Folks:
In this video, I address 3 key takeaways on the new all-out attack by the Trump Administration against Harvard University and its international students and visiting scholars. This is an attack on all our First Amendment freedoms, our academic institutions and higher education, and on “foreigners.” As if that is not enough, it is also bad policy, because we know historically that our strength comes in no small measure from the “foreigners” who come to this country (see, e.g., Albert Einstein, Billy Wilder, Henry Kissinger, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudolph Nureyev, Vladimir Nabokov, and even Elon Musk!).
To read the letter that the Department of Homeland Security sent to Harvard, which I address in three key takeaways, click here.
Stay engaged.
Andrew
P.S. Later this morning I am doing a Substack Live with
at 10:30am ET. Keep an eye out!(The YouTube link to The Trump Administration’s War On Academia can be found here.)
TRANSCRIPT
Hi folks,
I wanted to talk to you really quickly about the ongoing fight between the Trump administration and particularly the Department of Homeland Security and Harvard University.
I have three quick points.
If you are listening to this, you probably know that the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, sent a letter to Harvard University notifying them that as of immediately ASAP they can no longer have international students and visitors and they’re not going to be authorized by the administration to have visas that allow them to enter the country or to be here, and so those are all going to be revoked.
They have 72 hours if they want to change this to comply with six demands for discovery to the Department of Homeland Security.
I wanted to quickly talk about some things that are just remarkable here, big picture and small picture.
First, in the letter that was sent by the Department of Homeland Security, one of the things—I’m going to read from it just briefly—is that the secretary, Secretary Noem, says that they’re doing this because the Trump administration will enforce the law and, quote, “root out the evils of anti-Americanism,” unquote.
I’m sorry, what do you mean the evils of anti-Americanism?
We may all think that it is a bad thing to be anti-American. I certainly do, but that is not the job of the Department of Homeland Security.
And that goes to a second thing that relates very directly to this attack on academia and the First Amendment, which is that one of the categories of information that the Department of Homeland Security seeks is any and all audio or video footage in the possession of Harvard University of any protest activity involving a non-immigrant student on a Harvard University campus in the last five years.
That’s a direct quote—that’s item six.
Protest activity, certainly if it’s nonviolent—and this doesn’t say that they want only violent protest activity—protest activity is protected by the First Amendment, as is being anti-American.
That is something that you can—I mean, we might all think something is deplorable speech and deplorable viewpoints, but that is not something that the government has any business regulating, and certainly denying sort of funding and really reaching into the heart of academic freedom because you don’t like someone’s First Amendment protected activities.
Second, in the letter that the secretary sent, she lists all sorts of reasons, but in her statement that accompanied the letter—she, because she issued a public statement, of course, on social media—she says that Harvard is going to be held accountable for, among other things, coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.
Good luck proving that.
But also… this is the administration that is defying, as we speak, the congressional order and statute that has been held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court with respect to TikTok, where Congress had found that TikTok could no longer operate here if it was still owned by a Chinese parent company because of its concern about ties to the Chinese government and spying here.
And that is something that the administration just decided to completely ignore.
And the Department of Justice has said that they’re not going to prosecute any company that is involved in essentially violating the statute.
And so good luck not only proving that Harvard, in fact, is somehow coordinating the Chinese Communist Party.
But it is certainly with poor grace that—to say the least—that this administration will be taking that position given its views on… I would say the same thing with respect to its view that it’s doing all of this because of Harvard essentially being viewed, in its estimation, as anti-Semitic.
I mean, again, that is just sort of laughable that it as an institution is anti-Semitic.
But more than that, the idea that this White House in particular—which is the… this is Donald Trump’s White House, obviously—and so this is the same person who said with respect to Charlottesville, where there was, you know, white supremacists and Nazi sympathizers protesting, that they’re good people on both sides.
So that’s number two.
And then the third is a bigger picture, which is, this is… this is so reminiscent of what we saw in Germany in the 1930s.
I was a student of French history.
We saw it with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the 17th century, which is when France essentially kicked out all Protestants.
This idea of authoritarian regimes cutting off their nose to spite their face because you’re going to have a brain drain.
Just from a selfish point of view—leave aside the sort of morality and the legality here of doing this, which I think is highly, highly questionable—our country is so much richer as a country because of the fact that we attract people from across the globe to study here and do research here.
You know who knows that more than anyone? People in business know that that is such a valuable thing, but certainly that’s true in academia, it’s true in the sciences, it’s true in the arts, it’s true in the letters. It’s true in so many different areas.
After all, we are almost exclusively a nation of immigrants. We all came from elsewhere except for indigenous people.
And this idea that we’re going to be doing this as a policy matter—I mean, it’s just insane. It helps our adversaries and it hurts us.
But that’s not the big picture of what they want to do. And this is basically a war—a sort of class war.
It is a war on facts, it’s a war on science, a war on independence that you see in all sorts of different areas.
And this attack on Harvard is so notable because it’s another example of that in real time.
It’s really important to keep an eye on this in terms of what it means and its message to other universities, not just to Harvard, and the sort of chilling effect that is going to be had in all universities because of the steps that they’re taking here.
So thanks so much for listening. Stay engaged. Take care.
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