How do you feel seeing Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other academic institutions kowtowing and in acquiescence towards the current administration?
How do you feel seeing Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other academic institutions kowtowing and in acquiescence towards the current administration?
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50-something here. TBH – the older I get, the less inclined I am to feel the need to have an opinion on most things.
Hasn’t got anything to do with which administration. They’re kowtowing to zi onism. Exact same thing happened with the last administration and it would be the same no matter who’s in office.
This is not an old people question.
Even when I was 15 or 25 or 35 or 45… I was aware that even academic institutions are beholden to $$$ before anything. Maybe it’s the Gen X I me that never allowed to indulge the belief that anything is our world that is tethered to $$$ exists outside its constraints.
I see ordinary people thrust into a bizarre political landscape. Never knowing what asinine thing will appear tomorrow.
Balancing what they may WANT to do with what the legal department says CAN happen- because at the moment, every school is a wrong breath away from getting personally targeted by the Orange Guy. Losing grant finding and scrambling to figure out how to keep jobs. Will there still be financial aid tomorrow? What other words will Orange Guy and company say are off the table now?
Have scathing thoughts all you want about administrations right now. Be annoyed with what they do or don’t do.
But they’re only REACTING to what’s happening because of the Orange Guy.
University foolishness is a distraction from the center of the problem. The pressure needs to be on elected officials, the White House.
It feels like the early days of appeasement in a fascist regime. In the end, it will backfire on them in ways predictable and unpredictable and they will eventually admit to being ashamed. Same for the law firms that quickly “settled” when extorted by Trump. Appeasement instead of standing up for what’s right, joining forces with others being extorted, fighting against this illegal pressure campaign. Shameful.
Old people are the only ones that remember WWII history, that had fathers who fought in that bloody war. That lost relatives in the Holocaust. I DO think this is a question upon which we can have a legitimate opinion. If not us, then who?
I hesitate commenting as I am not from or living in North America (have lived there some years both in US and Canada).
On general level there are some principles that have been proven sane during last hundreds of years. Like the division of powers is important. You should never have same person making the rules, executing them and handling complaints. Or cashier collecting money, finalizing bookkeeping and auditing his own accounts and actions.
Economic independence of institutions and individuals is a requirement for independent opinions.
Fear and greed is a lethal combination.
I think it is horrible. Now the WHCA has dropped having a comic at their dinner. WTF.
It sucks. Very disgusting
Rule #8
Rather like a rewrite of the quote variously attributed to Johnson and Webster: I am surprised, but not astonished.
A resistance movement of academics will not arise until the regime goes after their parking spaces.
And to prove my academic credentials, I think you mean to use … kowtowing and acquiescing …
It’s disheartening, but colleges and universities long ago became more like corporations, so I guess I’m not entirely surprised.
I hope they all go “out of business.” We don’t need their Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, white men fraternity bullshit.
Same goes for sororities.