Nothing much new happening today, a short summary of what is going on follows. I will be traveling the next ten days or so, likely much less posting.<\/p>\n
On the visa front, a court stopped Trump from his plan to remove Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. The Trump people now say they will do “enhanced vetting” of all Harvard visas to look for “histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence” (and these days criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza is often considered “anti-Semitic harassment”). Unable to shut down visas to Harvard, they’re going after all student visas: pausing new appointments for all visa applications and threatening Chinese students in particular, based on connections to the Communist Party or working in certain research areas. For all of this, hard to know at this point if they intend to massively deny student visas or not. Probably they don’t know.<\/p>\n
Stand Columbia, as part of its ongoing campaign to make the case that Columbia needs to bend the knee, has a long analysis of the foreign student situation at Columbia.<\/a><\/p>\n The current situation of Trump’s war with the universities is described in Universities quietly negotiating with White House aide to try to avoid Harvard\u2019s fate, source says<\/a> at CNN. Harvard won’t negotiate, so it’s war and the Trump is trying to find every means, legal and illegal, to destroy Harvard. But Harvard has a lot of money, influence and lawyers. May end up with another TACO. <\/p>\n The source familiar with the higher education response questioned the appetite to proceed at an aggressive pace.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go after Harvard, how hard can you keep going? The universities are being played like a yo-yo for weeks and weeks and weeks. My guess is, at some point, the White House will lose interest in that. Once you\u2019ve taken down Harvard, where are you going to go \u2013 Emory? They\u2019re just as conscious of the brands as anybody else,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the source added, the market rules: \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to Harvard or Columbia? Record applicants, record yield. I would bet you that if you talked to MAGA voters at Charlotte Country Day School or The Westminster Schools \u2013 they may have voted for Trump, but are they turning away from the Ivy League? Hell no. The schools are having record demand.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n The overall goal is “We have to bring these universities to their knees”, more specifically <\/p>\n \u201cThey want a name-brand university to make a deal like the law firms made a deal that covers not just antisemitism and protests, but DEI and intellectual diversity,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Columbia has gone part-way with this, caving in on the “antisemitism and protests” front, with one factor influential pro-Israel trustees who were happy with that part of the demands. On the “DEI and intellectual diversity” front though, the Harvard demand letter shows that the Trump people are trying to get control not just of admissions and hiring, but also imposing MAGA students, faculty and staff on an institution. In response to this, supposedly many universities are “negotiating”. This includes Columbia, but our negotiating tactic is described as “playing dead”. For the rest<\/p>\n Asked if any of the schools are inclined to make such a deal, the source said, \u201cNobody wants to be the first, but the financial pressures are getting real.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n One problem for this effort (besides being completely illegal…) is that there’s now an ongoing campaign to destroy all universities, so it’s very unclear what caving-in to Trump would actually get you. The proposed budget has massive cuts in all grant funding everywhere, so getting your right to apply for grants restored at a time there aren’t any anymore is not much of an inducement. The attack on foreign students is on all of them, the proposed endowment tax is on all of them, etc. By starting on a campaign to destroy all universities, Trump has made it a lot harder to pressure any particular one. Who knows, the universities might even get together, join Harvard, and fight for a TACO.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: Why won’t Columbia do this<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nothing much new happening today, a short summary of what is going on follows. I will be traveling the next ten days or so, likely much less posting. On the visa front, a court stopped Trump from his plan to … Continue reading