Commentary by Jerry Lanson

In a letter Monday to the Harvard University community, President Alan M. Garber said that the university had rejected the ever-expanding demands of the Trump Administration to control what’s taught and learned on campus in exchange for continued federal research support.

He wrote: “Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to ‘maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government...’

“They include requirements to ‘audit’ the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to ‘reduc[e] the power’ of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

Just what comes next in the university’s standoff with the Trump administration is uncertain. While Garber made clear the university’s willingness to investigate and address legitimate concerns about anti-semitism — the Trump administration’s hypocritical rationale for its attacks on top universities — he also made explicitly clear that the university would not accede to the administration’s demands. His letter ended: 

“Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere. All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity -- and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.”

The release of Garber’s letter’s came within an hour or two of a second major piece of news: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that he would not release a Maryland father of three wrongly deported to a notorious jail there. Bukele was meeting with President Trump, who smiled approvingly as Bukele spoke, The New York Times reported.

Bukele’s statement — and Trump’s approving acquiescence — sets up a Constitutional crisis with the Supreme Court, which last week ordered the administration to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The US has acknowledged the Maryland man was wrongly deported, but insisted it couldn’t bring him home without El Savador’s approval.

Garber’s statement pits the oldest, wealthiest and arguably most prestigious university in the United States against a president who has seemed determined to eviscerate the independence of American higher education.

The New York Times reported Monday that, “Mr. Trump and his top aides are exerting control of huge sums of federal research money to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which they see as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.”

The administration’s threat to withdraw $9 billion of promised funding to Harvard and to defy the Supreme Court’s order sets up dual fronts in Trump’s effort to assert a level of authoritarian power never before seen in this country.This column originally appeared in Jerry’s Substack. Reprinted by permission.

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Tariff Debate

There is a lot of opinion to read on this page and we hope, to spark your comments on President Trump’s wild global trade war. 

In today’s right column, be sure to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s “This is Strategy?” questioning the White House whipsawing of tariffs, specifically the temporary suspension of tariffs on Chinese-imported smartphones, computers and semiconductors. 

Scroll down with the far-right trackbar to read an alternate right-column take; Contributing Pundit Rich Corbett on how tariffs could prompt the return of American manufacturing in “Should the US Play the Tariff Game?”

As if these two opposing position columns are not enough to prompt your response, you can scroll further down the page to read left-column opinions by contributing pundits Hugh Hansen, Sharon Lintner and Jim McCraw under the heading “About Those Tariffs.” Macaulay has a column about long-term implications for the US’s future economic leadership in the corresponding right column, “Trump Trashes Trust.”

Send your COMMENTS by email to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line.