‘Bout time

#Trump Finally Drops the #AntiSemitism Pretext

The latest letter to #Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish #liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.

#GiftArticle

The intensely #hostile letter that *#Education* Secy #LindaMcMahon sent to the leadership of Harvard yesterday has a lot going on. But the most notable thing about it is what it leaves out.

#AntiIntellectualism #academia #law #Trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/mcmahon-harvard-letter/682717/?gift=guxsrl_dAdXUP9zqbQPWxb1QtyC5jEJxucYDgT0fTn8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext

<span>The latest letter to Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.</span>

The Atlantic

To hear McMahon tell it, #Harvard is a #university on the verge of ruin. (I say McMahon because her signature is at the bottom of the letter, but portions of the document are written in such a distinctive idiolect—“Why is there so much HATE?” the letter asks; it signs off with “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”—that one detects the spirit of a certain uncredited co-author [#Trump].)

#AntiIntellectualism #academia #law

She accuses #Harvard of admitting students who are contemptuous of America, chastises it for hiring fmr blue-city mayors #BilldeBlasio & #LoriLightfoot to teach leadership(“like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation”),questions the necessity of its remedial-math pgrm (“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple & basic mathematics?”), & accuses its board chair, Penny #Pritzker (“a #Democrat operative”), of driving the #university to financial ruin, among many complaints.

The upshot is that #Harvard should not bother to apply for any new federal #funding, because, McMahon declares, “today’s letter marks the end of new #grants for the #University.”

What you will not find in the McMahon letter is any mention of the original justification for the #Trump admi’s ongoing assault on elite #universities: #antisemitism. As a #legal pretext for trying to financially hobble the Ivy League, anti-Semitism had *some* strategic merit.

#AntiIntellectualism #academia #law

Many #students & #faculty justifiably feel that these #schools failed to take #harassment of #Jews seriously enough during the protests that erupted after the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on #Israel by #Hamas. By centering its critique on that issue, the #Trump admin was cannily appropriating for its own ends one of the progressive left’s highest priorities: protecting a minority from hostile acts.

Now, however, the mask is off.

#AntiIntellectualism #Harvard #academia #law

Aside from one very oblique reference to congressional hearings about #antisemitism (“the great work of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik”), the letter is silent on the subject. The #Trump admin is no longer pretending that it is standing up for #Jewish #students. The project has been revealed for what it is: an effort to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being #liberal.

#AntiIntellectualism #Harvard #academia #law

@Nonilex Sounds like Trump is butthurt bcuz he’s so illiterate he can’t stand anyone else needing smarter than him