Trump’s assault on Universities (4 Viewers)

[MT15]

I thought we had a thread just about Trump’s illegal attacks on American universities, especially some of our very best. Harvard has decided to fight back, while Yale and Columbia have basically rolled over. Trump had been using the excuse of rooting out anti-semitism, which MAGA actually cares nothing about, but it at least provided a paper-thin veneer of a reason. The latest letter sent to Harvard, announcing they will no longer receive any federal grants, discards that excuse. An Atlantic article about this letter:

“The intensely hostile letter that Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent to the leadership of Harvard yesterday has a lot going on. But the most notable thing about it is what it leaves out.

To hear McMahon tell it, Harvard is a university on the verge of ruin. (I say McMahon because her signature is at the bottom of the letter, but portions of the document are written in such a distinctive idiolect—“Why is there so much HATE?” the letter asks; it signs off with “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”—that one detects the spirit of a certain uncredited co-author.) She accuses it of admitting students who are contemptuous of America, chastises it for hiring the former blue-city mayors Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot to teach leadership (“like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation”), questions the necessity of its remedial-math program (“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics?”), and accuses its board chair, Penny Pritzker (“a Democrat operative”), of driving the university to financial ruin, among many other complaints. The upshot is that Harvard should not bother to apply for any new federal funding, because, McMahon declares, “today’s letter marks the end of new grants for the University.”

What you will not find in the McMahon letter is any mention of the original justification for the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on elite universities: anti-Semitism. As a legal pretext for trying to financially hobble the Ivy League, anti-Semitism had some strategic merit. Many students and faculty justifiably feel that these schools failed to take harassment of Jews seriously enough during the protests that erupted after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. By centering its critique on that issue, the administration was cannily appropriating for its own ends one of the progressive left’s highest priorities: protecting a minority from hostile acts.

Now, however, the mask is off. Aside from one oblique reference to congressional hearings about anti-Semitism (“the great work of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik”), the letter is silent on the subject. The administration is no longer pretending that it is standing up for Jewish students. The project has been revealed for what it is: an effort to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.”

It simply amazes me that this letter was actually sent. It seems to suggest a First Amendment violation is being committed by the Trump Administration. I am so sick of these morons.

 

[coldseat]

SAN ANTONIO — Ximena had a plan.

The 18-year-old from Houston was going to start college in the fall at the University of Texas at Tyler, where she had been awarded $10,000 a year in scholarships. That, she hoped, would set her up for her dream: a Ph.D. in chemistry, followed by a career as a professor or researcher.

“And then the change to in-state tuition happened, and that’s when I knew for sure that I had to pivot,” said Ximena, who was born in Mexico but attended schools stateside since kindergarten. (The Hechinger Report is referring to her by only her first name because she fears retaliation for her immigration status.)

In June, the Texas attorney general’s office and the Trump administration worked together to end the provisions in a state law that had offered thousands of undocumented students like her lower in-state tuition rates at Texas public colleges. State and federal officials successfully argued in court that the long-standing policy discriminated against U.S. citizens from other states who paid a higher rate. That rationale has now been replicated in similar lawsuits against Kentucky, Oklahoma and Minnesota — part of a broader offensive against immigrants’ access to public education.

At UT Tyler, in-state tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year total $9,736, compared to more than $25,000 for out-of-state students. Ximena and her family couldn’t afford the higher tuition bill, so she withdrew. Instead, she enrolled at Houston Community College, where out-of-state costs are $227 per semester hour, nearly three times the in-district rate. The school offers only basic college-level chemistry classes, so to set herself up for a doctorate or original research, Ximena will still need to find a way to pay for a four-year university down the line.......

What’s happened since Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented students

The end of tuition breaks under the Texas Dream Act, once championed by some Republicans on economic grounds, is creating chaos on college campuses.

hechingerreport.org

I'm thankful my kid had the grades (scholarship), means (via us his parents) and connections (via his aunt) to not have to fork around the public universities here in Texas and they were able to get into a private university. The vast majority of kids here are not that lucky. The Republicans are destroying public education in this state at a rapid pace and they have no understanding of the damage they're doing. Or maybe they do and just revel in it. It's so weird their obsession with destroying everything of value in this country that has been built over decades of hard work and progress.

 

[MT15]

This is short sighted. Extremely so. To allow her to pay in-state tuition would have given the US a highly educated person who would have contributed to society and would have probably become a citizen. Now, who knows what she will be able to do? But she will most likely not be as big a fan of TX in particular and the US in general.

 

[Optimus Prime]

With Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” set to alter how families and students finance higher education starting in July 2026, a new surveysuggests the majority of college students expect to be affected by the bill.

A US News & World Report surveyed nearly 1,200 college students, with most responders saying the changes will affect them. When asked about the law’s broader effects, 61% of students said they would personally feel its impact, while 20% said they would not and 19% responded “I don’t know.”

About a third (32%) of students anticipate being affected by the removal of repayment options such as the Save Plan, a 2023 income-driven repayment plan for student debt implemented by former president Joe Biden.

Trump’s bill sets new caps on borrowing and reduces the repayment plan options available for federal student loan borrowers who take out loans beginning in the summer of next year. It also eliminates Grad Plus loans for graduate and professional students after that date.


Awareness of the scope of the incoming changes varies among those surveyed. Just 20% of students say they fully grasp the upcoming policy shift, while 19% admit they don’t understand it at all. Another 39% say they understand somewhat, and 22% are unsure how the new rules will apply to them.

A slight majority of students (51%) oppose all of the bill’s student loan changes. Even when asked about individual provisions, support remains weak, with only around one in five approving of borrowing caps or the elimination of certain income-driven repayment plans.

For many, the new rules are causing them to reconsider their educational path. According to the survey, 35% are thinking about cutting back on their studies, 32% about changing degrees, 31% about completing school abroad, and 26% about enlisting in the military for financial support.

First-generation students are even more likely to consider reducing their schooling (45%) or changing majors (44%), an outcome possibly also related to Trump’s rescinding of longstanding protections against immigration raids on school campuses, as data shows 47% of first-generation students in the US are also first-generation immigrants.

Some students shared their thoughts directly: “I’m thinking about not finishing law school,” one said. Another explained: “I wanted to go to medical school, but now I won’t.” One summed it up simply: “Honestly, I’m cooked.”………..

Majority of college students say they will be affected by Trump’s new tax bill: ‘Honestly, I’m cooked’

Survey shows 60% of students say they would personally feel impact of bill that sets new caps on borrowing

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Trump’s changes will prevent some students from going to college. The caps on borrowing will have the most affect on medical students and other high cost, high reward degrees.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Students and faculty heading back to US colleges and universities from summer break are returning to bruised institutions reeling from the Trump administration’s unprecedented campaign to bend higher education to its ideological will, and are bracing for more uncertainty ahead.

At the University of Utah, the Black student union has lost its funding and campus space – one of many student groups to face the brunt of Donald Trump’s anti-diversity measures. Indiana’s public universities have cut or merged more than 400 degree programs, about one-fifth of their academic offerings, while scores of other universities have made similar cuts as their budgets are on the line. At Harvard and Columbia, certain forms of criticism of Israel will now be punishable as antisemitism. And across the country, schools will see their international student population plummet after the administration erected a host of new barriers to students seeking to travel to the US.

The threat to higher education feels “existential”, said Benjamin Kersten, an art history doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the universities targeted by the president with millions of dollars in cuts. “It makes me wonder how I’m supposed to compartmentalize and conduct the research I was brought here to do.”

Kersten cited nationwide cuts and closures, dwindling research resources, crackdowns on student organizations, rising tuition, and worsening labor conditions for faculty. As a Jewish student involved in pro-Palestinian activism, he decried the administration attacking universities under the pretext of fighting antisemitism.


“Threatening to cut off research funds and make the university pay the administration does nothing to make the campus safer for Jews,” he said. The impact, he added, was being felt “by everyone, from the most vulnerable students and employees to even tenured faculty”.

Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), agrees.

“This is obviously the most intense assault on higher education by the federal government in the history of the United States,” he said. “Everyone is coming into fire.”………

‘Everyone is coming into fire’: students return to US campuses bruised and changed by Trump’s assault

The effects of a rightwing campaign to remake American higher education are fueling fear and anxiety, but advocates say they have plans to fight back

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

It is no secret that American universities are in the fight of a lifetime. With billions of dollars in federal support on the line, their ability to fund their research activities is clearly at stake.

But for the biggest targets, such as Harvard, their pockets are unfathomably deep. While cuts may be painful, no financial threat is likely to be existential. What is harder to know is whether universities can come out of their current predicament with their souls intact.

The groundwork for this situation has been in the making for more than a decade. While the destruction is a bipartisan phenomenon, early warning signs appeared in “cancel culture”, the left’s version of campus censoriousness.

More recently, the right’s version has been even more brazen, as seen in boorish attempts by the Trump administration and some state governors to control what is taught in university classrooms.

The response from universities is similarly dispiriting. Universities have not articulated what they are fighting for, and are not even particularly clear how much they are willing to fight against.

Feckless administrators, along with faculty who have lost their intellectual curiosity, have left the university a punching bag for competing factions: angry students, entitled donors and opportunistic politicians.

Large settlement payments by Ivy League colleges may be an expedient way to restore federal funding, but hardly demonstrate much backbone or conviction about academic integrity.

Worse, monitoring agreements, such as the one Columbia has agreed to, raise troubling questions about the extent to which schools are willing to compromise academic freedom in exchange for turning the money spouts back on.

When universities are heard the loudest in response to controversies swirling around them, it is through the blandest of AI-generated, crisis-communication-consultant-approved, focus group-workshopped statements. These statements please nobody.

Even worse, they are antithetical to what a university does, which is to provide open spaces to test and to contest deep, complex, unresolved disagreements. In an era of quick takes and easy outrage, this is a void both harder and more important to fill than ever.

Meanwhile, Americans report plummeting levels of trust in the ivory tower. The political scientist Greg Conti has termed the result the rise of the “sectarian university”.

Universities will not die: Harvard, with its nearly $50bn endowment, is not meaningfully imperiled by criticism from Congress, the public or even Trump. But the perception of these institutions as out of touch means “their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian.”

Sectarian universities will be like molecular gastronomy, isolated to rarified elite circles. The result is the loss of one of America’s great inventions: the research university, dedicated to the production of knowledge that can be used by all.

What is to be done? Universities need to reclaim their core value – academic freedom – and to adopt a stance of institutional neutrality in order to regain public trust and credibility.

This does not mean cracking down on speech or protest. On the contrary, individual faculty or students should be able to be as active as they want to be.

But the university itself – the administration tasked with creating a scholarly and educational oasis – must concern itself exclusively with providing an environment where research and learning can flourish.…….

How to save the American university

As Trump threatens funding and public trust plummets, US schools are in the fight of a lifetime. This is how they can survive – with their souls intact

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Administrators at the state university’s campus in Colorado Springs thought they stood a solid chance of dodging the Trump administration’s offensive on higher education.

Located on a picturesque bluff with a stunning view of Pikes Peak, the school is far removed from the Ivy League colleges that have drawn President Donald Trump’s ire.

Most of its students are commuters, getting degrees while holding down full-time jobs.

Students and faculty alike describe the university, which is in a conservative part of a blue state, as politically subdued, if not apolitical.

That optimism was misplaced.

An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of emails from school officials, as well as interviews with students and professors, reveals that school leaders, teachers and students soon found themselves in the Republican administration’s crosshairs, forcing them to navigate what they described as an unprecedented and haphazard degree of change.

Whether Washington has downsized government departments, clawed back or launched investigations into diversity programs or campus antisemitism, the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs has confronted many of the same challenges as elite universities across the nation.

The school lost three major federal grants and found itself under investigation by the Trump’s Education Department.

In the hopes of avoiding that scrutiny, the university renamed websites and job titles, all while dealing with pressure from students, faculty and staff who wanted the school to take a more combative stance.

“Uncertainty is compounding,” the school’s chancellor told faculty at a February meeting, according to minutes of the session. “And the speed of which orders are coming has been a bit of a shock.”……..

A commuter college thought it could avoid Trump’s education crackdown. Here’s what happened

Administrators at the University of Colorado's campus in Colorado Springs believed they could avoid the Trump administration's focus on higher education.

apnews.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Trump says he wants ‘nothing less than $500m’ from Harvard as feud continues

‘Don’t negotiate with them, they’ve been very bad,’ Trump tells education secretary in cabinet meeting

www.theguardian.com

 

[Dragon]

Blackmail is now apart of his responsibility as president apparently. I guess the SC will make that claim if Harward sues...

 

[Optimus Prime]

More than a dozen higher education institutions will lose federal grants to provide child care to low-income college students this fall after the Trump administration said some programs push identity politics on young children.

The U.S. Department of Education announced late last week that more than 100 grants under the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program will be renewed, and more than 12 others will be cut, the Washington Post reports.

Department spokesperson Ellen Keast told the newspaper “that some of the rejected recipients would have taught children between the ages 2 and 5 about gender identity and racial justice.”

Additionally, some of the colleges facing cuts “prioritized the hiring of child care staff based on ‘immutable characteristics, not merit,’” according to the report.

“The Trump administration will not fund programs that are not in the best interest of the American families they are intended to serve,” Keast said.

The department did not release the names of the institutions that are facing the cuts.

Meanwhile, the future of the whole program is in question.

President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would cut the $75 million program completely. It asserts that “subsidizing child care for parents in college is unaffordable and duplicative,” and funding can be “secured through the Child Care Development Block Grant” instead.

But some Democrat lawmakers are demanding the funding remain in place. U.S. Rep. Robert Scott, D-Virginia, told the Washington Post that offering child care to college students is a good inter-generational investment.

“By limiting the availability of these programs, the Trump Administration is making life harder for parents seeking a better life for themselves and their families, and depriving children of consistent care,” Scott said................

Ed Dept cuts child care grants to dozen universities over ‘racial justice’ curriculum | The College Fix

The Trump administration said some taxpayer-funded child care programs push identity politics on young children.

www.thecollegefix.com

 

[MT15]

Just because we aren’t hearing about it doesn’t mean the Trump admin has quit doing evil things.

 

[zztop]

 

[Optimus Prime]

When Beverly Daniel Tatum told a friend that she was writing a book about higher education, he replied: “I think being a college president has to be the hardest job in America.” Indeed, the academic year 2023-24 was an “annus horribilis for college presidents”, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

And that was before Donald Trump returned to the White House and sought to bend them to his will.

Over the past seven months the US president targeted elite universities, accusing them of fostering antisemitism, liberal bias and un-American diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. His administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal research funding to pressure institutions to align with its ideological goals.


“I wish I knew what was motivating it,” says Tatum, a former president of Spelman College, one of the US’s leading historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), via Zoom from Atlanta. “It is quite puzzling, given the fact that higher education in the United States is the envy of the world – or has been.

“Many institutions are a major source of importing talent, a major source of prestige in terms of research and innovation, and that has been true for quite a long time. It’s not clear to me why anybody would want to disrupt that. It is unfortunate that it is being disrupted in this way and I don’t think it will bode well for the United States in the long term.”……..

In a Trump era, Black students flock to HBCUs, ‘where their history isn’t being erased’, says Spelman College president

Beverly Daniel Tatum on antisemitism, ‘the hardest in the US’, and DEI as the White House targets higher education

www.theguardian.com

 

[Dragon]

“I wish I knew what was motivating it,” says Tatum, a former president of Spelman College, one of the US’s leading historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), via Zoom from Atlanta. “It is quite puzzling, given the fact that higher education in the United States is the envy of the world – or has been.

That’s actually not puzzling at all. Top universities foster critical thinking, encourage rigorous evaluation of sources, and teach people to recognize misinformation and stand up for what is right. Those skills are a direct threat to Trump and to the Project 2025 agenda, which rely on controlling narratives rather than having them challenged.

By undermining universities, freezing funding, and attacking diversity and inclusion programs, the administration can weaken institutions that produce independent thinkers. The less space there is for critical debate, research, and open exchange of ideas, the easier it becomes to impose ideology without resistance.

In the long term, this strategy may score political points, but it risks eroding the very foundation of American innovation and democratic strength — both of which have historically depended on strong, independent higher education.

 

[MT15]

This Op-Ed is from Bari Weiss, who is set to take over at CBS News. Look for CBS to become untrustworthy heralds of far right thinking.

It’s just trash, straight up.

 

[MT15]

 

[bird]

Interesting that the students beg the professor to tell them what he thinks. One wonders if it is to affirm what they think which they shouldn’t need or to see if the professor thinks differently than they do so they can feel superior or claim bias.

 

[MT15]

Interesting that the students beg the professor to tell them what he thinks. One wonders if it is to affirm what they think which they shouldn’t need or to see if the professor thinks differently than they do so they can feel superior or claim bias.

I think it’s because he teaches a class on the media. My guess is they want to know his opinion to see if it checks with what they think. Media is tricky, and they’re just learning about bias is my best bet.