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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

#401

Post by lenerdenator »

ethbr1 wrote: post #391
lenerdenator wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictatorships require at least some sort of state monopoly on violence. That's how power ultimately works. As of now there's no way for the state to enact such a monopoly in the US.

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An election only puts a few people in an office. If those people try to exert their will through force (which, I wouldn’t classify cutting Harvard off as using force, just being a jerk) and there can be severe physical consequences done to the state for that action, then I wouldn’t call it a dictatorship at that point.

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

#402

Post by j_maffe »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #339
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.

A friend is a big Harvard alum. He says that most of his classmates are very unhappy with the direction of the university. So in his circle the alumni may be cheering this on. Maybe not the extremism but the general idea of telling Harvard that it needs to get back to truth-seeking.

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

#403

Post by moshegramovsky »

nashashmi wrote: post #312
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…

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Do you know any Israelis? What makes you think Israelis are behind this?

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

#404

Post by UncleMeat »

Alupis wrote: post #367
rat87 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Can multiple things not be true at the same time? Or is it one of those "our" billionaires type of thing?

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

But they aren't, in this case. Trump and his ilk are attacking academia because they think that universities are all woke. There's no other reasoning required. Leaders within his community have said this in public very clearly. The goal is to destroy academia.

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

#405

Post by bananalychee »

ajross wrote: post #304
alephnerd wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Between Harvard, Yale, and possibly a few other schools, I thought they had influence throughout government. Harvard and Yale didn't hire the right lobbyists [0][1][2] The other universities like Dartmouth, MIT, and public university systems did. One of the side effect of being large endowment private universities meant Harvard and Yale remained extremely insular and concentrated on donor relations over government…

That is just shockingly cynical. We're facing a situation where a sitting government feels empowered to go to war against an elite university solely over the speech it doesn't like to hear on its campus. And your response is to dismiss it all as a kerfuffle over "bad lobbying" and "inter-elite fratricide"? Really? Surely there are existing institutions of some form or another you'd like to see not made enemies of the…

Fighting antisemitism is clearly not the true motive behind this ideological "war", just as denazification was clearly not the motive for Russia's invasion of Ukraine; it's just a convenient excuse to target institutions such as Harvard that are unwilling to distance themselves from the progressive left.

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

#406

Post by dkarl »

scoofy wrote: post #258
dkarl wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he’s generally intelligent. He’s not going to run the country into the ground I think you're having a hard time grasping the concept of people who care more about rolling back social and cultural change than they care about the United States being a strong and prosperous country. The tension between those priorities in the Republican party has been resolved. The current leaders in the party, including Vance, rose b…

I grew up in a wildly religious family, and was in wildly conservative areas for part of that time. There are a lot of people who want to roll back social and cultural change for good-faith religious reasons. I think are wrong for thinking these things. However, they still also want to have a strong and prosperous nation. My point is not to say that I want the future they want. It's to say I also don't want the futur…

I think you're describing a part of the Republican Party that is now almost irrelevant, one that kept expecting the voters to turn against Donald Trump. They're the ones who thought, what the hell is Trump doing sucking up to Putin? Our voters are patriots who have no hesitation about calling the United States the greatest nation on earth. Surely they're going to be shocked at Trump fawning over a sad sack country like Russia. Surely patriotic voters are going to be offended at the president of their precious eagle scream U! S! A! showing open admiration for an ex-superpower with a ruined economy, zero cultural capital, a laughingstock of a democratic system, and a crumbling military with zero global reach.

That point of view still exists in the Republican Party, but it has been eclipsed by something sadder and smaller-minded. Liberal progressives have long used national greatness as a lever on patriotic conservatives, telling them, look, our "national greatness" comes from our embrace of education, cultural change, new people, new ideas. If conservatives love our supposed national greatness, they should embrace the progressive liberal ideals that built it. Now, it's like the Republican Party has been taken over by conservatives who... decided the liberals were right? It's like they gave up and said, y'all are right, national greatness requires education, continual learning and self-criticism, openness to new ideas and new people, and acceptance of creative destruction, both economic and cultural. They accepted that, grieved, faced the choice with clear eyes, and decided that national greatness isn't worth the cost. They look at Russia and see a country that is marinating in its own chauvinism, and they want that instead.

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

#407

Post by simonh »

lenerdenator wrote: post #385
soupfordummies wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard for me to see this as anything more than "they resisted Trump, that pissed him off and now he's further retaliating." Side question I've been wrestling with to whoever feels like commenting: At what point would you look at our current US situation and say "yep, we're now in a dictatorship"

Dictatorships require at least some sort of state monopoly on violence. That's how power ultimately works. As of now there's no way for the state to enact such a monopoly in the US.

Agreed, dictatorship is a gross exaggeration. Sliding toward fascism? Sure. Would Tump like to do away with election? He’s said he does, that they won’t be necessary.

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

#408

Post by Animats »

ty6853 wrote: post #82
ceejayoz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states "existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status"; this injunction would appear to pause that.

The semester is already over, many of them went home. They'll simply be refused when they try to come back.

That's a real issue. If you're on a student visa, and were planning on coming back in the fall, leaving the US for the summer may be a bad move. Entry to the US can be denied arbitrarily. Deporting someone is harder.

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

#409

Post by truthyTables »

Alupis wrote: post #367
rat87 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Can multiple things not be true at the same time? Or is it one of those "our" billionaires type of thing?

Sure, in writing anything can be true.

Superman fought Lex Luthor in Action Comics #NN and on and on

Most people just default to faith in their native political and religious traditions. So yeah “our guy is better than their guy” and fuck your individual self, you’re on the one true team normalization, becomes the default by sure lack of will of enough people to rock the boat even gently through public debate and discussion.

I mean this crowd can circumlocute an endless set of rhetorical perspectives. Ground truth is this group is outnumbered by Trump #1 and all kinds of other tribal group thinks.

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

#410

Post by bgwalter »

daveguy wrote: post #344
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…

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