TRUMP ATTACKS GOLD STANDARD: AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES
Dating Over Research
A prominent college settled on a new President, supported by trustees, faculty and other interested parties. There’d be a final check on the candidate’s family.
On social media, their spouse had written favorably about diversity programs and the Mueller report on Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential contest.
That killed the appointment; the school thought this might put it in the crosshairs of Trump’s assault on higher education.
This is illustrative of the fear the Trump Administration is creating with its attacks on academic independence and free speech. The focus has been on Ivy League schools but the effects are in every region around the country.
Hundreds of University Presidents, in a joint letter, warned of an “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering America’s higher education.” It was dismissed, with contempt, amid a sense that this is reminiscent of the witch hunts during the Sen. Joe McCarthy era seven decades ago.
Actually, says Larry Tye, who wrote an authoritative biography on McCarthyism it’s worse. He says it’s “scarier because he’s the President, not one of 100 Senators and because he’s taking aim at not a single college or two but at top notch schools across America.”