With deadline looming 4 of 9 universities reject Trumps pact to remake higher ed

I've always thought more state power was probably a good thing - the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.

That said, as a fly on the wall, my obvious observation from people at large is a direct correlation between how much power they believe states should have and whether or not they belong to the party in power. So it's definitely worth the exercise of seeing if you'd feel the same way still if your exact clone ran the federal government.

> states fighting back

Fight back against _what_? Look: our universities really do need reform, and the perceptive observer should be able to see that independent of political opinions. The current administration may be an imperfect vehicle for reform, but I don't see anyone else trying.

In particular, universities need to return to pursuing truth. Not every department at every school has abandoned the goal of seeking pure knowledge, granted, but the reality is that many have oriented themselves towards building a "better world" by preaching (there is no other word) the "right" ideas well past the point where they intersect with the real world.

It is damn hard for me to muster sympathy for the universities. I recall that they spent a decade demanding statements of ideological affiliation as a precondition of hiring, that they pollute the epistemic commons by suppressing inconvenient facts, and that they rationale injustice against individuals by gesturing at universal, cosmic justice that they claim they alone have the power to discern.

I see no reason to send public money to seminaries that have murdered universities, donned their skins, and demand respect as institutes of knowledge.

The push to mandate an "ideological balance" is indeed a wrong move; allowing the state to determine such matters always leads to rot, examples abound.

It sadly does not mean that universities are laser-focused on seeking truth, and are free from ideological biases, often very obvious. Regarding truth, one of the leading theories in humanities is that of Michel Foucault, which states that there cannot be any objective truth, and what is considered true is determined by power structures.

I'm glad to see though that the four universities are making a stand, and value independence above whatever "federal benefits" the administration may offer. It's sad that these are only 4 out of 9.

A top-down exertion of ideological power like this is terrible, it can't be the case that universities are bullied into toeing the line of whoever is in power at the moment, that much should be evident.

But surely it also can't be the case that colleges demand what are basically declarations of political allegiance in the form of DEI statements, institutional trust is nosediving and ideological capture is to blame in large part. I hope this push from the administration fails, but I also hope something changes because otherwise the result is going to be worse than if universities actually submitted to these demands.

I'm opossed to what trump is doing, its abhorent.

But i still think its possible for academics to get into echo chambers. They are human just like the rest of us. Especially in fields not easily subject to direct experimental verification. I think its important not to put researchers on a pedestal as if they are above folly. (After all, the saying "science advanced one funeral at a time" didn't come from nowhere)

They are already at the point you're worried about. They force everyone to have Progressive, often atheist, views despite that being non-inclusive of most of humanity. Progressives also did that in mass media and government where they could.

It's good that this is being reversed. It turns out that many who are celebrating it are liberals and minority members. The Progressive media doesn't cover much of them but we see them elsewhere. Their ratings are plummeting which shows their viewers are tired of what they're doing.

All of these trends started with Trump who seems to be the only person willing or capable of handling it. A wicked man to be sure but very helpful in breaking Progressive's control of institutions. Also, showing their hypocrisy as they complain about people doing to them what they've been doing for decades now. If it's so bad, they should likewise cease all ideological activities in all institutions. (They won't.)

> The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints, which hopefully approximate the truth.

Consider crime. Restorative justice has failed everywhere it's been tried . Utterly. Comprehensively. Totally. Everywhere it's tried, restorative justice increases crime and degrades the public spirit.

Yet universities continue to push it, despite all evidence, because it flatters a certain worldview. That this viewpoint is universal in academia isn't the organic victory of a good idea, but ideological groupthink that becomes a menace to society when it escapes the quad.

And it's not only that equitable justice is the dominant viewpoint: it's that no competing viewpoint are allowed. To disagree is to be a bad person, and universities today wield every institutional weapon they have against "bad" people who hold "bad" ideas. This is not an environment conducive to knowledge formation.

No university department that pushes "equitable justice" as summa bonum should receive public money. It's just nonsense.

So it is for many university programs these days. As J.S. Mill wrote: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion."

It does seem fairly arbitrary. It’s not a list of schools with big labs, since Hopkins or Berkeley aren’t there. It doesn’t seem to be private vs state schools, it’s not Ivy League or blue state only.

One potential reason to select a diverse set would be to point to a few who may be forced to accept by their state governments as examples to paint the refusers in a negative light.

There's probably some piece on Fox News, or a blog post from some influencer that cites these institutions. Most regime policy begins with some media outrage like this. You and I aren't exposed to that content so it seems arbitrary.

I first realized this decades ago when I ran into someone socially who started on about how evil the red cross was. I'm like wtf? Then did some research and discovered some fringe belief originating in the Vietnam war. There are thousands of oddball grievances like this.

None of the 9 colleges have accepted so far, according to this article that was linked at the bottom of the article we are discussing: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-hous...

They should have noted this in the article we are discussing since it does change the story, as you said.

The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this.

You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.