First Trump came for Harvard, now he’s after the rest

[Cafeconleche]

Trump has just ordered all US embassies worldwide to stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students with immediate effect. WTF???

But this is similar to what many Londoners from the outer boroughs must do.

They’re now having politics done to them, and it’s suddenly illegitimate?
(Yes it is illegitimate, and was on both sides)

Yes, there were excesses and smugness of the extreme left on US campuses, although not as many as the right-wing press would have us think.

But this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And it's done in such a vicious spirit of retribution and "We'll show you who's in charge now."

Let's not forget that 150 years ago, black Americans were mostly enslaved people, and they still live with a level of structural inequality that can be shocking. We can say the same for women. Change comes slowly and it's painful.

@ParmaVioletTeamy DD is at Durham and is a course rep. One third of students there are international. She will tell you:
their English is NOT good enough: they tell her they don’t like the courses as they can’t understand the lecturers and the reading is very difficult for them.
They do tend to stay with their own; early on she befriended a Chinese student and they became friends. Then she didn’t see her around until one day she spotted her with a group of other Chinese students and she totally blanked her.
Of course this is a generalisation and there are plenty who do mix well but she says it does not do the courses nor the university any good unless they can tighten up on the English comprehension. Unis need the international students for the money they bring and for diversity. But they need to have English proficiency tests that are accurate. It doesn’t do the international student any favours to struggle so much. (I obviously understand that many international students speak English as their mother tongue).

It's not about "having sympathy" it's about damaging America. But hey as long as he's "owning the libtards and the elite". Right?

for proving my point.

Yes, it’s extremely damaging. That’s there in my first sentence.

Not just to the US, but to the students too. I have plenty of sympathy for them. It’s the institutions I have little sympathy for.

No sure who you are replying to with your bit about owning the libs. I’m avowedly a liberal myself. That’s why I oppose ideological litmus tests, the erosion of institutions of free enquiry, and racist admissions policies.

I just dislike it whoever’s doing it. If that feels plebeian to you, I can live with that.

Calling much needed affirmative action racist or race based admission policies is so reductionist and misleading.

And btw it’s interesting those opposing that have done nothing to challenge the largely white and wealthy families who buy their way into various educational institutions and workplaces?

Also re. Affirmative action WHITE women have benefited very well from that : https://phillywnc.org/why-dei-matters-in-america-and-who-benefits-the-most/#:~:text=Research%20from%20the%20National%20Bureau,in%20education%20and%20the%20workplace.

UK: www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jul/28/uks-white-female-academics-are-being-privileged-above-women-and-men-of-colour

I'm not going to join you in demonising white women, @Inawhyl - women generally (of whatever ethnicity) are too often set up as scapegoats. As J S Mill pointed out in 1868, women in Britain had fewer rights than recently freed, previously enslaved African-American men.

I'm not sure what you mean by feels plebian. But then I'm a pleb myself.😆 However that was not what I was feeling or even just thinking so don't feel victimised by it.

You find DEI initiatives racist. You think there's a far left elite controlling America's universities to the detriment of the USA.

So forgive me my simple, plebian ways but for me, if it talks like MAGA and walks like MAGA, it's probably MAGA.🤷‍♀️

Was architecture. Masters/post grad. Maybe part of her issue was that her undergraduate course was in the U.K., maybe the content is too different as the courses will be validated by that country’s validating architecture board.

In my job I work with a lot of foreign students in London and employ them sometimes. Many only work one day a week at college and work 2 or 3 jobs. They go to a not so good Uni doing 2 year course like business studies and they don't really come for the Uni course they come to work and earn money, they are mainly from India and Pakistan.
Quite a few end up staying in the UK afterwards and it is a route to immegration. Some marry, some get a work visa, one guy I know stayed after his visa finished for 15 years and no one followed up.

Then your political map is way too limited. You really can’t conceive of any other space than Far Left Elite or MAGA? If you imagine your own politics as being more nuanced than that then I think it’s fair to recognize others’ might be too.

I’ve said nothing about a far left elite. I don’t know many MAGA who would open their post with how they loathe Trump either. Is that really how MAGA talk?

My problem with the politics of US elite universities is not the individual politics of any of their members. I’ve had many enjoyable debates with genuinely far left academics, some of whom are friends of mine. Mine is a concern for holding space open for genuine intellectual free enquiry, and how that is undermined by requiring specific values statements as a condition of hiring. That’s anti-diversity.

As for discriminatory admissions, Harvard in 2023 (under Biden, not Trump, you’ll note) lost a landmark Supreme Court case which found it has been violating the equal protection clause of the US constitution, in unlawfully discriminating against Asian Americans. Adding salt into the wounds, not only were Asian Americans systematically declined places with scores that a comparable candidate who was who was white or any other race have been admitted on, to rationalise this Harvard argued this was because the Asians had sub-par personalities, based on scores given by assessors who typically had never interacted with them. Harvard’s been here before. In the early 20th century it imposed a cap on Jews for, yes, character reasons. We see that now as racist and wrong, and I think progressives will come to see the treatment of Asians in the same way.

It can be very easy to go along with polite society opinion, and the WASPs were doing no more than that after all. But if you step back, there are some principles worth defending. For me those are liberal principles. What are yours?

Correct. I don't disagree with that at all, what I'm pointing out is a response to the post I quoted: Working at a snazzy hospital in San Francisco or Los Angeles as a top nurse in a highly prestigious field with what sounds like a high salary ( in comparison to uk salaries) does not necessarily equate to a comfy, middle-class lifestyle because of these conditions and a much higher cost of living.

I don’t know many MAGA who would open their post with how they loathe Trump either.

Demonstrating a very limited view or extreme naivety @GeneralPeter. Again a marker of MAGA IMHO.

Mine is a concern for holding space open for genuine intellectual free enquiry, and how that is undermined by requiring specific values statements as a condition of hiring. That’s anti-diversity.

DEI is pro-diversity. Check the stats. It doesn't require value statements, unlike the WH and POTUS.

Linda McMahon: "Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish."

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lqahhcotqx2n

You’re determined to have an argument with someone who doesn’t exist, over terms only you introduced, using stats you don’t produce. To boot you seem to think MAGA are the anti-Trump lot.

I’d say have fun with it, but I’m not even sure this is worth your own time.

To boot you seem to think MAGA are the anti-Trump lot.

Not at all @GeneralPeter. I'm more than well aware of those who say I loathe..., and yet/ however/but..., rather than expose their actual feelings. Maybe they're lying to me or maybe they're lying to themselves.

Anyway, you think DEI initiatives are racist and do not promote diversity of thought in universities. What was the proportion of white, affluent male students before the initiative was introduced compared to now?

As fucking if!

Have you SEEN the shitshow they're making of the few constituencies they won?

The more batshit Trump gets, the more Farage wriggles up his arse and the more the people of the UK will see these absolute charlatans for what they are.

The US Supreme Court found Harvard’s admissions policies to be in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the equal protection clause, because of unlawful racial discrimination. You seem to be either ignorant of that, or think it not a problem. You seem confused by fairly a straightforward expression of liberal principles, which you seem to think must be code for a political movement that is pretty much antithetical to them and which emerged 200 years later. You want to talk about acronyms because it’s easier to defend than the shutting out of Jews and Asians, which you don’t address. You seem to think stats on race would be a good measure of ideological diversity, while also seemingly being unaware that the main dis-beneficiaries of the illegal policies were not white men but (just for you, an acronym) other POC. You seem unwilling or unable to discuss actual measures of ideological diversity, actual values statements in hiring (recently publicly dropped by a number of elite colleges, yet another fact you seem unaware if) or actual legally determined racism. I’m frankly not sure why you want to have this conversation that you don’t seem to really want to engage with and which you seem so unfamiliar with.

So much gobbledygook and double speak. You know that dis-beneficiary isn't a thing? Or even a word @GeneralPeter?

Meaning someone who suffers the opposite of a benefit.

@TooBigForMyBoots Anyway, I’m putting my content blocker on now so I get some work done. But if you really are as new to the idea of liberalism as you seem, there are two books I’d recommend.

The Very Short Introduction book called Liberalism is an easy read. And ‘Liberals and Communitarians’ is good for a lot of the ground that left-liberalism covers. Helen Pluckrose too.

Liberalism really is not MAGA (it’s almost the opposite), and it’s much more than the ‘own the libs’ sense too.

Anti-intellectualism is a common weapon of the demagogue.

Exactly. And I think it's as simple as that.

I agree the commutes are brutal. Not defending that. But Californians do them on well maintained motorways, at least four lanes in each direction.

As you move inland house prices fall off sharply and that experienced nurse and her senior school teacher husband ( whom, we have established, should be able to but cannot afford to live closer to their jobs) likely go home to a house with 4 BR, a good sitting room and a huge living kitchen, two or three large bathrooms, central air con, a two or three car garage, (not all to the non-American taste) and a nearby supermarket with produce that still makes me green with envy.

Aside from the commute, a solid middle class life

Yes, that was the response people around me had when I predicted Trump 1.0, Brexit and Trump 2.0.

People are actively voting for disruption. It doesn't matter how much Reform fuck up locally - they will blame the status quo, their hands being tied by statutory spend, etc., and tell voters that they need to be in government and change laws in order to make change. Labour have impoverished people further and Starmer's "Reform-lite" rhetoric about an island of strangers and taxing universities for taking overseas students isn't going to stop people incllned that way from voting for the real thing.

There are plenty of people who only care about immigration and will vote accordingly. Have you not noticed how many people even on MN are now saying they want to vote for Reform?

Anyway, I very much hope that I'm wrong and you're right, but recent elections and referenda have made clear that there are a lot of people on here (and in the university sector where I work) who have little idea about, or interest in, the way that people who aren't like them think.

Actually I agree, even if we can't stand Trump or what he stands for, not everything is black/white, hard left/hard right. Too much polarisation and not enough critical thinking but just jumping on the bandwagon. Just because we don't like Trump doesn't mean that absolutely everything he is trying to change is wrong (although I would seriously question the way he's going about much of this).

I think GeneralPeter makes some very valid points.

Harvard in 2023 (under Biden, not Trump, you’ll note) lost a landmark Supreme Court case which found it has been violating the equal protection clause of the US constitution, in unlawfully discriminating against Asian Americans. Adding salt into the wounds, not only were Asian Americans systematically declined places with scores that a comparable candidate who was who was white or any other race have been admitted on, to rationalise this Harvard argued this was because the Asians had sub-par personalities, based on scores given by assessors who typically had never interacted with them.

The discrimination against Asian Americans was shocking. I’m glad that they won their class action.