Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Ryan Enos: Thanks. I’m very glad to be here.
Enos: Yeah. Well, look, I mean, it’s a long, convoluted story, but we have to remember that this is all in the context of Trump’s authoritarian attacks on civil institutions. And the universities are just one of those; just like other authoritarians have done in other countries, universities are a prime target. And everybody knew from day one that Harvard would be one of those prime targets—the prime target—because of its standing in American higher education.
And then Harvard sued—led by the faculty and then joined by the university—and won, and won these grants back after our research funding had been canceled. So supposedly in the background, at least we hear from the New York Times, that there’s been a series of negotiations ongoing. And as you mentioned, when it was reported that Harvard was not going to pay out this sort of arbitrary yet very high sum of 200 million or 500 million—it’s gone all over the place—that Trump seems to have “lost it,” for lack of [a] better term, and gone on a ramp that now is a billion dollars, which I think, you know, just shows the arbitrariness of this whole situation.
Enos: Well, I think the only way to make sense of it is not from a legal perspective or, in many ways, even a political perspective, but to put it in the perspective of Trump trying to assert authoritarian control. What he cares about is control. He cares about winning because he wants to take control of civil institutions.
Sargent: Well, it’s worth pointing out that if you take the two things together, he’s essentially saying, “We will criminally investigate you unless you hand a billion dollars over to causes that I value.” I’m not sure that that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Is it?
But this is the federal government doing the same thing. And when we put it in those terms—which is clearly what they’re doing—it shows just how outrageous and how against any kind of system of law this is.
Enos: I totally agree. And look—I mean, if I could go in and rewrite every headline in the New York Times, I’d really like to, because they adopt this language. And I think they should know better. But I don’t even entirely blame the New York Times, because I think what this shows in some ways is that in a democracy—which the United States has been—we are not used to having a government doing this.
Sargent: Yes. Well, let’s just go into the situation a little more. Can you explain the role of research grants here? Why they’re so essential to Harvard’s flourishing and how seriously Harvard has to take the prospect of losing them? We’ve seen Harvard fight back on that front and Harvard has won—at least temporarily. That’s where we are, right? But it’s still a looming threat. Can you talk about why it matters?
And it’s important to use that term because these are not “grants” in the way someone might think of it. It’s not like, you know, a grant you give to somebody to—you know, that—because they want an art contest or something like that, however we think about that.
Sargent: And the U.S. government awarded it. The U.S. government made the decision that Harvard won the competitive bidding process, too. I want to underscore your point here, which is that when the U.S. government enters into a contract with Harvard to conduct some research, it’s doing so because it has undergone, theoretically, a rigorous process and determined that doing this contract would be in the interests of the United States. It’s not something that’s handed to Harvard for nothing.
A lot of them are related to national defense when it comes to things that serve our military. A lot of them are things that are aimed at trying to help the American population generally when it comes to things like fighting hunger and things like that. And so these were things that were prescribed by law to be things that the United States government should be funding because it’s in our best interest for the American people.
But essentially Harvard, like anywhere else, is therefore unable to do this very expensive research that was undertaken not for its own good, really, but because there’s professors and other researchers here whose main motivation is to produce research that makes America’s society better and healthier and safer.
But Trump is incapable of saying to himself, Wait a minute, do we want this contract to continue because it’s in the interest of the American people or not? Everything is just a tool or a weapon to reward friends and punish enemies. That’s really the essence.
I mean, look, you know—you know that the Harvard School of Public Health... public health, think about that. You know, there’s not any greater public good than that is—is... had to undergo a radical downsizing where they’re losing faculty. They’re losing their ability to research. They’re losing their ability to serve the public interest because Donald Trump thinks it’s something he wants to target in a political game, and he’s hurting the American people, but he thinks it’s in his best interest.
Ryan, that seems to capture the basic collective action problem here. It’s not until Trump has been severely weakened that Harvard leaders came to this realization, but they should have realized it a little sooner, no? I mean, in other words, if more institutions had realized that if they all stood up to Trump, it would weaken him further—which would in turn make it easier to resist his bullying—we’d be better off now.
But in the background, there’s been this idea that some people in Harvard leadership wanted to cut a deal with the Trump administration. And maybe that was the best way out. Maybe that was a way to move things forward.
He’s been his own worst enemy, and he’s getting politically weaker as he goes, because this is what authoritarians do—they get in their own way. But every institution that stands up and pushes back enables that. And that’s what we’ve seen from the ones that actually have, including Harvard.
Enos: You’re absolutely right that there is a group of professors that really are feeling the pain of what’s going on and want to say that the best and easiest route is to just normalize things. And look, that’s what authoritarians do—is they apply pain and they want to normalize things. And so it’s hard to blame somebody that’s, for example, being essentially kidnapped or has somebody held ransom by an authoritarian.
And the question is whether we can allow this anti-democratic regime of Donald Trump to consolidate or not. So when we look at the larger picture, all of this research and these things we want to do are tied up in our system of free government. They’re tied up because we are a place where researchers want to be. They’re tied up where people have free expression. They’re tied up in the idea that people can express free ideas. And that’s, frankly, what has made the American higher education system the envy of the world. There’s no doubt that we lead in that. And it’s tied up in our system of free government. These things do not flourish in places where people don’t want to go and do research freely. And so if we don’t look at that in the bigger picture, eventually that all goes away—no matter what kind of short-term extortion or ransom we’re willing to pay.
Enos: Well, I think part of it is the collective action problem that we’ve noted, where everybody thinks maybe it’s somebody else’s job to push back and things will go back to normal. And of course, when that happens, eventually we all lose, right? We all put our head in the sand, and [when] we put them back up, our democracy is gone.
And in many ways, those of us that are alive now lived through the most fully democratic period of our democracy. And so it’s hard for us to imagine a situation where, when somebody like me says, “No, our democracy is coming apart,” [or] in many ways, it’s already come apart, and it’s a matter of whether we can take it back to its full state or not—they think that’s hyperbole because they’re basing this, somewhat rationally, on the whole history they’ve seen. And what they need to do is think about it more holistically and realize that, yeah, we are now in a system of “competitive authoritarianism.” And it’s just about whether we manage to take our democracy back from that.
Harvard President Alan Garber is seen, kind of widely, as a real fighter for academic freedom and democracy, and he’s getting feted for that. Meanwhile, universities that have caved to Trump were only rewarded by a renewed effort by Trump to extort more from them. So clearly the lesson is that standing up to Trump is the only way. So to close this out, Ryan, what happens now? Does Harvard hang tough, and does Harvard end up winning?
Sargent: It sure seems that way to me. And the alternative is just unthinkable. Ryan Enos, thanks so much for coming on, man. I really hope Harvard’s leaders are listening to you.
Enos: So do I. Thank you very much.
Hence then, the article about transcript trump spirals into fury after harvard humiliates him badly was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Transcript: Trump Spirals into Fury after Harvard Humiliates Him Badly )
Also on site :