In brief

Not all of Trump administration’s demands on Harvard are unreasonable; some are in keeping with existing civil rights laws.
The administration is overreaching in asking for external audit of “viewpoint diversity”. This goes to the heart of academic freedom and no university can submit to this without losing its soul.
However, those outraged at Trump’s tactics should realise that viewpoint diversity is also missing in New Zealand universities.
Those decrying Trump are adopting similar tactics insisting on particular courses and course content, which are also violations of academic freedom.

Universities push back

Harvard university recently made news by refusing to bow down to the Trump administration’s demands in order to retain more than US $2 billion in federal grants and contracts. Harvard’s stance stands in contrast to the one adopted by Columbia earlier, where the latter agreed to most demands in order to keep about US $400 million of federal funds.

Not surprisingly, especially when Trump is involved, there have been howls of outrage all over.

But it is important to understand that not all of the Trump administration’s demands are outrageous.

Some will agree with Trump’s position

Those who have looked at the letter sent to Harvard will find parts of it unobjectionable.

Some of these relate to governance reforms, merit-based admissions and recruitment and ensuring faculty and students comply with relevant university policies. These are well in line with existing US laws including civil rights laws.

But Trump supporters are also mistaken in arguing that all the demands are reasonable.

The Trump administration is grossly overreaching when it asks for “viewpoint diversity” in student admissions and faculty recruitment or demands reformation of programs with “egregious record of antisemitism or other biases”.

No university can give in to these demands. Because while losing billions of federal funds may cause significant distress, giving in to these demands threatens the university’s very existence.

Viewpoint diversity is lacking – but not fixable by fiat

It is indeed true that there is a serious lack of viewpoint diversity in academia, both in the US and elsewhere.

But this is not easily corrected by government fiat. If for no other reason than the fact the “viewpoint diversity” is a meaningless standard. Who decides how much diversity is enough? What is the appropriate balance? Similarly, what exactly is the definition of “antisemitism and other biases”. What other biases? Who decides when the line has been crossed?

The administration is asking for an external audit of these matters. This is out of the question because these matters go to the heart of academic freedom and no university can accede to these demands without losing its soul.

And any university that does give in will find it very difficult to recruit talented staff and students in short order.

The attempts to coerce universities is not going to stop with the Ivy League institutions. They will likely filter down to lower-level institutions and therein lies the tragedy.

A large part of US prosperity is the direct result of its excellent university system, which attracts the best and the brightest from around the world. This is, in fact, why China has not managed to achieve similar levels of creativity and innovation. Even now the best minds around the world try to get to the US and not to China. (However, after a recent trip to China, I am keenly aware that this too is changing. China is making massive investments in its tertiary education sector and beginning to attract international talent. How far they can go while maintaining a one-party dictatorship remains to be seen. But, for now, the supremacy of the US remains unchallenged.)

Destroying the universities will mean the loss of this primary driver of US success and high standards of living.

In going after these universities, Trump is playing to particular sections of his vote base even though the long-term consequences are bound to be dire.

New Zealand should pay attention

But those in other countries including New Zealand who are disdainful of the Trumpian approach will do well to pay attention to what is happening in our own institutions.

Around the world, activists have forced universities to make changes to their mission and their curriculum to advance social justice causes, even where these changes are fundamentally opposed to academic freedom.

These range from favouring particular courses and course content to providing university approval for certain political positions while disfavouring others.

The viewpoint diversity that people desire is as absent in New Zealand as it is in the US.

The rise of Donald Trump can be traced back, not entirely but to an extent to a system that has persistently elevated one particular set of views, often referred to as “woke” for the want of a better word.

The problem is not that some espouse “woke” values. The problem lies with an educational system that provides a position of pre-eminence to this worldview to the exclusion of everything else. As with any other school of thought, many aspects of “wokeism” are tribal, narrow-minded and militate against enlightenment values.

People should bear these nuances in mind when decrying Donald Trump’s attempts at coercing universities to do his bidding. Often those opposed to Trump are doing the same, just from a different perspective and using different tactics.

Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland and author, most recently, of “Economics: A Global Introduction“.

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