Harvard Profs Say Faculty Won’t Cave to Trump Demands
“we will not give up so easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name”
Two Harvard professors wrote the piece below. They go on and on about academic freedom, which misses the point entirely. This is not about free speech. It’s about civil rights violations.
From the Boston Globe:
Harvard faculty won’t cave to Trump demands
The Ivy League presents itself as an embodiment of academic freedom and intellectual rigor, but these days its universities look tarnished and compromised. Faced with the harshest federal attacks on higher education this country has ever seen, boards of trustees at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown University have in recent weeks all inked deeply problematic “deals” with the Trump administration.
All eyes are now locked on Harvard University. Circumventing governing statutes and the Constitution, the Trump administration unilaterally took hostage our research and our international students, in a campaign to police thought and suppress speech both on our campus and at schools across the country. Many thus see Harvard’s choices as a bellwether for not only American colleges and universities but democracy itself.
While Harvard decision-makers have rejected some of the Trump administration’s demands they have also quietly instituted others. All the while they have steadily negotiated with President Trump toward an eventual deal. This has yielded weeks of breathless speculation across our campus and the world: Will Harvard lead, staying the principled course it set when it sued the federal government in April, or will it follow other universities and break under the onslaught?
This myopic focus on the university’s administration ignores a truth fundamental to the future of American higher education: Salvation does not and cannot lie in the hands of the Harvard Corporation — the university’s secretive, self-appointed governing board made up of financiers and power players. Universities are much more than the individuals who come to campus a few times a year to review high-level operations.
The role of faculty is fundamental. We are the teachers, researchers, and writers who have committed our professional lives to learning and free inquiry, working together with students to advance truth with rigor, independence, and integrity for the collective benefit of society. That commitment means that, unlike our distant governing boards, we will not give up so easily — no matter what kind of deals are signed in our name.
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Comments
These professors forget that the one who pays the piper calls the tune. If the piper does not want to play that tune, the payer will take the money and find another piper who will play the tune.
“Laws are for the little people.”
What are the odds of DJT giving a Harvard commencement address after this is all settled? Now that would be a fascinating bit of theater.
oh that visual is golden!
I still want Harvard burned to the ground with the professors inside wailing about their freedom of speech and academic freedom and screaming kill the Jews and we love Mao. Please make it so.
Maybe they should offer a faculty FAFO workshop.
“This is not about free speech. It’s about civil rights violations.”
Explode their brains. Explain that “their speech is violence” to certain ethnic populations.
Harvard’s reputation is shot full of more holes than than a Swiss cheese in a cage full of starving mice. The whole antisemitism and racism scandals alone have cost it more than it could raise pleading poverty to the stupidest, most gullible alumni and donors who would blithely ignore its > $53 billion endowment (debatable how much of that is liquid or not). The faculty is full of minds so fine no ideas could ever violate them, and certainly no clear citations could make it into their research or dissertations to avoid plagiarism charges.