We are watching Trump\u2019s clash with Harvard University. The US government has cut off state funding to this large private university and is now threatening to cut off its tax exemptions as a non-profit institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This treatment of a university that is the quintessential institution of the American elite, considered the top in many fields, and one of the most important symbols of American supremacy is striking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And don\u2019t think that Trump is doing all this to make it, for example, less elitist. On the contrary, he is invoking the requirement to comply with the current policy of effectively criminalizing solidarity with Palestine, but also his insistence on abolishing the measures that made universities more inclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We believe that both this attack, and the blackmail it has carried out at other universities, is related to the way in which a large spectrum of the Far Right, as well as the Far Center, currently hate the University and everything it represents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because Harvard may be a private university, in the sense that it is a university founded in 1636, at a time when the American state did not even exist, but it is not a university of “private individuals”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It bases its prestige on its ability to be a leading place for research, study, and public debate. And it has indeed become one of the places where America has built its elite, in all aspects of social life: 8 American presidents, 162 Nobel Prizes, and 48 Pulitzer Prizes show this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in order to do this, a university must be able to invest in education and free scientific research, be tolerant of different opinions, promote knowledge and not propaganda, and protect the university community to some extent against the arbitrariness of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of these are defined as the principles of a public university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it seems that many people no longer like all of this. Various political currents, from the variations of the Far Right to even the \u201cExtreme Center\u201d, want universities to be \u201caligned\u201d with a specific agenda: to accept manipulation, whether by the state or by \u201cfunders\u201d, to adopt the dominant ideological direction and not to accept \u201cdissidents\u201d, however they are defined in each situation, not to teach \u201cdisturbing courses\u201d, not to promote inclusivity, and obviously not to have real self-government. This is why they consider it \u201ccriminal\u201d for there to be protest movements that develop within universities, even though anyone who knows the history of the university as an institution also knows that movements within it are always an integral element of its physiognomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, what is happening in America may be stepping on the specificities of both the US educational and political systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ultimately, how can those who consider all sorts of \u201cSocial Truth Networks\u201d as \u201ccommunication\u201d and \u201cinformation,\u201d \u201cjustice\u201d as the constant undermining of the disclosure of scandals, and \u201cliberalism\u201d as the constant contempt for institutions not hate the very idea of \u200b\u200bthe public university?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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