The worst ignorant against the best universities

One thing that truly makes America great is its universities, both public and private.

Trump threatening Harvard University to cut its financing unless it accepts to lose its independence, and Harvard saying no to authoritarianism, shows that when the current President says “Make America Great Again,” he in fact has in mind a very narrow and sectarian view of his country.

The Trump administration will freeze over $2 billion in federal funds because Harvard refused to comply with a list of demands that threatened its independence. Harvard leaders believed saying no was worth the risk. The University’s President has said it clearly: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

In Europe, we have always felt envious of the American universities –and tried to benefit from them, sending there our best future scientists and academics. And we watch amazed this act of national self-harm. Italian journalist Michele Serra has said in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on April 17th that

"The social rancor of the ignorant who detest culture does not allow a shadow of doubt about the theory and practice of Trumpism. Culture is something that money cannot buy, not even the billions of Trump and his friends, and this makes it particularly unbearable to people who consider any human being for sale. Learning is more difficult than commanding. Destroy everything you cannot have, everything you cannot be: this is Trump."

Her colleague on the same page, Concita de Gregorio, adds: “Dictatorships write textbooks, burn books, dismiss academics.”

Although Harvard and other universities may win in Court, the Trump administration will push further for cuts in their funding. In the long run, only the electoral defeat of Trump and Maga will ensure the survival of this global public good, the US university system.

This is part of Trump’s campaign against science. The smell of Macarthism cannot be hidden behind the obsession with wokism and the hypocritical accusations of anti-semitism (mostly code for students criticizing another neo-fascist government, Netanyahu’s). In the fight against trumpism, the resistance of universities will be an important building block.