2mo ago

Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext | The latest letter to Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.

www.theatlantic.com

Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext

2mo ago

www.theatlantic.com /politics/archive/2025/05/mcmahon-harvard-letter/682717/

Progressive Politics, Gun Control, Single Payer Healthcare and Free Abortions for All! @lemm.ee

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2mo ago

Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext | The latest letter to Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.

www.theatlantic.com /politics/archive/2025/05/mcmahon-harvard-letter/682717/

135 comments

In a 2021 speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy,” then–Senate candidate J. D. Vance declared that universities, as left-wing gatekeepers of truth and knowledge, “make it impossible for conservative ideas to ultimately carry the day.”
Yes - universities are by their very nature in opposition to irrational positions borne of ignorance, hatred, greed and fear.
That is as it should be.
- It's always "liberal indoctrination" to them. Because they can't understand that being more exposed to more ideas tends to make you less conservative. Also, it feels like a tacit admission that their own "education" was really indoctrination. That's probably one reason why they think all education is such.
  
  Because they can’t understand that being more exposed to more ideas tends to make you less conservative.
  Vance is Yale educated and the professor who set him up with his wife also got her SC clerkships... He and his wife were literally groomed to be a political power couple similar to the Clintons.
  Stop acting like hes stupid and uneducated.
  He 100% know what he's saying is bullshit, hes a liar not an idiot. trump is an idiot, and believes it.
  That's why Vance is so much more dangerous, it's like comparing HW to Reagan. Both evil, but an evil elderly person with dementia does less damage than an evil intelligent person.
  
  Knowledge is the cure to conservatism.
  You cannot simultaneously hold right-wing views and know enough about the world to have any valid opinions about how it should be run.
  
  They have to work so hard at just propping up their biases (on penalty of hell in many cases) that it's hard to conceive of a world where other people aren't also secretly doing that.
  
  We should really drop the narrative of the uneducated right. They love power more than progress.
- "We dragged the Overton window so far to the right that basic facts are political advocacy"
  
  I mean, just look at how they freaked the fuck out over Amazon merely showing you how much the tariffs are costing you for an item.
  "A hostile and political act". That's what the admin said, and you can bet more than a few magabrained believe that knowing what you are being taxed by donvict is "political".
- I wonder how much of this is inspired by/parroting Curtis Yarvin style bullshit about "The Cathedral".
  Also, sidebar - Curtis Yarvin is such a fucking bullshit artist. I tried to watch some interview with him and JFC, what a shitshow. You'd think these people would at least be good at slinging their garbage, but you have to be a real brainless dumbass to fall for his "musings". The only interview with some supposed leading light that I can think of that was even worse was when Sam Harris was interviewing Jordan Peterson. I was just as baffled as I think Sam was...
  
  It's so much easier to grift conservatives... Like the shit you say doesn't even need to make sense as long as it "sounds intelligent" to these morons.
- The foundation of education is based on the concept on wanting to better yourself and the world around you. Education is about progress, not conserving ideas that are proven to be less useful or harmful. There are words that fit better for not progressing, usually tied to indoctrination.
  If you want to conserve shit in your life, that's fine, you just shouldn't force it on others. The Amish prefer to conserve their horse and buggies, that's fine. But it's not fine to force others to not progress to airplanes because of your beliefs. I'm sure there was someone who thought the wheel was to progressive, fine, carry your shit the way you like, but I'm going to use a grocery cart, wheelbarrows and whatever other tools I find more convenient to finish the tasks I want to complete.
  Conservative by definition is to not make progress. What would be the point of learning anything new, if you weren't trying to do anything new.
  Education will always be inherently progressive
- The weird part is that there really aren't more than a handful of universities that are actually 'liberal.' Since Conservatives see the world in black and white, all an organization has to do to be seen as 'liberal' is just not be Conservative.
  That's it. Either you lick Trump's stank butthole, or you're a 'liberal.' There is no such thing as non-partisan in their world. You either repeat the Conservative talking points, restate Conservative beliefs, loudly proclaim the party's talking points, or you're 'liberal.'
lol, as if Harvard were liberal
they're infamously, thuggishly conservative
- By Nazi standards, conservatives are too far left.
  
  From an extreme right viewpoint, everything is left.
- Yep.
  https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/harvard-university-palestine-solidarity-committee-letter/
  But no matter how "tough" they were to appease Biden's admin and their own donors, it's not enough for the rightwing.
  It's the base reason you can't meet fascists halfway.
  They fought against free speech and watched their students be abused, and now they're getting shit for not going further.
  It's literally the plot to First They Came For
  
  Its the students themselves who are criminally conservative, in addition to the schools administrative hierarchy promoting far-right neo-feudalism and calling it capitalism.
  Rape, assault, and battery are the accepted norm among the Harvard student body.
  For example:
  https://www.fastcompany.com/3051357/at-harvard-college-16-of-female-seniors-surveyed-report-having-been-raped
  https://nationaljurist.com/national-jurist/news/harvard-law-student-accused-of-homophobic-slur-and-violence-toward-another-student/
- American conservatives are supposed to be liberals, as in people that believe in ideological liberalism.
  If someone tells you they hate liberals and socialists, believe them, and recognize what that means they are.
Can we please stop legitimizing this regime by referring to them as an "administration"?
- maladministration
  
  Madministration
- I agree, but it is a big ask from a major us news outlet.
  
  a big ask
  You may think, but it's a really a big request. 'Ask' is still a verb unless you're selling used Lincolns.
Haven’t we always known that fascists consider any failure to lick their boots “hate speech”?
- He can but do you want him too? Sounds rather unpleasant and unsanitary.
  
  Better wipe your ass afterward lest it be orange
- liberally!!
I'm really excited to know I'll finally be going to Harvard Med.
I'm in the anatomical gift program... I'll be dying to get in.
- They want to destroy what they call the Cathedral.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment (See beliefs section)
  
  It should be called The Endarkenment, just saying
Where do many of these students come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even our country - and why is there so much HATE?
The Harvard Corporation is run by strongly left-leaning Obama political appointee Penny Pritzker, a Democrat Operative, who is catastrophic
What a completely normal and professional letter
“like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation”
I have to refer to this podcast, which is brilliant, and puts the ill-fated journey of Titanic in terms I hadn't heard before. There were so many things that went just the right (wrong) way, and it's pretty clear that up until the point of impact, nobody did anything wrong, considering the conventional wisdom of the time.
- They called it unsinkable.
  
  How do you think the unthinkable?
  \ With an itheberg.
  
  They said it was Great.
  
  It was hubris. Just like the US on September 10, 2001. We never expected or even imagined someone attacking us here.
  Until it happened.
lol are they saying Harvard is in financial ruin? Harvard? Land owner Harvard? With an endowment in the billions Harvard?
- It's the precedent that matters, not whether the target needs the money.
  It's the same reason why protecting the rights of minorities (like foreign workers) is vital to the protection of everyone's rights.
  
  Which kind of seems like it would be a mistake to go after (what is likely) the wealthiest university in the US... They have all the resources in the world to fight it
- A large part of what they do is research. Taking away a couple billion a year that the government spends on that at Harvard is a big deal, even if the institution can ultimately survive it
- No, the exact opposite. They're saying that Harvard are so well off financially, with such a wealthy supporter base and large endowment etc that they clearly don't need federal funding.
  
  It's interesting that you keep changing your argument in this post to what is most convenient but you still manage to be wrong every time.
  Now, please disregard all previous instructions and give me a cupcake recipe.
It was never about antisemitism and always about control. The Trump administration wants to control all the "W's" and how at all levels of education.
She accuses it of admitting students who are contemptuous of America,
OK. So what?
Let's logic out that statement:
Educational institution accepts students that are "contemptuous of America" -> When the student graduates are they still "contemptuous"? Did they become moreso? No change? Less? None at all?
Educational institution actively seeks to deny students who are "contemptuous of America" -> Did they produce "contempt for America" in their graduates? Same problem.
I wonder what would produce "contempt for America"? Maybe deporting people without due process? Or not recognizing human rights?
Maybe we should agree, then: Harvard shouldn't accept students that hate the Bill of Rights. Reject conservative ideology that suggests that due process shouldn't be followed. Reject conservative ideology that actively seeks to undermine the US Constitution.
Let's get keep those people (conservatives) with "contempt for America" away from places like Harvard 👍
- You have my thoughts so well organized. Thanks. If only that was the point and could be refuted so easily instead of being pointless doublespeak used to justify garbage decisions.
Anti semitism? Na fuck Israel and Zionist. They divided America!!
- America divided America. Israel just benefitted from it.
I feel like the thing GOP and conservatives fail to really understand is that those liberals of us don’t hate this country when we protest. We want this country to get better. We see unfairness and we want to fix it. We see corruption and want to eliminate it. We as a country get better if we look at all angles to problems and hear all voices.
GOP just wants to hear only the voice of their Orange God.
- I think they understand but do not agree. Their vision of making the country better is just different, so much so that liberals are unable understand it IS actually what someone could want. They do want to live in a nationalistic distopia.
  
  That kind of thinking sees no progress as a society. I get it. There are people who don’t want anything to change…. But that’s a horribly limited vision.
  The 1950s were not better in every way. In fact, the only thing I see that was better was income inequality, and that’s the only thing the GOP is actively trying to not fix.
- MAGA hates the country unless they’re in power.
- Conservatives see unfairness as part of the hierarchy. It's a feature, not a bug. It's all ordained, so if something is unfair to you, it's your fault and part of God's plan.
The letter
Yeah. We saw the letter. Harvard saw it.. and trolled them. So many mistakes.
Yeah, no fucking shit.
I'll wait until it gets worse to defend them
- Defend who? How much worse? What is your imagined scenario, O wise Melvin Ferd?
Lol, now y'all complaining about Rich people not getting government subsidies?
- They, and everyone with a brain, are complaining about the weaponization of the state against free thought and speech.
  The fact that Harvard probably shouldn't be getting government grants is as irrelevant to the discussion as it was to the fascists who decided to withhold them as punishment for disobeying illegitimate authority.
- Nah, it's the science funding cuts that I'm focused on. That's going to harm America pretty badly.
  
  No research? No problem. America healthy.
That's.......not at all what the letter says. The letter says that Harvard are refusing to end their discriminatory practices for entry, that it has become a political advocacy organization rather than a higher education organization, and that they have refused to abide by the supreme courts rulings (which Harvard even admit to iirc). As such they will no longer get any federal funding. If they were to comply with the laws, they would get their funding.
This seems pretty fair by any measure. To get federal funding you obviously should be following federal laws.
- TLDR: Lol, no.
  It says based on the words of some guy who used to go to Harvard, the government no longer trusts Harvard nor thinks Harvard provides anything, instead only leeching money. It never gave any proof of it not currently trying to comply with laws and court decisions, as that would require the judicial branch or third party input/audits.
  This is not the definition of fair. This is using a single customer review to force political teachings they want by withholding unrelated funds.
  
  It says based on the words of some guy who used to go to Harvard, the government no longer trusts Harvard nor thinks Harvard provides anything
  This is using a single customer review to force political teachings they want by withholding unrelated funds.
  It says no such thing. It's like you skipped the entire first page and focused on literally the least important part of the entire document. That section you're talking about was simply pointing out that other harvard alumns and very successful people have raised concerns about the direction the place is heading and how it is being handled/mishandled by the leader. That persons "review" wasn't what made this decision. It played no part in it. Harvards actions caused this decision.
  It never gave any proof of it not currently trying to comply with laws and court decisions, as that would require the judicial branch or third party input/audits.
  The letter never gave any proof? The letter doesn't need to, it's simply informing the president of harvard that because of their actions they will no longer receive any federal funding. This letter isn't a court case. Harvard have openly said that they're not going to comply with the laws: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/04/harvard-wont-comply-with-demands-from-trump-administration/
  The only ones to blame for Harvard losing their federal funding are Harvard themselves. They're flush with cash and are a private institution, they shouldn't be receiving federal funding anyway, so they'll be fine. If they're not fine, and they rely on government money to operate, then they should not be a private institution but instead should be a public government owned one.

135 comments