Graduation Season

The Attacks on Academic Freedom and Research are a Dangerous Foreboding

By Arthur Schwartz

I had the immense pleasure of attending the graduation of my daughter Jordyn in late May. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University, which, along with its medical school, has suffered the loss of $900 million in grant money, not as the result of one of those Donald Trump-Kristi Noem overnight attacks, but because they were a leading recipient of grants administered by the Agency for International Development, the first agency which Trump destroyed during his first week in office.

The graduation was striking for many reasons. Kelly and I attended several of the department graduation honors events (our daughter got a few) and heard presentations by or about these 20-somethings addressing a range of intellectual and scientific issues which expand the boundaries of human knowledge.

The graduation, held in a downpour, included 1,500 bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate candidates. It was remarkable because of how diverse the graduating class was; about half were the first ones to get a degree in their family. The names reflected the diversity: like Zhang, Kahn, Alvarez, and Oletunji.

I am not writing, however, in order to celebrate. As the Hopkins ceremony was about to begin Harvard University revealed that Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, had just served the university with a letter revoking, immediately, its right to enroll foreign students, and warning that any international students who did not immediately enroll elsewhere would have their student visas revoked. Those who were graduating weren’t even allowed to stay for their own graduation, and there was an insinuation that if they did, they would be deported. Luckily, Harvard got a Temporary Restraining Order the next morning, and for now this draconian edict is on hold.

This was not the first time that Harvard was standing up to Trump. In April, after Trump announced a freeze on $9 billion in federal grants to Harvard because it would not allow federal oversight of its curriculum and admissions (unlike cowardly Columbia, my alma mater). Trump and Noem have announced that its War on Harvard will serve as an example for all other colleges and universities, even ones that do not rely on federal grants. Trump has declared war over the minds of millions of college students. They want to control what students are taught at all levels, but they are particularly focused on colleges and graduate programs. Why? Because they are engaged in an effort to reshape U.S. culture in its entirety, and students in colleges and universities learn how to be critical thinkers. Columbia is where I learned how to weigh ideas, to challenge orthodoxies, and to explore paths that others had not explored. I see the same with my recent graduate and her sister, who is still in college. They are thriving in a culture where they are taught to think for themselves and figure out how to make the world a better place.

At the Hopkins graduation the keynote speaker, Sol Khan, of the Khan Academy (an online free learning platform which has coached millions of students through middle school, high school, and college) told the students:

“There’s no Forbes list of the 500 happiest people on Earth. If there were, I suspect most of them would be people we’ve never heard of, but they’ve had a few things in common. A strong community of friends and family, a sense of purpose, a way to express themselves creatively. They’d feel appreciated. They’d laugh often, they’d see the glass half full and not take themselves too seriously. Many would have basic financial security, but plenty would have far less material wealth than most of us. So, as you build yourself in the traditional sense, also invest in what gives you meaning.”

The president of Johns Hopkins, Ron Daniels, told graduates:

“We are not perfect. Universities, like the nation of which we are part, are constantly in a process of becoming. To be the best version of ourselves, we must subject ourselves to the same exacting standards of review that we apply to others and to our research. And where we fall short, we must change. We must do repair.

But whatever our flaws, whatever our stumbles, we cannot lose sight of how good, how indispensable research universities like Johns Hopkins—and students like you—are to the national fabric and to the world beyond.

The modern American research university, of which Hopkins was the first, stands as an institution that is, I believe, unmatched in its capacity to promote individual flourishing and societal advancement. Standing at the core of that success is the extraordinary research compact that was painstakingly forged between America’s research universities and the federal government in the wake of the Second World War.

That compact has produced a bounty of innovation and impact that is as astounding today as it was then: the internet, the cell phone, the reduction in the death rate of cancer by 33%, GPS, and the technology that knocked asteroids off course—invented right here at Johns Hopkins University. And there is so much more.

Graduates and families, the case for our cause is strong. And I know that you would not be here—after four years, from across the country and around the world, in inclement weather—if you did not share my belief, our belief, in the transformative power of higher education to support this country’s highest and most vaunted aspiration.”

The most immediate goal of Trump’s attacks is an effort to rewrite U.S. history; to eliminate the notion that our country wasn’t, historically, a perfect place. Soon the Department of Education, which has only a handful of staff and is “run” by World-Wide Wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, will ban teaching about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement. The strategy is to build off of what they see as White resentment at the efforts to balance the scales of a society built on systemic racism and sexism. That is why DEI has become a dirty word. That is why Trump announced that the EEOC can no longer pursue claims about “disparate impact” (claims about a subjectively neutral standard which has the impact of barring people of a race, sex, national origin, or disability status from a particular job, housing, or benefit).

Trump told West Point graduates in May that he can do this because he has “a mandate,” that he won by “millions of votes,” and that he is doing “what he was elected to do.”

But there is something more at play here than pompous pride. I do not like throwing around words like “fascist,” but some key thinkers in our society (not lefties using the word too liberally) are warning us about what is really meant by these vicious efforts at control, now focused on Harvard and other universities, and the media.

Since targeting Columbia, the Trump Administration has expanded its crackdown on academia – investigating over 60 universities, arresting students, threatening federal oversight of Middle East departments, and scraping foreign students’ social media for “antisemitic activity” (utilizing a law called the McCarren Act, a McCarthy period statute actually used in the 1950s to target Jews).

This effort to control our minds, particularly of young Americans, is the scariest aspect of what we have experienced over the last five months. Fasten your seat belts folks, we are in for a rough ride.

And help keep voices like Village View in circulation.

---

What Else is Under Attack?

Coupled with attacks on learning institutions comes attacks on law firms because of the clients they choose to represent. Then there are attacks on the media, with some being denied critical federal funding like NPR and PBS, and others being threatened with lawsuits if they dare say something critical of Trump. There are incredible attacks on cultural institutions, ranging from the Kennedy Center, to the Smithsonian Museum, to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.There are also the cuts in Medicaid and the destruction of the National Institutes for Health. And let’s not forget the presidential pardons for the January 6 rioters and the personal self-aggrandizement of Trump and his family.