Harvard Prof Says Universities Shouldn’t Respect Trump Administration Officials

Harvard Prof Says Universities Shouldn’t Respect Trump Administration Officials

Saying something like this about the Obama administration would have cost this professor his job.

Campus Reform reports:

Harvard prof: Universities should not ‘respect’ Trump officials

A Harvard University professor says universities should not give “respect or deference” to Trump administration officials.

Harvard professor Dani Rodrik, in an op-ed for The Boston Globe, calls Trump’s “shameful presidency” a “stain” universities should reject honoring, declaring that administration officials “should not be accorded the degree of respect or deference that their seniority and government positions would normally merit.”

While Rodrik concedes that universities should “be open to diverse viewpoints,” he has an issue with “normalizing and legitimizing…an odious presidency.”

“Trump violates on a daily basis the norms on which liberal democracy rests,” Rodrik claims. “He undermines freedom of the media and independence of the judiciary, upholds racism and sectarianism, and promotes prejudice. He blithely utters one falsehood after another.”

Citing the controversy over the University of Virginia’s appointment of former Trump advisor Marc Short to a senior fellow position, Rodrik criticizes UVA for expressing positive sentiments about anyone with ties to Trump.

“Trump’s close associates and political appointees are his enablers—regardless of their personal merits and how much they try to disassociate themselves from Trump’s utterances,” the professor adds. “Qualities like intelligence, effectiveness, integrity, and collegiality—words used by Miller Center Director William J. Antholis to justify Short’s appointment—have little to commend them when they are deployed to advance an illiberal political agenda.”

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