hIgher Education is under attack from White House residents. The university is threatened by a series of penalties, including reduced federal contracts and grants, loss of nonprofits, and taxes on donations. The Trump administration is demanding a say they will admit it, who they will hire, and even the courses they will teach.
That’s a harsh message – either abandoning your basic values or otherwise. The idea of an “existent moment” has become a cliché, but this situation guarantees a harsh explanation. Academic freedom, the lifeblood of higher education, is threatened.
How should these universities and universities respond?
Columbia University has learned the hard way that it is not possible to negotiate with a dictator. Give him an inch and he’ll come back more. Harvard has been widely praised for saying “no” to Trump. But Harvard could not have done anything else. The demand is so outrageous that if the university surrendered, it might have shut the door.
The $2.2 billion cutoff of federal contracts and grants, as well as the threat of withdrawing the university’s tax-exempt status, will take a sip from investigations, education and financial aid if ultimately endorsed by the court. However, Harvard is the world’s wealthiest university with a donation of $50 billion north. This is greater than the gross domestic product of nearly 100 countries. With a deep pocket, it is located to continue uniquely, but the country’s best lawyer phalanx fights in court.
Other Trump schools include far more wealthy private universities like Northwestern and flagship public universities like the University of California, Berkeley. Trump & Co. If they say they closed the door when they called, the outcome would be undoubtedly devastating. But Colombia’s fiasco really shows that there’s no choice.
Colleges compete in many ways. They compete for contracts and grants, professors and students for contributions. They fetish fame, so they act aggressively and boost their place in the US news-specking order.
But in these desperate times, such competition is a catastrophic course. The only strategy that involves prayers for success is for universities (public and private, blessed, frayed, rubbing universities) to come together to make it clear that they will not succumb to an attack on academic freedom.
That’s exactly what happened last week, with over 200 university and university presidents signing statements issued by the American Association for forcing federal government to “put higher education at risk.”
Stanford, Chicago and Dartmouth are one of the top ranked schools that didn’t sign on. Perhaps their president believes that “ducks and cover” is their best strategy. Colombia signed it, so that they can tell them, so they wish them good luck.
Higher education has long been taking, where we believe that Americans value intrinsic values, but that has not been true for years. The issued statement of principles should be combined with a full-fledged campaign to make their claims, to prepare the coming generation to contribute to society, to carry out essential and cutting-edge research, to demonstrate the importance of universities and universities.
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Aacu Manifesto is off to a great start, but it takes more to win this war. Wealthy universities must assume essential and expensive legal assistance with the help of financially weak siblings when anti-university forces are called.
“NATO for Higher Education” – Mutual Defense Agreements are a long-term approach, but they may convince White House bullies to step back. The tariff confusion is just the latest example of how Mr. “art” changes tails when faced with strong opposition.
Furthermore, colleges and universities do not have viable options. To borrow a line from Benjamin Franklin, “you can hang or hang separately.