As Trump advertised during the campaign, his administration has moved to gain direct oversight over academic institutions across the country. The latest university to receive one of Trump’s letters: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Download the letter here: DOWNLOAD
The letter demands that Harvard directly report to the Federal Government on all matters from hiring to curriculum content.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a nebulous collection of words at this point, is to be banned. It doesn’t make sense for an academic institution to ban the study of anything, really. A university dedicated to the discovering truths and exploring the universe should be free to facilitate the study of whatever its student body dedicates itself to. By having a say in hiring staff and student acceptance, the federal government will have an incredible sway in the ideological, political, and racial make up of these institutions.
“By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or
anti-Semitism.”
The Federal Government under Trump is also seeking leverage to censor criticism of Israel and to report the activity of students to the government. Already, we are seeing a drastically reduction in the amount of international students attending our colleges. This is a serious brain drain that undermines the free flow of ideas throughout the entire country. Especially when other countries, namely China, appear to be surpassing us in various fields of science and engineering, it seems it would be in our best interest to embrace our neighbors across the globe and try to learn from one another. Sharing knowledge between one another leads to incredible discoveries.
“By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. This audit shall begin no later than the summer of 2025 and shall proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate.”
The Federal Government also requests that an external party satisfactory to the president directly monitor the institution for “viewpoint diversity.” What does this even really mean? What diverse viewpoints are being stifled? Given the apartheid sympathies of Trump’s staff, he probably means Nazi viewpoints. Or anti-palestinian viewpoints. Are antisemites underrepresented at Harvard? Maybe there aren’t enough confederate sympathizers in Boston? Also, shouldn’t the viewpoints at a university be measured by their merit? Is this not Harvard University we are talking about?!!
“Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.”
Feds want Harvard to attacs the right of individuals to wear face covering not three years after a deadly pandemic wiped out millions of people. The federal government wants harsh penalties on masking to prevent protestors for hiding their identities from photographs for ID purposes (which can be systematically scanned and categorized with AI). The voracious appetite to identify and store information about protesters in order to punish them draws to mind a kind of Neo Nixonianism– a paranoid government apparatus using modern recording technology to keep vast lists of agitators and ideological enemies to persecute. The letter also demands that students that partook in the Palestine protests following October 7th be retroactively punished:
“Harvard must investigate and carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years, including the Harvard Business School protest of October 2023, the University Hall sit- in of November 2023, and the spring encampment of 2024. This must include permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student, and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings, as warranted by the facts of individual cases.”
Indeed, the thrust of Trump’s new surveillance apparatus is being tested on college students with visas as we speak. Social media accounts are being scanned and databases being compiled of students with any ties to Palestine or related movements. More than 80 students in New England alone have had visas revoked for no other reason than expressing the incorrect opinion online.
“SHALOM MOUHMAD” — A giddy white house social media staffer after declaring that Mahmoud Khalil had been detained and moved to Louisiana for protesting for Palestine on Colombia University campus. He was a student of Colombia University at the time.
In his official statement accompanying the arrest, Trump declared, “if you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.” This is a really strange way to to word this. “Contrary to our national and and foreign policy interests…” Not that slaughter of innocents is wrong? Or deeply un-American? Not that it undermines freedom and right to pursue happiness? Since when have people been subject to arrest for speaking against a policy interest? The federal government doesn’t exist to enact policy interests. It exists to uphold the unalienable RIGHTS of its citizens. Citizens in the USA have a right to think freely, to assemble and protest, and especially to express grievance with the government itself.
“Informed by the attorney that Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that instead.”
Trump’s government first and foremost seeks to limit the definition of constitutionally protected citizenship so that it can treat larger swathes of the population as non-citizens. More broadly, this move to limit civil rights protections only to citizens allows a second class to form where non-citizens in the country are not treated the same under the law. Alongside Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, this allows the federal government to create a permanent class of non-citizens living within the country for perpetuity, as even the kids of immigrants will be denied the chance to become constitutionally protected citizens. On the global scale, it also implies that the rights imparted by the constitution are narrowly applied only to Americans of citizen status, and not applied broadly to humanity across the globe. Trump’s America is already taking steps to walk away from its obligations to uphold freedom and learning across the globe. In its place: conquest and colonization enters a new phase with psuedo-democracies like Russia and Israel using war as a means to expand territory while expelling/genociding existing inhabitants.
This is all quite a lot for a university to shoulder. If Harvard refuses Trump’s demands, they risk having billions of dollars in federal funding revoked. The highest level research in the country will be choked of funding.
And yet, today Harvard has decided to decline.
