The cost of the government’s Attack on Columbia | American universities have given the country prosperity and security. The Trump administration’s attack on academic freedom endangers all of that

> The United States is home to the best collection of research universities in the world. Those universities have contributed tremendously to America’s prosperity, health, and security. They are magnets for outstanding talent from throughout the country and around the world.

> The Trump administration’s recent attack on Columbia University puts all of that at risk, presenting the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s. Every American should be concerned.

> The rise of the American research university in the 20th century depended on many factors, including two crucial turning points. The first, at the start of the century, was the development of strong principles of academic freedom that allowed people and ideas to be judged by scholarly standards, not according to the whims or interests of powerful trustees, donors, or political officials. Stanford’s dismissal in 1900 of Edward Ross—an economics professor who had incited controversy with his remarks about, among other topics, Asian immigrants and the labor practices of a railroad run by the university’s founders—catalyzed a movement to protect the rights of faculty members to pursue, publish, and teach controversial ideas. Significant governance reforms took place in the same period, shifting control of professorial appointments from boards of trustees to presidents and faculties.

> The second turning point came during World War II, when Vannevar Bush, the director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, created the modern partnership between the federal government and the country’s research universities. Bush recognized that by sponsoring research at universities, the United States could lead the world in discoveries and innovations. Over time, American universities became responsible for a large portion of the government’s scientific programs, accepting tens of billions of dollars a year to perform research that would make the country stronger and improve the lives of its citizens.

> These two developments had an important connection. The government’s successful collaboration with American universities depended on its respect for academic freedom, which, for decades, presidents and legislators from both political parties largely observed. That freedom attracted the world’s finest scholars and facilitated the unfettered pursuit of knowledge.

> Robust federal funding helped make American universities the world’s best, but it also created a huge risk. Universities had acquired a public patron more powerful than any private donor; their budgets became heavily dependent on that single source. If the United States government ever repudiated the principle of academic freedom, it could bully universities by threatening to withdraw funding unless they changed their curricula, research programs, and personnel decisions.

> That’s what the Trump administration did this month when it canceled $400 million in funding to Columbia without the legally required due process. The government told Columbia that the money would be restored only if the university met various conditions, which included placing its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department “under academic receivership” and making unspecified but “comprehensive” reforms to its student admissions and international-recruiting practices.

!ping ED-POLICY&SNEK

Does anybody have a good understanding of what academic receivership entails? Not clear of what the does to a department.

This is why they should have taken a stance against the protests there.

FAFO as the kids say.

Ultimately they were complicit in their own position right now.