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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

#951

Post by lewisleclerc »

maest wrote: post #830
epolanski wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go to Harvard because they want a prestigious career, not because they have an insatiable palate for knowledge that somehow in 2025 they can't satisfy in any other way.

"Harvard's not a real school, therefore these actions are justified" Even if you were right about Harvard not being a real school (which is a strange thing to claim), your conclusion still doesn't follow. Separately, is there a name for this debating technique? I would like to call it "baiting the assertion". You claim A => B where, in fact, A does not imply B. To distract attention from the faulty logic, however, yo…

Thank you for this comment. It got me into researching more about the rhetoric types and think about all the people I've come across who make similar arguments.

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

#952

Post by alephnerd »

raincom wrote: post #949
alephnerd wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard (the University, not it's alums) has had a near nil presence on K-Street for a looooong time - and their primary lobbyist with the GOP has been on Trump's bad side for sometime after he pissed off David Sacks. I'm also an (severely disillusioned) alumni of some of the student orgs that are mutually using Harvard the institution as a punching bag to fight their culture wars. A lot of this is honestly very chil…

Sorry to ask, who is "their primary lobbyist with the GOP"?

https://ballardpartners.com/team-member/brian-d-ballard/

To talk with this admin, you need a person who's part of the Florida GOP milleu in the 90s. Susie Wiles is the one who's managing/operating the show. Almost everyone who matters in Florida republican politics since the 90s owes favors to her.

Similar to how if you had an in into Chicago or IL Dem politics in the 90s or 2000s, you had an in with the Obama admin becuase of Axelrod, Rahm, and Jack Daley.

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

#953

Post by silverliver »

eyesofgod wrote: post #36
duxup wrote: post #6

Government policy in the form of personal grudges rather than law and good policy.

Expect much much more of this as Slicon Valley scum continue to get their way. They have very loudly expressed their desire for a sort of fuedal power and hace polluted the current administration with some of their ideas.

Very true. A feudal relationship once established was never going to conform to their political interests. They simply pushed too far, too fast, and for too long for that to be a possibility.

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

#954

Post by mixmastamyk »

acdha wrote: post #822
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. I worked there for years, still spend a lot of time there, and therefore know a lot of people who either are or were there. I should have said that.

It’d be especially useful to have more specifics about what you’re talking about. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of university administrators, politics, etc. but without even knowing what you’re talking about a lot of people, especially those who’ve been here for a while, are going to see that, decide it won’t have a positive outcome, and downvote.

When former soviets are speaking out about compelled speach:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38985343

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

#955

Post by mbs159 »

cosmicgadget wrote: post #362
ithkuil wrote: post #242

The us government, using the appropriate mechanism like passing laws etc, can change the policies like they see fit. However I don't understand how it's possible to single out a specific university. Are there precedents for this kind of behaviour?

It's called a bill of attainder and it's prohibited by the Constitution. Courts have said this also applies to executive orders though it's not as crystal clear. He's already done this to the Associated Press for ignoring his stupid Gulf of Mexico rename as well as to several law firms for representing democrats.

> it's prohibited by the Constitution

Even if it is illegal, does not mean that anybody will actually do anything about it beside challenging the administration in court and giving them a slap on the wrist at best.

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

#956

Post by mbs159 »

mizzao wrote: post #943
nitwit005 wrote: post #917

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be assuming they're following the law. The Trump admin hasn't exactly been winning in court.

Does it really matter if court orders/judgments can't be enforced and they can just ignore them?

If the court orders cannot be enforced, it does indeed not matter

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

#957

Post by southernplaces7 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #930
southernplaces7 wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there will always be a loud contingent of Americans spouting counter-arguments based in American Exceptionalism, claiming that everyone else somehow, magically, has the US to thank for its standard of living. The entire second part of your comment shores up exactly this notion that everyone else has the US to thank for its standard of living and that the country is exceptional. Underlying all the things you list: th…

The post-WWII order was deliberately designed by clever American politicians who realised they could leverage the untouched industrial base and built-up military capability to become a world superpower, in an alliance with Western Europe. All of these policies were and are 100% America First, because the US has always been the primary benefactor of it all, but they've been marketed as some kind of benevolent altruist…

Greedy or not, somebody was going to become the dominant and even hegemonic world power after that colossal war and the nation state dynamics that followed it. Would you have preferred that it be something like the then still Stalinist USSR, or later perhaps the deeply authoritarian (and under Mao batshit crazy on its internal policies) China?

Given the inevitable rise of at least one dominant power, I prefer that it was the United States with its generally benevolent democratic traditions to model off of (even if it itself often poorly applied them overseas)

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

#958

Post by qgin »

dragonwriter wrote: post #254
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. 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 big wakeup call for me is I believed the idea that there was a small group of people in the US that had the "real power". The billionaires, the corporations, the elite whoevers. And on a certain level that was comforting, because their self-interest to keep the United States as the best place for capitalism meant that certain political excesses would be limited.

But with the Trump admin, I've realized that just isn't the case. There's nobody who has the ability to rein this in.

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

#959

Post by ashoeafoot »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #877
rayiner wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I actually think indoctrinating their children in western human liberalism -is- a feature. But whether it’s a feature or a flaw, it’s an aspect of having the best brand on earth that those with the most money aspire to it. If you’re in an African country Harvard degrees are extremely prestigious, more so than in America, so the drive to attain it is even greater - even if it’s largely limited to the wealthy. But not…

By that logic slavery should have been abolished by the reeducated elite in the middle east years ago. The education does nothing but provide connections.

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

#960

Post by uselesswords »

qgin wrote: post #958
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 big wakeup call for me is I believed the idea that there was a small group of people in the US that had the "real power". The billionaires, the corporations, the elite whoevers. And on a certain level that was comforting, because their self-interest to keep the United States as the best place for capitalism meant that certain political excesses would be limited. But with the Trump admin, I've realized that just isn…

A big problem with other spheres like education is that they do not react immediately in the sense that the effects of a change in policy won't be realized for decades. The economy on the other hand basically has an instant reaction to policy changes. When Trump put out tariffs and saw the instant economic reaction, he somewhat walked it back.

But the reaction to changes in areas like research and education isn't realized for years if not decades. So Trump doesn't feel the consequences. For non-economic spheres, the only real immediate reaction to these changes is the social reaction, which comes from people Trump is actively aligned against and entrenches his position.

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