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Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

nytimes.com

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Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#341

Post by dragonwriter »

decimalenough wrote: post #198
TrackerFF wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can (try and) transfer to another college / university. But, I suspect, if suddenly all international students transferred to MIT, the administration would simply do the same to MIT. So it would become one big game of whack-a-mole, and the smaller players would just bend over to the rules. International students are cash cows for some institutions. They wouldn't dare to have that cow put down.

The Trump administration is not targeting the students, they're targeting Harvard. The students are collateral damage. So transferring to another college will be fine as long as they pick one that has already kowtowed to Trump. And have never posted to social media or taken any action that could be construed as opposition to the policies of the Dear Leader.

> The Trump administration is not targeting the students, they're targeting Harvard.

The Trump Administration is targeting Harvard, foreign students (and foreigners, especially non-White foreigners, generally), free speech, due process, limited government, and constraints on executive power, and a whole bunch of other things simultaneously.

"It's this, not that" is the wrong mental model. It is more like, everything, everywhere, all at once.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#342

Post by cosmicgadget »

Spivak wrote: post #295
woggy wrote: post #266

I don't see the US surviving the Trump administration.

We basically get two chances if you want to follow the normal procedure. Swing congress during the midterms and lock him up for the remainder of his term and or elect a democrat in four years who will tear up the stack of executive orders and make the rounds apologizing to everyone.

We won't even get those chances if either Roberts or Barrett roll over.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#343

Post by alaxhn »

iambateman wrote: post #298
alaxhn wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the better path forward? Republican voters led by their representative Trump were unhappy about certain policies and events at Ivy league institutions. Voters have the right to feel this way and elect representatives to carry out their views even if this is not how you feel as a feature of democracy. Proxies of the representatives of the voters reached out to a few institutions requesting changes to be made o…

Btw, I am a University employee who serves (among other things) children affected by parents who abuse drugs. My organization employs hundreds of people working on everything from low income nutrition education to researching Medicaid expenditure. We belong to the University, but we don’t have anything to do with undergraduate education. This is the problem with looking at higher-Ed ratios like that…there are a lot o…

I don't have first hand experience with your situation and I would imagine that you believe you are doing a great thing for society and I don't want to disparage thats so I don't intend my comments to speak to your specific institution or situation. I apologize if you see my comments this way.

---

Broadly speaking the spending and staff levels at universities have grown over time while the number of enrolled students have stagnated and tuition costs per student have risen. There is a desire to reduce the per-student cost without providing additional subsidy and a straightforward way to do this is to look at the side of the university that doesn't have anything to do with undergraduate eduction and see where cuts may be made. One clear example of what we perceive as administrative bloat in the recent past was the Stanford Harmful Language Initiative (https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/08/university-removes-harm...). Every institution makes mistakes but if a tax-exempt and grant receiving institution has the bandwidth to produce something that to the eyes of the right appears to be fairly silly while charging ~$60k for tuition, this does raise some eyebrows.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#344

Post by daveguy »

neilv wrote: post #89

Can someone ELI5 the power networks involved here? I didn't expect to see Harvard getting smacked around or humiliated like this. Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government. And that key figures in government were interested in maintaining and benefiting from that influence. And a lot of that influence seemed aligned with national interests. (For exampl…

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government.

Turns out the "deep state" is just some made up bullshit to make people distrustful, angry, and easier to manipulate.

> Is some other faction at work now, or is it the same people as before? Are the power networks changing?

Nope, it's always been this dynamic. It's made of people after all. But that doesn't work as well to get people lapping up Trumpty Dumpty propaganda.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#345

Post by krapp »

bluGill wrote: post #316
tormeh wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more of an ethical question. Were the people who voted for Hitler bad people because they voted for a bad person? I'd argue that they were. You can't just vote for a horrible person and then say you had nothing to do with the consequences. I'm not the one you replied to, but I assume this is something family related, a la "just because grandpa voted for Trump doesn't mean he's a bad person".

People didn't have good choices. There was plenty to not like about the Democrats as well. You can argue who is worse, or even if the concerns are valid, but there are plenty of things many people don't like about how the democrats use their power. As such what was a voter to do? There are a long list of things, and most people are not willing accept that "their side" does anything someone else might not like. Doesn'…

People may not have had a good choice, but they had an obvious choice. The status quo of a Harris term - even considering the likely negatives, her pandering to the right and pro-Zionist stance - would have been objectively preferable to Trump. What is a voter to do? Not vote for the greater evil because they aren't in love with the lesser evil.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#346

Post by iAMkenough »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #314
neilv wrote: post #89

Can someone ELI5 the power networks involved here? I didn't expect to see Harvard getting smacked around or humiliated like this. Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government. And that key figures in government were interested in maintaining and benefiting from that influence. And a lot of that influence seemed aligned with national interests. (For exampl…

[flagged]

Conservative ideas are usually unconstitutional and criminal, if the last four months is any indicator of the current state of conservative ideals.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#347

Post by pron »

ivape wrote: post #28

I am going to get downvoted and flagged because I will bring up a topic that is not to be discussed here: From a similar CNN article: "Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered her department to terminate Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, making good on a promise made last month when she demanded the university hand over detailed records on its international students’ “illegal and vi…

Sure, but do you think that if nothing had ever happened in Gaza, the Trump administration wouldn't have found some other pretext to go after higher education, and foreign students in particular? They're defunding research programs all across the board and are sending people to gulags for having tattoos.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#348

Post by hobs »

more_corn wrote: post #201
dragontamer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’d be much better off with a president Vance. Vance literally defended the eating cats and dogs lie during the debate. The entire fucking point of this platform is to fuck the immigrants, legal or otherwise. Or is this actually a surprise to anyone with half a brain?

A lot of smart people believe a lie told often enough.

Do you think he believes the lie that he said he knows isn't true and then walked back and talked about as if it was true? Are you the smart person whose been told the lie enough?

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#349

Post by alpaca128 »

mmooss wrote: post #234
adamors wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checks and balances are just words. So yes, they can and will do everything they want.

> Checks and balances are just words. By that logic, Trump's orders are just words. The Trump administration obeys the courts - they push the envelope way too far, but it is still rule of law.

They deported a man to El Salvador against a court order and then ignored an order from the Supreme Court to return him.

Re: Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

#350

Post by 9dev »

neilv wrote: post #313
dragonwriter wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government. The simple answer is that they don't. Alumni are often in powerful positions, but even they are, that is very different from the school itself exerting influence.

I mean that alumni are invested in the prestige of the alma mater, and in the network they have through that. Also, that some people at the universities are very connected, and can get a lot of people on the phone.

But why stick your head out? The people you’re referring to got where they are now by being ruthless, egocentric, power-hungry opportunists; these kinds of people don’t risk their careers over some vague sense of gratitude for their Alma mater.
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