Trump’s GOP Takes a Page From Left-Wing Statists in Push To Place Academia Under Government Supervision

Even academics are educable, so universities might emerge from their current travails improved — more willing to include intellectual diversity on campuses, or at least be more circumspect about impeding it. This is the good news.The bad news: Republicans rejoicing about breaking academia to the saddle and bridle of federal government supervision demonstrate that we have two parties barely distinguishable in their shared enthusiasm for muscular statism. As “conservatives” mount sustained attacks on left-dominated educational institutions, they advance the left’s perennial agenda — the permeation of everything with politics.Such statism will extinguish the core conservative aspiration: a civil society in constant creative ferment because intermediary institutions — schools, businesses, religious and civic organizations — are given breathing room, and are free to flourish or fail without supervision from above by a minatory central authority.The president says he wants to “reclaim” the universities. His verb implies restoration: that the universities once were what he wants them to be, appendages of the federal government, subject to its agendas, which shift with gusts from the electorate. Even if the administration were not flagrantly violating the law (the Administrative Procedure Act) concerning due process when freezing or withdrawing federal funds from universities, it would be then doing lawfully what should not be done at all.The administration is right about protecting Jewish students from campus antisemitism. Yet this concern looks increasingly pretextual as the administration broadens government’s reach to encompass universities’ admissions, hiring, administrative and curriculum decisions, and to punish plagiarism, and more.The political class is to be trusted to define proper “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit.” (This language is from the administration’s letter commanding Harvard University.) And to measure the government-enforced diversity that conservatives favor — a “critical mass” of appropriately diverse faculty hires — by its intellectual micrometer. And to police deviations from propriety.A German concept used to validate the society-saturating politics infecting Europe 90 years ago was Gleichschaltung. It denoted totalistic government: the “coordinating” or “harmonizing” of all important social institutions. A foreign word, but no longer a foreign practice.As a candidate in 2023, President Trump vowed to “choke off the money” to schools assaulting “Western civilization itself.” As he defines this, and as he defines “assaulting” it. What could go wrong?America’s research universities are sources of American economic dynamism and vital to technology-dependent national security. It is folly (and unlawful) to punish entire institutions for the foolishness of a few departments. When English departments are “decolonized” — dead White men purged from the curriculum — the only victims are students deprived of Shakespeare. Ideological indoctrination is rarer in engineering departments, where knowing the right facts rather than having the right feelings matters, otherwise bridges crumble and skyscrapers tumble. Leave all departments alone, some because their silliness does not matter much, others because their excellence matters greatly.Some Republicans want to further tax universities’ endowments. There is a 1.4 percent tax on a few of the largest, which include thousands of individual funds dedicated to particular uses, and money for student aid. The crux of the conservative case against taxation of endowments is: Such taxation is partly intended to further the homogenization of society — to enlarge government’s sway by enfeebling a rival source of independent judgment and action.More devastating than taxing endowments would be stripping institutions of what enables them to build endowments: their tax-exempt status and their donors’ right to tax deductions. The president says the universities’ exemptions are “totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” He seems to define this as conformity to his administration’s agenda and preferences. As the next Democratic administration surely will do regarding its agenda. The IRS can be a hammer for pounding various institutions into obedience to the presidency of the moment.Government presumptuousness that struts on campuses will not strut only there: Secretaries of state wield a law that says an alien is deportable if the secretary has a “reasonable ground to believe” that the alien’s “presence or activities” would “potentially” have serious adverse “consequences” for American foreign policy. This potentially life-shattering discretion presupposes judicious, temperate secretaries of state, forever.Today, each party pretends to be dramatically different from the other regarding philosophic fundamentals. Actually, they offer no clear choice to voters who are wary of any American Gleichschaltung. Both parties seem equally oblivious of the deep disharmony that inevitably accompanies attempts to harmonize all important sectors of civil society by melding political and cultural power.What could go wrong? Look around.The Washington Post

Trump’s GOP Takes a Page From Left-Wing Statists in Push To Place Academia Under Government Supervision

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