US President Donald Trump
During his first term as the US President, Donald Trump had not felt empowered enough to try and bring about a paradigm shift to American society and coerce it into adopting what can be termed as the ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again) ideology.
But, with the American electorate pushing him once again into the White House with a relatively stronger backing, as reflected in the fact that at the moment the Republicans have a majority in both the Congress as well as the Senate, the shackles that had restrained him earlier have been removed, and he seems to be hell-bent on not only disrupting the global order, but also totally transforming what so far the world had viewed to be the typical American ethos and replacing it with the MAGA ethos.
The latter is absolutely against the liberalism that marks what it contemptuously refers to as the ‘Woke’ culture and wants to usher in its own brand of conservatism. Trump well knows that in order to affect such a seminal shift, he has to launch a concerted assault on one of the most sacred principles that the US is noted for – freedom of thought and expression, protected by the First Amendment of its Constitution. He too knows that the way to this objective is by attacking the institutions which foster the spirit of free-thinking.
Such a motivation is behind his attempt to browbeat elite American universities by threatening punitive action against them, including cutting off federal financial aid, if they continue to harbour “anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators” on their campus.
While a number of institutions such as Columbia University have bowed to such blatantly coercive tactics, thereby implying their consent to the assumption that anyone who does not agree with the administration’s point of view can be branded as a “terrorist”, the prestigious Harvard University has rightly decided to fight back. This world-famous institution had earlier been asked by the federal government to implement wide-ranging changes to its governance, faculty hiring, student admissions, and international student oversight.
Rather than comply with such directives which violate academic freedom and the right to free speech, Harvard instead sued the administration, which retaliated by revoking the university’s certification to host international students under the F-1 and J-1 visa programmes.
With further punitive actions being contemplated by Trump, the danger that the 6,800 foreign students at Harvard might lose their visa status and be deported has become terrifyingly real. For the time being, reprieve has come after a judge issued a temporary order blocking the Trump administration's plan to strip Harvard University of its ability to enrol foreign students. Now the entire academic world is watching with trepidation Harvard’s attempt to fight back, even while cheering it on.