On the morning of May, Mordechai Johnson, President of Howard University, witnessed a sub -committee in Congress on the spread of left -wing left ideas among faculty and students. Given that the federal government has historically provided funding for the university budget, through the annual allocation, Johnson had a difficult choice. He can respond to the questions of the actors while defending the free exchange of ideas (and their risks carrying allocation) or taking the safest path to waive their criticism and promised them to work to ensure that thinking about university campus is better in line with the supposed American values.
Johnson’s dilemma will be familiar to anyone who has noticed higher education in this country during the terrible academic year that is now approaching. Spring is usually a happy time on campus, when students graduating celebrate any challenges they may face along the way. This month, officials and faculty are likely to be equal. In fact, this prevailing feelings since December of 2023, when Republicans in the House of Representatives – harassed, and in some cases, even the physical attack of Jewish students in universities, following the October 7 attacks in Israel – summoning the university who are summoned before commitment, where they were neglected. These appearances caused the subsequent resignation of the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Colombia, and the University of Pennsylvania, all women. However, Johnson did not appear in the current wave of federal transcendence, but in May 1935, amid a frantic occupation of communism in the academic circles. The sessions of these presidents listen to a century of history are separated, however their dilemma is remarkably similar.
Academic freedom in the United States has found itself periodically under the siege. In March, Ellen Shreker, a historian and author of the book “No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and Universities”, spoke by enlargement to the deans in Colombia (including me) about government repression on the campus of universities in the fifties. Shrekir, who studied in Colombia and Harvard and retired as a professor at Yashiva University, stressed the intensity of the current climate. She said, “I have studied the impact of McCarthy on higher education for fifty years,” she said. “What is happening now is worse.” This is partly because universities today are more full of federal government. The explosive was expanded in higher education that started after the Second World War in the Federal dollar. So, members of Congress and President Trump, too, have the influence that the demojogen who preceded them can only dream about it.
In March, the Trump administration threatened to cancel fifty -one million dollars from federal scholarships to Colombia. A few days later, this amount was increased to four hundred million, and the university received a letter calling for a series of changes to internal operations as a prerequisite for discussions on recovering financing. The university, which has also seen four of its students targeting by the administration for their political views – one, Mahmoud Khalil, is still being held – has been largely complied. However, on Thursday, the administration announced that Colombia acted with the “deliberate indifference” towards the harassment of Jewish students, and violates the Civil Rights Law.
In April, a tougher letter was sent to Harvard University, which responded by prosecuting its demands in the Federal Court. The administration suspended $ 2.2 billion from grants to the university, then four hundred and fifty million dollars, and threatened to cancel the school’s tax exemption status. Last Thursday, the Ministry of Internal Security took the exceptional step of ending Harvard’s certificate to register international students; Harvard University is paid by the Ministry of National Security, and a federal judge stopped the Ministry’s efforts. The administration has also announced that it will achieve in sixty institutions and apparently began in schools such as Johns Hopkins, which has been canceled eight hundred million dollars. The resource sharing agreement was proposed between the eighteen universities at the Big Ten conference, in order to provide mutual support in the event of targeting any of them.
The administration relied on two excuses to justify these incursions. I have used the essential language of anti -Semitism to rationalize actions that have at best crosses for this reason. The canceled grants are assembled in areas that include climate change research or that use terms such as “diversity” in proposals. It increases the guarantee of credibility to say that reducing the university’s ability to conduct cancer or Alzheimer’s research is an appropriate strategy to correct alleged religious bias. Meanwhile, NPR reported last month that three government officials “have close relations with anti -Semitic extremists.” This news corresponds to previous events, such as Trump welcomes the prominent antiques Nick Fuentes and Kani West to his home for dinner.
The incursions also occur amid a conservative insistence on “the diversity of a larger view.” This batch comes just as the measures that have been enacted to protect other types of diversity are turned. The 1978 Supreme Court decision invalidated racist classes at the University of California, but he saw that positive measures were constitutional, and experts have long acknowledged that racial diversity strengthened a wide range of views. The threats that threaten it to cancel the tax -exiled situation at Harvard University represent a similar reflection of history: the government has first used tactics for decades against institutions such as Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school that banned couples between races on the campus. The biggest mistake made by some universities in responding to the White House was an assumption that it works in good faith. This is not. The efforts made to engage with it have resulted in the escalating penalties and the rotation of leadership, but a little privilege.
Mordechai Johnson was a black man leading an academic institution during Jim Crowe when representatives of almost a white conference asked him if professors with radical sympathy should be allowed to teach in Howard. However, a firm faith said that he would soon close his university instead of allowing anyone to dictate what his students could learn. The principle of play – that without free inquiries, there is no basis for the presence of the university – still applies. ♦
