Crime Today News
By Kenneth Tiven
President Donald Trump’s financially punitive and legally questionable attack on Ivy League universities is best understood not as policy, but as a function of his emotional compulsions. For Trump, every issue, no matter how complex or consequential, is about dominance. Whether it’s absurdly claiming a golfing handicap comparable to Jack Nicklaus or treating global tariffs like a board game with his grandchildren, his actions are less about governance and more about performance.
Now, Trump is freezing $23 billion in government funding to Harvard University—a move that strikes directly at medical and scientific research which saves lives. This assault on research institutions is compounded by the appointment of vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services, crowning what may be the most incompetent cabinet assembled in a century.
As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman bluntly observed: “This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce… He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge… I doubt he has ever spent five minutes studying the workforce of the future.”
Trump’s gambit appears to be aimed at delivering red meat to the MAGA base. With inflation and foreign policy floundering, he’s targeting higher education—an institution alien to many of his supporters—especially when it champions diversity and inclusion.
The Ivy League universities—Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale—have become a focal point. The Trump administration first approached Columbia University with a letter heavy on demands and light on negotiation. Columbia’s newly-appointed president hinted at possible dialogue.
Harvard, however, received a different kind of communication: a letter masquerading as a contract, drafted in unmistakably condescending and moralizing tones. The response at Harvard was likely unprintable.
One section of the government’s letter began in a dramatically altered font (emphasized to show formality or threat): “It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture…”
The letter’s laundry list of demands included:
- Governance reforms to reduce faculty power and decentralization.
- Merit-based hiring and admissions, explicitly ending any race- or gender-based preferences.
- International admissions scrutiny to block students deemed “hostile” to American values.
- Viewpoint diversity audits.
- Immediate shutdown of all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.
- Disciplinary overhauls to prevent ideological disruption.
- Whistleblower protections for internal dissenters.
- Quarterly federal compliance reports through 2028.
It concluded ominously: “We expect your immediate cooperation in implementing these critical reforms that will enable Harvard to return to its original mission…”
Harvard President Alan M Garber responded with polite firmness: “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating anti-semitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard”.
Garber’s rebuttal was delivered via two Republican-aligned law firms with deep Trump-world connections—one led by a former appointee, the other by a Trump Organization ethics advisor.
The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, wrote: “In a break from the rhetorical tug-of-war that has defined Harvard’s standoff with the Trump administration, Garber—for the first time—alleged that Trump’s campaign against Harvard was not just an example of government overreach, but outright unlawful…”
The newspaper emphasized that demands to eliminate DEI programmes, subject curricula to federal review, and derecognize pro-Palestine groups violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the First Amendment.
This letter was not unique. A coalition of universities—including Brown, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, and the University of Illinois—has asked a Massachusetts federal judge to block a Trump policy change that would slash indirect research cost payments from 30 percent to 15 percent. These funds pay for facilities, staff, and vital infrastructure. The government, trying to save $405 million annually, is punishing institutions that resist ideological control.
The question remains: Will Columbia follow Harvard’s stance or fold under pressure? Brown and Dartmouth have already declined engagement.
Trump’s administration managed to wrangle free legal help by threatening law firms—a strategy that feels like a reverse mafia shakedown: “You already have the payments. But we can take away the future ones.” A federal district court judge recently issued a restraining order to protect one such law firm—the one that secured Dominion Voting’s $800 million settlement with Fox News.
This kind of interference in higher education is unprecedented. With an endowment of $53 billion, Harvard—founded in 1636 and alma mater to eight US presidents—has the stature and resources to fight back. But many smaller institutions may not.
Beyond prestige, these universities are economic engines in their communities, deeply networked, and with influential alumni. Yet Trump’s moves endanger not only academic independence, but also America’s innovation ecosystem.
Student protests in the 1950s shifted from civil rights to anti-war movements. Today, the Trump administration seems intent on stifling protest altogether and “dumbing down” the populace—because keeping voters uninformed, as history shows, is a proven route to authoritarian power.
Trump has long admired wrestling—where conflict is performative and outcomes predetermined. In wrestling parlance, “kayfabe” refers to the suspension of disbelief. The show may be fake, but the pain is real.
So it is with this assault on higher education: the storyline is politically crafted, but the damage to science, medicine, and civil liberties is painfully real.
This campaign also helps distract from heavy-handed immigration policies. If foreign graduate students—who pay full tuition—are scared off, American students will bear the financial burden.
Clare Shipman, Columbia’s acting president and former CNN Moscow correspondent during the USSR’s collapse, has heard from concerned alumni—including this reporter. As Ben Franklin said during the American Revolution: “We must all hang together, or surely we will hang separately.”
This moment—a fever dream fuelled by libertarian ideologues and a lonely, damaged man—may very well decide whether America’s universities remain bastions of inquiry or become pawns in a cultural power play.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels
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