing to stand up and protest, and therefore be removed, chances are you won't stick your neck out when they instate "temporary" changes to federal elections - only out of some extreme necessity, of course.
[1] https://perspectives.ushmm.org/collection/higher-education-i...
(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).
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 plan.
No comments yet
The movie also sent Upgrayedd but left that story arc for a sequel.
Ackman voted for Trump in 2016.
>1798
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
>1918
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
>>notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds
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.
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.
The most charitable and perhaps the most rational explanation is that the 'propaganda' effort is impressively, surprisingly, exhaustively grassroots [1] and that's why reddit's overlords cannot simply contain it -- after all, it's real people, very committed and very real indeed. Although I would think that even if this were true, were reddit's operators uncompromised, they'd at least feel compelled to investigate the moderators of the subreddit which has a readership of 50 million, because even if the activity is organic, what's going on crosses a certain threshold of what should be permissible, if only for the richness of debate and discussion. I won't approach the complex topic of whether grassroots led propaganda effort constitutes something that is illegitimate and whether it warrants management, moderation, or some sort of penalty.
I'm not extremely educated about the complex history of Israel and jewish people, though I'm trying to learn more these days. Knowing what I know so far: It is a unique group of people for sure, and 2000 years of oppression, I think, has resulted in a special kind of cohesion that even when scattered throughout the world, they partake in strong self-advocacy. In my experience, this kind of self-advocacy doesn't exist with any other group.
I apologize if my comment reads prejudiced or inappropriate, please tell me if it does, certainly and obviously it is not meant to be.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/24/gaza-is...
The regime didn't even exist until after those protests, so let's not go too post hoc here.
"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.
No comments yet
Make no mistake, the Republican party (and half the Democratic Party FWIW) is fully captured by the Israel lobby.
The ability to criticise authority is a defining right of America. How are these teachers supposed to teach the First Amendment?
I've seen no evidence that they are not. So much for inclusion and acceptance from one of the nations leading progressive institutions.
Here's the beginning:
WASHINGTON – Today, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered DHS to terminate the Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.
This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.
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.
“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” said Secretary Noem. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.”
On April 16, 2025, Secretary Noem demanded Harvard provide information about the criminality and misconduct of foreign students on its campus. Secretary Noem warned refusal to comply with this lawful order would result in SEVP termination.
This action comes after DHS terminated $2.7 million in DHS grants for Harvard last month.
Harvard University brazenly refused to provide the required information requested and ignored a follow up request from the Department’s Office of General Council. Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the U.S. government.
I think a fair answer might be that this immediate action is primarily about Israel, and Harvard's toleration and apparent support of organizations that the US government considers to be terrorists. Harvard has quite consciously taken an antagonistic approach here, and the government feels it is responding in kind.
Secondarily, it's about the way that elite schools have aligned themselves with the progressive politics associated with the Democratic party. Harvard is the target here because they are strongest, not necessarily because they are the most liberal. If the government can humble Harvard, they expect that all the weaker institutions will fold without a fight.
Remember when people were really mad about weaponizing the government? I guess that's okay now. Good to know.
I'm glad that despite being immediately being voted to a negative score and pushed to the bottom, some people like you are reading the link. If the goal is to understand what Harvard is up against, I think it's really useful to read what the government is actually claiming. I wasn't expecting that many people here would be persuaded by it!
Yes and this can't be overstated. Interests that were previously aligned are now going to fracture. Everything is up for grabs now.
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.
No comments yet
However I wouldn't extend that line of thinking to stock markets, superannuation etc.
The longer something has been around, the more likely it's going to be around in the future.
https://www.trumpstore.com/product/trump-2028-hat/
> Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.
Or perhaps I misunderstand what they mean with "rewrite the rules".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> order from the Supreme Court to return him.
The Supreme Court did not order that.
Edit: If you object to these things, realize you are helping the Trump administration by spreading exaggerated fears about what's happening. They want people to believe they are super-powerful, unstoppable, inevitable; it intimidates people into inaction. Also, without accurate information, people can't make good decisions and act - you are helping a propaganda campaign (unwittingly). And finally, spreading fear is not what good, responsible leaders - or teammates - do.
We have multiple judges beginning contempt proceedings against the administration, so this is open to debate.
And, there's recent action in the budget bill to attempt to defang judges' contempt powers, seemingly in response.
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued"
No they don't:
https://apnews.com/article/deportation-immigration-south-sud...
Also, Trump is relying on Congress to pass bills, for example. It's not rule by decree.
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.
There is little to no chance of this getting overturned.
People want to study in the US, and the administration is revoking Harvard's ability to be on the list of study destinations.
The students want to go to Harvard, it's not that Harvard wants the students (of course they do, but that's not the direct concern here).
Harvard will sue, lose in court, and then give DHS everything they want at which point they'll get their visas back.
They just want to pretend to be the victim for a while so that their overwhelmingly far-left faculty don't leave.
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.
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.
People who lived under authoritarian regimes have long said that things move slowly at first, but after an inflection point, get real bad, real fast. It's one thing to understand that intellectually, quite another to witness it first hand.
Hopefully, the judiciary will block this particular madness, but then again, given the concerted effort over the past decade by Republicans to appoint right wing judges, the odds are not that great.
If you want an indication why the US could go into dictatorship mode, look no further than to what is happening now. Dictatorship coups are extremely fragile in the initial phase. The very recent example is South Korea. It only takes a few determined people to sabotage the coup. In the same fashion, Trump would immediately stop if enough people where to take it to the street. So far, the silence is extremely loud.
It didn't. Conservatives in this country have explicitly been headed this direction since they decided to never let another Nixon happen. Not that they would prevent another criminal Republican. But they would ensure that Republicans are never punished for behavior like this. It led to Fox News and Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, etc. The writing has been on the wall in plain sight for everyone to see for literally decades. The people who have been pointing it out and stating this is exactly where the country has been headed are called radicals and casually dismissed. The only reason Romney lost is because he didn't lean into the hatred his base was demanding[1]. Trump delivered what they wanted.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/romney-...
If anyone has any counter arguments, I would genuinely love to read them.
There is no political winning, at any time in the future, unless the structural issue with information and news ecosystems is dealt with. The best evidence I have seen, shows that news consumption on the right in America is sealed, and has no traffic with the center or left.
There is no future for ANY liberal democracy, if there is no fair debate between its citizenry. We aren’t even fighting for the table stakes of informed citizenry, but we are talking about the scraps of not debating fantasy.
This isn’t even about misinformation; the total consumption of misinformation as a portion of total content can only shift so much, given the number of hours in a day. It’s not the production of more misinformation which matters - it is the championing of misinformation by leaders that makes it a ‘fact’.
This then decides the talking points for debates. The side which has to do research that requires interrogating reality - slower, probabilistic, uncertain processes - is inefficient when competing with a party that can create facts.
The reason that the Stanford Internet Observatory and other content moderation arms are being targeted, is because for all their warts and issues, these teams were trying to ensure a fair market place of ideas, and as a result ended up slowing the spread of narratives on the right. Or potential new recruits.
https://studyinthestates.dhs.gov/schools/apply/getting-start...
As far as I can tell, the headlines are not quite accurate. From my reading, a more accurate description would be that one cannot obtain a student visa to go to Harvard.
So presumably, if someone could acquire legal residence in another way, they would be free to attend Harvard.
Foreign students normally enter via a non-immigrant visa (F1), or rather they are eligible to apply for that visa at an embassy, if a registered sponsor supports it. The visa permits a request for entry into the country for the purpose of study (at a port of entry). The most important document that you need day to day is a DS-2019 and you must remain "in F1 status" in the SEVIS system for the duration of your program. If you don't leave the US, you don't need another visa even if your original one expires, the university can issue you a new DS-2019 annually until your end-of-program date. That's up to 5 years dependent on the category. If you leave after your visa expires you have to renew it out of the country, which is normally straightforward (using the dropbox system).
The government has not prevented foreign people from studying or working at Harvard, they have withdrawn their ability to maintain status while at Harvard. Hence why they can transfer to another institution.
They will be accommodated.
[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.
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.
the core of free speech isn't if you can insult officers or similar in the larger picture irrelevant things, but the freedom of teaching, education, books etc. And freedom doesn't just means "its theoretical possible" but the absence of suppression, retaliatory actions and similar
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.
“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.”
And yes, Harvard is absolutely a morally dubious institution. Less morally dubious than Trump's movement is, but still.
https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1925631602589151325#m
No comments yet
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."
> 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 mean ... it's still nuts, but slightly different.
Instead of breaking the "keys" (visas) that unlock the doors to Harvard, they're just putting glue in the locks.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/5/23/trump-admin-rev...
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...
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
Spoiler alert: they quickly deteriorate and the next 3-4 cycles become far less free than the election cycle that put them into power.
This Harvard thing is just one example. Just saw a report this morning (Aus time) of an Australian detained, stripped, and held overnight in a US federal prison. She was just coming in to visit her husband.
Who the hell will want to come to the US now? You are going to suffer a massive reverse brain drain. You got a 30% tariff tax, kidnapping of random people off the street including US citizens, blatant and overwhelming corruption at the highest levels, weaponizing of government to target people, institutions and private companies.
Good luck in the midterm 'elections'.
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.
Let’s throw that all away because learning is liberal.
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.
The situation is slowly recovering, as the UK has now first-class access to EU funding programs and there is an open negotiation to bring back home fees for EU students. However, visas are becoming more restrictive and the exceptionally high fees associated with them might be again increasing, which is putting off potential new employees.
Besides, I am not sure Oxbridge has sufficient extra spots for overseas students diverted from the US due to its peculiar tutorial system. There are lots of top EU universities that could collectively benefit from this as they are much cheaper and larger: Heidelberg, TUM, KU, DTU, KI, KTH, etc.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
(/s in case it wasn't obvious)
/s in case not obvious
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.
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.
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?
https://youtu.be/vVJ_Icosa3s?si=urohSO8q_iLFJpg2
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.
Vance is a useful stooge handpicked by Peter Thiel. If push comes to shove, do you think his Yale degree is going to give him any backbone if he's ordered to do something that violates the Constitution? Did Yale provide John Yoo with one when he wrote legal memos justifying the torture of detainees held without charge in Guantanamo 20 years ago? Yoo was ready to ignore the Geneva Conventions then, and Vance is ready to deport US citizens now.
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.
What makes you believe that they are engaging with their religious views in good faith?
I know a great many friends and acquaintances that take their religious studies seriously. I also have met a great many more whose approach is far more cavalier, simply using their beliefs to justify their existing biases and gut feelings, as well as justifying and excusing their own anti-social behavior.
+-------
I'm not thinking that Religion is the problem here.
That point of view still exists in the Republican Party, but it has been eclipsed by something sadder and smaller-minded. Liberal progressives have long used national greatness as a lever on patriotic conservatives, telling them, look, our "national greatness" comes from our embrace of education, cultural change, new people, new ideas. If conservatives love our supposed national greatness, they should embrace the progressive liberal ideals that built it. Now, it's like the Republican Party has been taken over by conservatives who... decided the liberals were right? It's like they gave up and said, y'all are right, national greatness requires education, continual learning and self-criticism, openness to new ideas and new people, and acceptance of creative destruction, both economic and cultural. They accepted that, grieved, faced the choice with clear eyes, and decided that national greatness isn't worth the cost. They look at Russia and see a country that is marinating in its own chauvinism, and they want that instead.
You sound like you don't know any decent Republicans who are really upset at what's happening. I do. They ought to be encouraged to speak up.
It really isn't anymore. I agree that there are many decent "old-time" Republicans, but they've been neutered and/or they've "self-deported" themselves from politics.
Romney might've been able to run and split the vote.
Bush the younger could've put his thumb on the scale, too.
Murkowski says "we are all afraid" [of MAGA].
Many traditional Republican congressmen have simply bowed out and not sought re-election.
McCain is dead.
The only one that I can think of that actually stood up is Liz Cheney.
To use a programming phrase, the country is in an "error state" and has been since 2017.
I don't know what the re-set is.
The fact of the matter is that "the party" is MAGA now, there is effectively no internal resistance, and mounting one is basically intractable. Trump won the primary with 80% of the vote despite "strong" opposition.
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".
Being "grossly uninformed" is no excuse anymore.
For example - The day after Brexit - so many people regretted voting to leave. They could’ve thought about it 24 hours earlier, no? “I was misinformed, uninformed” sounds lazy and shallow, isn’t it? How hard can it be to spend an hour less on Netflix and an hour more learning about what’s on the ballot?
Anyone pikachufacing here is a liar.
(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.)
This is what the Republican party is about.
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.
https://newrepublic.com/article/128107/classier-two-evils
J.D. Vance gave a big speech at the Nationalism Conservatism Conference titled "The Universities are the Enemy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw
Destroying universities has been his schtick since long before he was a VP candidate.
He has stated that he believes 4-year degrees make people dumber.
I'm constantly amazed by how many people don't know that waging wars on Universities has been Vance's thing for years.
This is more like the latter. There aren't many signs of us hitting the bottom thus far.
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.
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.
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".
Republicans and Trump-voting independents signed up for this. They want to see Harvard treated the same way it treats others.
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.
Maybe in reruns of The West Wing. America is a long way past that now.
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.
But we don’t agree on how that should happen.
The underlying problem as I see it is that there aren’t enough slots for students in schools that are socially viewed as “reputable.” It’s not much different from beachfront property in that way.
We’ve allowed schools to build up a “mystique” for generations that a Harvard education or a state school education was the only ticket to the upper middle class…of course it’s expensive. As long as there are waitlists a mile long at nearly every state school, we will never see meaningful reduction in costs. The other way to fix that issue is to insist they build a plan to enroll 30% more students over 5 years.
I don't agree with this international student, and other policies, or implementations, and you can't run government like you run a "move fast and break things" startup, which seems to be how the administration is operating.
But, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, and try to separate Trump's execution from the underlying ideological sentiment.
"If our schools have lost any edge, it’s since Trump came back to power." I completely 100% disagree with this statement. My partner is an education at a University and remote learning had a huge negative impact on our schools and student outcomes. US academic achievement has been flat for decades despite spending and pupil rations going way up https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf. Public schools in certain areas of the country are a complete failure for every student enrolled https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/at-13-baltim... (I choose an example of a left leaning area but obviously there are right leaning examples as well!)
Let me propose what I see as a couple of common sense reforms. Mandate the availability of pre-k nationwide starting at 4. Increase the school year from 180 days to 195 days by reducing the length of summer. If needed make this optional at first. Allow professors to fail students who have not learned the course material and make it illegal for the department to pressure professors to offer the students a way to pass the course.
> why I am very sad that we could not achieve reform without resorting to measures such as threatening the international student admission process
That being said, republicans decided to chose an M1 Abrams tank to kill the pesky mice in the system.
Don't give the guy the credit of being a reasonable adult.
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).
Most people in the course of their job do not closely work with people of diverse backgrounds. People who work at universities will work with people of all backgrounds and abilities. It’s not just about race or gender, but language, mobility, mental disabilities, and so forth. People in roles that deal with so many diverse people need to be able to articulate how in a statement. That’s not unreasonable or political, but just a reality of the job.
Likewise the right does not agree with you that the diversity statement is a positive and non-ideological contribution to the hiring process and if your response is going to be "this is not up for discussion because it is not a political or ideological matter" well... they are going to disagree with you and if they are in charge might respond by cutting funding and support for your institution. That's just a reality of living in a democracy.
Most of these people haven't read a single "diversity statement" and cannot articulate what exactly the hiring process at a university is, and what actual role these statements play in the process. It's mostly ideological posturing about something that sounds scary to them. I'm not saying this isn't up for discussion, but the discussion better be around what the facts are and not the boogey man "the right" created.
At the end of the day the people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students need to articulate and demonstrate that they can do this task. There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers than an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"? They don't have an answer, all they know is they don't like the current process, even though they can't explain what it is.
> people who are being hired to teach in a classroom that will include a diverse group of students
I don't remotely understand how this is relevant to whether a particular instructor should be hired or not. If I need to learn math, then I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with. We can take a look at example diversity statements online https://physicalsciences.ucsd.edu/_files/examples-submitted-... and we will notice people feel empowered to talk about their sexuality, race, gender etc but they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US" but if you swap words to a new value in the relevant categories i.e. "I am a Latinx queer woman from Mexico" this suddenly becomes relevant to the exercise. If changing the color, sexuality, gender, or place of origin for an applicant is relevant to the outcome then this seems like a discriminatory process (https://www.justice.gov/crt/nondiscrimination-basis-race-col...).
I do think it's perfectly ok for people to disagree with me here and I expect that if their representatives get in power we will see funding and priorities shift back towards more required diversity statements while also shifting to allow admissions processes to take into account things like race, sexuality, and gender etc which is just the reality of living in a democracy.
Of course, but I haven't brought up parties, you did. I'm taking an apolitical position from the perspective of an educator looking to just do their job free from interference of political parties. I'm not sure what you do, but I don't suppose you'd enjoy "the left" or "the right" barging in and micromanaging your hiring committee, thinking they know how to do your job better than you.
> I don't remotely understand how this is relevant
Exactly, and that's kind of my point. You are very eager to quote the law at me, but you aren't first willing to spend the time to actually understand the reason for the diversity statements, how they are used, and why they might be necessary at all.
I think that has to do with this:
> I want my instructor to be knowledgeable, personable, patient, good at explanations, and dedicated to their work. I don't care what equipment they have between their legs, what color it is, or who they want to use it with.
You are looking at this from the perspective of a student, who view the job of the instructor as to teach. But the job is not to just teach, it is actually to be a member of the faculty, which comes with may other. One of our primary directives is to build a community that is conducive to learning. And how we do this is by selecting top students for admittance based on scholastic achievement, regardless of background.
Turns out when you do this, and you cast a wide net, a lot of different people end up in your classroom. Get past the culture war nonsense and put yourself in the shoes of an instructor of a math class of 100 students...
85 are from the US, 15 are immigrants and speak English as a second language. For some of them it's the first time in another country.
3 of them have ADHD. 1 is autistic. 8 have a learning disability. 5 have a motor disability. 1 is undergoing treatment for a major medical issue. 20 of them are neurodivergent in some way. 30 of them are suffering symptoms of depression. 1 of them is a psychopath. 30 are first generation students. 35 are low income. 1 is trans.
Your job is to help all those people succeed at math. How might this affect a math instructor? Here are some ways:
- Have you chosen your course materials to take into account low income individuals that can't afford a $200 textbook? Are they accessible by people with disabilities, for example are they available in electronic form?
- Is your lecture style and content appropriate for people from various backgrounds? For example, if all of your material relates back to local anecdotes, are foreign students going to perform well? Does your use of sarcasm and idioms make your content inaccessible to students who do not speak English as a first language, or who do not readily recognize sarcasm?
- What are your course policies for students with learning disabilities? How do you handle the fact that some students need 2x time than others? How do you structure your exams so that students who can't take them during the test time are able to? How do you handle students who have permission to miss instruction to deal with medical treatments?
The classroom is where the culture war meets reality. Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations they will never find themselves in. But in the classroom, things get real. For example, when a trans student asks you to call them by their preferred pronoun, what do you do in that situation? For most professors it's not a hypothetical, it's just something that happens on the job. So you need to have a real answer for these things, and not a political answer or a talking point.
The diversity statement is a really good way to open up a dialogue about these topics. So let's look at the diversity statements you brought up, and what you had to say about them:
> they never proudly mentioned things like "I am a white heterosexual man from the US"
Because the purpose here isn't to recite some sort of identity credentials, but to articulate how one approaches diversity. Many people take the route of talking about how their experience as some sort of minority has given them a unique perspective. If a white male feels they have something similar to say, at least I know I would be happy to read that. Today men are a minority on many campuses and this is becoming an issue. Many faculty I know would love to hear more about that.
But I fail to see anything egregious in these examples. From these letters we learn that people have experience running programs for underserved youth, running a lab that people from all backgrounds join, starting programs that build community, etc. These are all good things that are articulated, and reading these statements makes me want to meet them and ask them more questions!
Anyway, you dodged this question:
If diversity statements are wrongthink, then how do you vet candidates?> I'm taking an apolitical position We've been over this already.
Just because you do not wish that your position is political doesn't make it so.
> Your job is to help all those people succeed at math.
Yes. Well our job is at least to help some of them succeed at math because they won't all succeed statistically https://umbc.edu/stories/math-awareness-needed-to-raise-math... "For instance, in 2022, only 31% of graduating high school seniors were ready for college-level math – down from 39% in 2019.". We disagree on how best to accomplish this but metrics (e.g. PISA, NAEP or any way we have come up to evaluate this) indicate we have not achieved any incremental progress in decades even though cost per pupil has dramatically increased (e.g. student teacher ratio has declined dramatically). So I might humbly suggest that the approaches we have taken so far have not been successful.
> Most online culture warriors are talking about people they'll never meet in hypothetical situations
Are you trying to suggest that most of us who disagree with you and others like you haven't set foot in a classroom? This is unhinged.
> There are real language and cultural barriers, as well as disability barriers that an instructor needs to consider. How can this be done in a way that is acceptable to "the right"?
It's likely that many of your goals regarding language, cultural, and "disability" (I put this in quotes because some are real and other times people pretend to have a "disability" in order to turn in their homework late) cannot be met in a way that is acceptable to the right so you need to either drop these goals or accept that you are going to lose funding in support if you attempt to accomplish these goals.
"We" are asking you to drop things that "we" consider harmful. Initially "we" attempted to negotiate (https://president.columbia.edu/news/our-next-steps, https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...) but "we" were rebuffed. I believe the strategy now is a to make a few prominent examples of what will happen if "your" side is unwilling to budge on "your" position regarding things like diversity letters in the hiring process in the hopes that the next tier of institutions has a change of heart or at least pretend to for a few years. You and I have a difference of opinion much like I might have a difference of opinion with a fundamentalist christian who wants to use taxpayer money to teach about creationism. I and many others like me will happily vote for candidates who will take a sledgehammer to any institution that wishes to institute things like diversity statements. Now that "we" are in power the onus is on educators to decide if this is the hill they want to die on. I still find it very sad that we couldn't reach a compromise that left American institutions in a strong position to be scientific leaders in their space but unfortunately the levers available to political leadership are crude and time is short (I would also argue that "my" leadership is headed up by a geriatric unintelligent narcissist who does a lot of damage when he lashes out but I guess that can't be helped right now).
I hope you have a great rest of your day - I'm done here but I do wish you all the best!
That should've happened back when J.D. Vance was even announced as Trump's VP pick. That should've happened even more back when Yarvin attended Trump's inaugural gala as a guest of honour.
> Curtis Yarvin began constructing the basis of the ideology in the late 2000
Ah yes of course this dude is involved. The more I read about Curtis Y, the more I believe he suffers from some sort of undiagnosed mental illness.
Trump is a result of white Americans having to deal with our racist past and the reaction.
Unfortunately nobody likes to be told their success is built on slavery and theft, so we wind up with this wild backlash.
This is a tantrum from white Americans who don't want to be called racist, transphobic, even though they are.
A month or two ago a podcast, I believe Radiolab, straight up asked the woman who was responsible for many of the book bans in the US. Her reply was seriously that she didn't want her kids to feel bad for what their ancestors did.
It's seriously just a tantrum from white Americans who want to deny our history. That's the most American thing I can possibly imagine.
I wish I was kidding but that's really what it is. White Americans get suuuuper upset if you bring up these things.
Remember when Hilldog called trump supporters "deplorables" and his ratings shot up?
Imagine throwing 300 years of democracy and tradition out the window because food prices went up 30%. It went up all over the world but America is the only place that is actively throwing bricks through our own windows.
reads more like a childish temper tantrum than any coherent political move.
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Seems like lot of voters weren't feeling good in previous administration.
"You have your facts on the left and we have our facts on the right" is basically what he said. Along with "If people feel one way then that's real." He isn't wrong, but he openly admitted to manipulating people to get them to feel certain ways.
https://youtu.be/xnhJWusyj4I
https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
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.
That's what's happening now..
>"hold responsible" you mean "be mad at them"
You make it sound simplistic. I mean calling them out, demanding an explanation. You have friends who support this then let them know you think they are wrong.
All these horrific regimes throughout history, how did it happen? The majority of people agreed with it or was a vocal minority left alone because most people just wanted to avoid conflict?
I call this selfish. It's like hoping the problem gets solved later that way you get to maintain your relationships.
Being shamed into a little introspection wouldn't hurt.
I do appreciate this notion as I read articles of government workers fired who supported Trump (why a person working for the government would vote Republican is beyond me).
Many of Trumps actions attack those that would either likely never vote Republican or can't vote (illegals, groups on special visas that lost them, foreign students, etc)
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.
For example I can give a speech in a public square where I advocate some completely stupid conspiracy theory and I do it in the most offensive language possible pissing off everyone who hears, and be protected by the First Amendment.
That doesn't stop you from inferring from that speech that (1) I'm an idiot and (2) I'm a very unpleasant person to be around and then based on those inferences declining to hire me if I apply to you for a job. Neither idiots nor assholes are protected classes so you are free to discriminate against me. That you learned that I'm an idiot and asshole through my First Amendment protected speech shouldn't be relevant.
If someone lets it be known who they voted for and their reasons something similar could happen.
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...)
So with the current system, that varies. If it’s a popular vote, then I’d say you have a point.
Does that apply to Gaza as well? Or is it just when people you don't like vote?
There is a reason we don't do this, why we didn't punish everyone who voted for Hitler etc.
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?
I don't think Trump is really running the show here.
During the pandemic, the remote first model lead to a number of fairly successful early stage investments such as Orange Health and BharatX
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]
[1] https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-3351-...
MAGA destroying universities smh.
Trump is simply saying let's focus on our own people.
For my entire life Republicans have been too scared to do anything that may hurt the economy, and so while Democrats took over major institutions by banning their competition, Republicans just rolled over. It's good to see they're actually standing up for themselves this time around
Columbia tried to comply with their made up "federal law" requirements to try to get their funding restored and instead got more cut, so...
Which means Harvard leadership actually has more reputation to gain by fighting this than by backing down, very similar to all those tariffed countries.