The Crippling of the United States of America as it Eats Itself Alive on Ever More Fronts

News:

A Fox News headline on the 22nd of May stated that “Trump administration terminates Harvard's student visa program” and the article quoted the Secretary of Education, Kristi Noem, as saying: "This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus... It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country."

Comment:

It is a dangerous warning as it means that the prestigious Ivy League classified university may not enroll any foreign students next academic year, and even those students who are now enrolled will lose their right to remain in the US unless they transfer to another university before the new academic year begins! The Education Secretary stated its reasoning in a letter to the university: "As a result of your brazen refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas rhetoric, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege."

Harvard filed a lawsuit claiming that Trump’s action is unconstitutional and a federal judge blocked the visa ban until the case can be decided, but the Department of Homeland Security responded: “Today’s ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers” and added that the Trump administration is committed to “restoring common sense to our student visa system, and we expect a higher court to vindicate us in this. We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side.” Furthermore, Trump is seeking to remove the university’s ‘tax-exempt’ status which would add to the financial pressure following his freezing last month of $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard.

Decrying the latest Trump administration attack on higher education for political purposes, Barbara R. Snyder, the president of the Association of American Universities, said, “This unprecedented decision is a cruel and unwarranted disruption to the lives and education of talented students whose energy and creativity benefit our country tremendously... Ultimately it is our country’s future — its leadership in science and innovation and its prosperity — that is threatened by this unforced error.”

These assaults by the Trump administration against Harvard are part of broader campaign against universities to take away their long established independence from political control. Trump’s attacks upon them are unprecedented since the McCarthyite purges of suspected communists in the 1950s. However, the threat then was a superpower state, the Soviet Union, that was a true peer competitor of the US and whose ideology was in confrontation with capitalist ideology worldwide! So, what great new threat is causing Trump to be so aggressive? It is as his Secretary of Education, said: "This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.” Is there any validity to these allegations?

For sure the Zionist lobbies (both Jewish and more importantly evangelical Christian) and huge financial backing of Miriam Adelson to Trump have motivated him to clamp down directly on protests against genocide in Gaza that are taking place on US university campuses, but what about China? Foreign funding for US universities has long raised suspicions, and Chinese efforts to gain political influence through its financial ties to US institutions has been reported on from time to time over the last decade. Former Harvard Professor Charles Lieber was convicted in 2021 of lying about his ties to China. In 2023, the Hudson Institute published a report titled: “The Chinese Communist Party’s Campaign on University Campuses.”

Regardless of these points of contention, the campaign against Harvard and also many other universities is actually just part of the broader civil war eating up America at this time as Trump seeks to destroy the deep state influence of political opposition to his program of ‘making America great again’ wherever they occur. Hence his attacks on federal government agencies and their funding led by The Department of Government Efficiency which he established in January with Elon Musk at its head. This power struggle within government departments, the legislatures in Congress and the courts at the government and state levels is now widening to include higher education and who can say where the conflict will end and what the result will be.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin