Authoritarian regimes hate disobedience. Coming up with your own ideas or rejecting what your priest, parent, or politician says is very disobedient.
Reasoning about the world is a threat to authority. Studying the history of something and keeping records about what is happening in order to attribute disastrous policy accurately is equally threatening. That de-legitimizes authority and justifies disobedience. This administration has worked to delete graphs that would require action or that show bad policy decisions rather than to take action or change policy.
Authoritarians need to subordinate institutions that ground themselves in reality and devote themselves to reason. Universities are the natural enemies of authoritarians.
That's not necessarily true. There's a whole body of law surrounding when the federal government can and cannot engage in quid pro quo withholding a federal funds. Much of it was litigated with respect to the withholding of highway funds in exchange for compliance with Federal blood alcohol limit standards and the like.
Much of it was re litigated with respect to title IX educational compliance.
I can't speak to specifics, but my understanding is that there are limitations on the withholding of funding and it must be directly tied what the funds are actually being used for.
As you say, Columbia is a private entity, so that is a major distinction. However, there's also a body of law around selective punishment for speech. An example of this came up when the White House selectively punished the AP because it did not like the content of its speech.
The opposite of authority is reason.
Authoritarian regimes hate disobedience. Coming up with your own ideas or rejecting what your priest, parent, or politician says is very disobedient.
Reasoning about the world is a threat to authority. Studying the history of something and keeping records about what is happening in order to attribute disastrous policy accurately is equally threatening. That de-legitimizes authority and justifies disobedience. This administration has worked to delete graphs that would require action or that show bad policy decisions rather than to take action or change policy.
Authoritarians need to subordinate institutions that ground themselves in reality and devote themselves to reason. Universities are the natural enemies of authoritarians.
As much as I disagree with Marcus whenever he opens his mouth on AI, I wholeheartedly agree with him on this:
A functioning democracy requires that academics, journalists, and law firms remain independent of the state.
There is an argument for ending federal support of private universities. States are better set up to resist the federal government.
What happened to states rights? Do Republicans no longer believe in that?
Republicans have always believed in the right of states to support and enforce Republican ideology.
How is this relevant?
It's relevant to the current administration going after universities.
Columbia is a private entity directly contracting with the federal government. This isn’t a states’ rights issue.
That's not necessarily true. There's a whole body of law surrounding when the federal government can and cannot engage in quid pro quo withholding a federal funds. Much of it was litigated with respect to the withholding of highway funds in exchange for compliance with Federal blood alcohol limit standards and the like.
Much of it was re litigated with respect to title IX educational compliance.
I can't speak to specifics, but my understanding is that there are limitations on the withholding of funding and it must be directly tied what the funds are actually being used for.
As you say, Columbia is a private entity, so that is a major distinction. However, there's also a body of law around selective punishment for speech. An example of this came up when the White House selectively punished the AP because it did not like the content of its speech.
To be clear, I’m not saying what Trump is doing is legal. I’m just saying it’s torturous to twist it into a states’ rights issue.
It's not about rights, it's about funding. If the universities don't take federal $$, they can't get told what to do by the federal government.
Taking the aid $$ is accepting soft power. Same as with foreign aid.