Watching the professoriate suddenly embrace free speech and expression, political pluralism and tolerance for competing viewpoints after spending the past decade denouncing all these things as bigoted and oppressive impositions that harm the marginalized has taught me a valuable lesson.
The next time anyone wonders why we seem to have an entire generation of young people who believe they have infinite rights and zero responsibilities, that they deserve to have every need and desire state-subsidized and/or paid for by someone else, and who refuse to accept any consequences for their mistakes or acts of malice—well, now we know they were just parroting their professors.
Academia is like a giant kindergarten for spoiled children who spend their lives denouncing society and Mom and Dad for how evil and unfair they are, but who demand that their allowance arrives on time.
Too much time on campus seems to make you allergic to reality.
Completely agree! The more expensive the college, the more spoiled and entitled are the kids. It is encouraging that so many Gen Z males are "moving to the right" politically. In the U.S. there has been a tradition of rebelling against previous generations, and maybe that dynamic remains even more powerful than woke indoctrination of children. T'would be sweet to see the day when the kids of Gen Z join Young Republicans. LOL!!!
The weird thing about academics is they spend half their lives denouncing America and Americans for all our historical crimes and crimes against equality etc, and denouncing and denigrating anyone who votes or thinks the wrong way, then the other half of their lives expecting the same people and institutions they despise to fund them w no strings attached.
The only possible parallel is the angry spoiled teenager.
But everyone's free ride comes to an end eventually, and now the bell tolls and the bill comes due for American academia.
They will have the same type of loud tantrum that a teen does when Mom and Dad takes away their credit card.
I agree totally with your concerns about transgender women competing in women’s sports. I agree that Penn Uni’s response was lame. But I cannot agree at all with your supporting the freezing of government money directly because of their policies and behaviour.
This opens a Pandora’s Box of possible bullying, manipulation and protectionism by the government based purely on what it may or may not like. This is a touchstone of authoritarian behaviour which I cannot believe that you would ever support, even as a conservative.
The government provides financial support to universities for a range of reasons and activities. If it doesn’t like one specific action of a university, it can request a please explain or even issue a public admonishment, without resorting to extortion. There are also plenty of other mechanisms in place for altering a university’s stance on an issue without blackmail.
You really think the govt withholding funds from a college because it violates the civil rights of its female students is "blackmail" and "extortion"? What about when Obama replaced sex with gender and sued state govts that didn't comply with putting boys in girls locker rooms and bathrooms? When the Dems organized various state boycotts to replace sex w gender? Was that also blackmail and extortion?
People have been compiling info for years about how our universities have erased women (even the word itself), forced them to change with men, obviously and blatantly violated their civil rights, enshrined Gender ideology as a sacred belief and punished anyone who disagreed or even misused a pronoun.
What do you expect Trump and the Republicans to do, send flowers and a card? Academia sees itself as a higher cause bearing a higher morality than the rest of us—Trans rights are human rights!—pulling the plug on their funding is the only thing that's made them pay attention.
And they'll still fight this as much as they can anyway.
Depends how you define civil rights. I agree governments of all persuasion don’t always behave well but if laws are broken through the actions of universities, then recourse should be by legal means. If the laws don’t reflect the current societal views, then change the laws. But if you allow governments to bully and extort, then you will get authoritarianism. The US is rapidly heading that way now and if you don’t do something about it soon, fussing about university approaches to women’s sports will become a very minor issue indeed as society collapses around you.
All govts bully and extort obviously, as the Dems did to enshrine gender before sex in the first place. There is no ruling party ever anywhere who didn't utilize the power of the purse to get their way.
And the law doesn't help here, because under the Team Red conception of Title IX and the 14th Amendment, women's rights are sex-based and to be protected from male encroachment, whereas under the Team Blue conception, anyone is a woman who says they are, thus erasing the idea of woman. These are irreconcilable visions.
I suppose we could sacrifice an entire generation of female achievement (scholarships, awards, free and fair competition etc) until the Dems shake off gender ideology, but sometimes people have to have sense smacked into them. Missing a check or a meal concentrates the mind.
And as far as "society collaps(ing) around you", let's try to keep this in proper perspective: If America collapses it won't be because Trump withheld some funds from colleges (many of which have massive endowments and all of which are bloated with useless admins). Trump is no more "authoritarian" than Obama or Biden or George W were, he's just more obnoxious.
"So we agree then that governments shouldn’t bully or extort."
lol i would never be so naive.
There has never been one who didn't and there never will be, unless what they govern is so sterile or inconsequential that it provides nothing to fight over. It's just that when our team does it, we call it Justice.
"Trump’s behaviour cannot be compared to any previous president."
Andrew Jackson? Teddy Roosevelt? Woodrow Wilson? All of whom had quite expansive views of Presidential powers. America has coughed up and swallowed demagogues before and admins who took a hatchet to the fed govt and various interest groups. We survived those and will survive this one, even if a few university wings get clipped.
There have to be consequences. That’s what we teach children. Maybe they can use their massive endowment to make up for some of these funds until they re-embrace reality and the protection of women.
Could not agree more, and you point out the key issue - public trust. Once gone it’s very difficult to get back. Public intellectuals don’t have to be agreed with by everyone, and aren’t, but you expect they speak from a perspective of a shared desire for truth.
When it’s obvious that truth has gone on vacation at a White Lotus resort, why listen to anyone? Thought becomes compromised.
Encouraging article! It is so good to finally see politicians in power use it on behalf of the majority of the American people rather than in "allyship" to destructive forces in our society.
I agree fully with Colin Wright's analysis of the substantive issue -- both about male athletes in women's sports, and more generally about "whether we live in a society governed by truth or one dominated by ideological fantasies" -- but I also agree with The Rhythm's fears about the Pandora Box of authoritarian behavior that Trump's *methods* have opened up.
Firstly, $175 million is a grossly excessive penalty for a university's malfeasance on one issue that affects only one small part of the university's operations. Would the Trump administration levy a $175 million penalty if it were found that one small program within the university discriminated against black students?
But more importantly, as the conservative NY Times columnist David French pointed out in a recent article concerning the $400 million grants freeze on Columbia University, the relevant
federal statutes and regulations permit termination of federal financial assistance only when
“compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means” and when “there has been an express
finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply.”
There was no hearing. The administration simply acted. As a rule, our nation does not take the
approach of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
approach of the Queen of Hearts in 'Alice in Wonderland': 'sentence first, verdict afterwards.'"
It is pretty funny that you accuse Trump of doing this, when it is very much what these universities actually did.
Why are you the expert to say that the penalty is grossly excessive for violations that have gone on for years? Can you tell me how many student loans to that university that the federal government is currently backing?
You are also beyond comical to suggest that compliance was going to be secured by voluntary means with Columbia absent the grant freeze.
P.S. David French is decidedly NOT a conservative any longer (if indeed he ever was); he is merely right of the median NYT writer and reader. There is a massive difference between that and a conservative.
We are seeing the awesome power (and funding) of the federal government used as a threat or cudgel to force people in universities, law firms, cities, states, our courts, and other entities bend towards this administration’s will and to force entities to embrace certain political positions. This is a terrible way to implement policy. Just like I opposed and resented having Obamacare shoved down the country’s throat on a strictly partisan basis, this will engender a similar backlash when the GOP is eventually not in power. It is authoritarian. You embrace and champion this at your peril.
admin is simply reversing policies previous administrations implemented in secret, or without most knowing. to implement policies based on gender beliefs activists lied to previous administrations about policy impacts and any benefits (there are no benefit to gender policies). they invented a new language to confuse their victims abd the public and then implemented their bogus quackery aggressively via a carefully crafted PR and lobby campaign. gender activists continue to lead progressives around by the nose via these lies. gender activists have to misrepresent their claims because they know most dont agree with men invading womens spaces. they know most don't agree with sterilizing and harming the most vulnerable members of our society. so they lied and continue to lie. lets get it out in the open.
not sure the comparison to the ACA works. the ACA was explained ad nauseam. every detail and penny and plan and religious argument was poured over with a fine tooth comb and ground finely via the courts. policies based on gender beliefs wouldnt last a second with similar scrutiny.
In the current situation, this is a double edged sword.
Public funds should only be granted to institutions of higher learning where we can be certain that the funds will be not be wasted on pseudoscientific or even antiscientific research and teaching. The case can be made that many institutions of higher learning, such as Penn State, have violated those standards.
However, granting or witholding public funds must always be the result of a robust process of assessment and judgement. I.e., there must be congressional or other public committees and bodies that make that call, and those judgements must themselves be subject to public scrutiny.
This is not what happened here. Here, these funds were witheld on a whim. However factually correct that whim may be, this is an authoritarian gesture, and has nothing to do with scientific standards.
On these grounds, I reject this - and other parts of - Trumpian politics as much as I reject the infiltration of large parts of academia by pseudoscientific ideologies as we have seen in the past 20 or so years. On the long run, both are really the same thing, and both undermine the scientific process as much as public trust in institutions of higher learning and research.
A large portion of these grants are quite obviously pseudoscience and there is no reason at all we taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for any specific one of them, save if the specific grant was explicitly written into law by Congress.
And that is not to challenge the factual basis of the decision. But Donald Trump and his administration are hardly concerned about eroding scientific standards or the quality of teaching and research. To them, it is just getting at who they perceive to be their political opponent. See their latest attempts at getting US museums to portray US history in a more patriotic light.
In essence, this Trumpian move is just a blitz version of how all those liberal identitarian notions such as gender identity entered academia in the first place. It's just the political opposite, that's all.
Now, I am very much in favor of defunding obviously pseudo- and antiscientific research. But those decisions have to be based on a sound and fair public debate, and they have to have clear legal outlines and definitions. In other words: This is a job the US Congress must make, in a number of hearings by a number of committees. Some of this could take months or even years, true.
But only this could ensure that public trust in science and academic institutions ins being restored, and only this could start a process within academia to define what's science, border science and pseudoscience etc. (again).
The way the Trump administration is going after this is likely to stir up resistance within academia and likely to potrait science in general as corrupt in the eyes of the public. This is hardly helpful.
Watching the professoriate suddenly embrace free speech and expression, political pluralism and tolerance for competing viewpoints after spending the past decade denouncing all these things as bigoted and oppressive impositions that harm the marginalized has taught me a valuable lesson.
The next time anyone wonders why we seem to have an entire generation of young people who believe they have infinite rights and zero responsibilities, that they deserve to have every need and desire state-subsidized and/or paid for by someone else, and who refuse to accept any consequences for their mistakes or acts of malice—well, now we know they were just parroting their professors.
Academia is like a giant kindergarten for spoiled children who spend their lives denouncing society and Mom and Dad for how evil and unfair they are, but who demand that their allowance arrives on time.
Too much time on campus seems to make you allergic to reality.
Completely agree! The more expensive the college, the more spoiled and entitled are the kids. It is encouraging that so many Gen Z males are "moving to the right" politically. In the U.S. there has been a tradition of rebelling against previous generations, and maybe that dynamic remains even more powerful than woke indoctrination of children. T'would be sweet to see the day when the kids of Gen Z join Young Republicans. LOL!!!
The weird thing about academics is they spend half their lives denouncing America and Americans for all our historical crimes and crimes against equality etc, and denouncing and denigrating anyone who votes or thinks the wrong way, then the other half of their lives expecting the same people and institutions they despise to fund them w no strings attached.
The only possible parallel is the angry spoiled teenager.
But everyone's free ride comes to an end eventually, and now the bell tolls and the bill comes due for American academia.
They will have the same type of loud tantrum that a teen does when Mom and Dad takes away their credit card.
I agree totally with your concerns about transgender women competing in women’s sports. I agree that Penn Uni’s response was lame. But I cannot agree at all with your supporting the freezing of government money directly because of their policies and behaviour.
This opens a Pandora’s Box of possible bullying, manipulation and protectionism by the government based purely on what it may or may not like. This is a touchstone of authoritarian behaviour which I cannot believe that you would ever support, even as a conservative.
The government provides financial support to universities for a range of reasons and activities. If it doesn’t like one specific action of a university, it can request a please explain or even issue a public admonishment, without resorting to extortion. There are also plenty of other mechanisms in place for altering a university’s stance on an issue without blackmail.
You really think the govt withholding funds from a college because it violates the civil rights of its female students is "blackmail" and "extortion"? What about when Obama replaced sex with gender and sued state govts that didn't comply with putting boys in girls locker rooms and bathrooms? When the Dems organized various state boycotts to replace sex w gender? Was that also blackmail and extortion?
People have been compiling info for years about how our universities have erased women (even the word itself), forced them to change with men, obviously and blatantly violated their civil rights, enshrined Gender ideology as a sacred belief and punished anyone who disagreed or even misused a pronoun.
What do you expect Trump and the Republicans to do, send flowers and a card? Academia sees itself as a higher cause bearing a higher morality than the rest of us—Trans rights are human rights!—pulling the plug on their funding is the only thing that's made them pay attention.
And they'll still fight this as much as they can anyway.
Depends how you define civil rights. I agree governments of all persuasion don’t always behave well but if laws are broken through the actions of universities, then recourse should be by legal means. If the laws don’t reflect the current societal views, then change the laws. But if you allow governments to bully and extort, then you will get authoritarianism. The US is rapidly heading that way now and if you don’t do something about it soon, fussing about university approaches to women’s sports will become a very minor issue indeed as society collapses around you.
All govts bully and extort obviously, as the Dems did to enshrine gender before sex in the first place. There is no ruling party ever anywhere who didn't utilize the power of the purse to get their way.
And the law doesn't help here, because under the Team Red conception of Title IX and the 14th Amendment, women's rights are sex-based and to be protected from male encroachment, whereas under the Team Blue conception, anyone is a woman who says they are, thus erasing the idea of woman. These are irreconcilable visions.
I suppose we could sacrifice an entire generation of female achievement (scholarships, awards, free and fair competition etc) until the Dems shake off gender ideology, but sometimes people have to have sense smacked into them. Missing a check or a meal concentrates the mind.
And as far as "society collaps(ing) around you", let's try to keep this in proper perspective: If America collapses it won't be because Trump withheld some funds from colleges (many of which have massive endowments and all of which are bloated with useless admins). Trump is no more "authoritarian" than Obama or Biden or George W were, he's just more obnoxious.
So we agree then that governments shouldn’t bully or extort. Yet this is exactly what Colin Wright’s post is supporting.
And no, trump’s behaviour cannot be compared to any previous president, however obnoxious he may be.
"So we agree then that governments shouldn’t bully or extort."
lol i would never be so naive.
There has never been one who didn't and there never will be, unless what they govern is so sterile or inconsequential that it provides nothing to fight over. It's just that when our team does it, we call it Justice.
"Trump’s behaviour cannot be compared to any previous president."
Andrew Jackson? Teddy Roosevelt? Woodrow Wilson? All of whom had quite expansive views of Presidential powers. America has coughed up and swallowed demagogues before and admins who took a hatchet to the fed govt and various interest groups. We survived those and will survive this one, even if a few university wings get clipped.
I don’t agree with you at all. Just go on apologising for the worst president in history by a country parsec and see where you end up.
There have to be consequences. That’s what we teach children. Maybe they can use their massive endowment to make up for some of these funds until they re-embrace reality and the protection of women.
This Pandora's Box has been open for a long time.
Maybe. But that doesn’t make it ok.
Stop spouting common sense, damnit!
Could not agree more, and you point out the key issue - public trust. Once gone it’s very difficult to get back. Public intellectuals don’t have to be agreed with by everyone, and aren’t, but you expect they speak from a perspective of a shared desire for truth.
When it’s obvious that truth has gone on vacation at a White Lotus resort, why listen to anyone? Thought becomes compromised.
Encouraging article! It is so good to finally see politicians in power use it on behalf of the majority of the American people rather than in "allyship" to destructive forces in our society.
I agree fully with Colin Wright's analysis of the substantive issue -- both about male athletes in women's sports, and more generally about "whether we live in a society governed by truth or one dominated by ideological fantasies" -- but I also agree with The Rhythm's fears about the Pandora Box of authoritarian behavior that Trump's *methods* have opened up.
Firstly, $175 million is a grossly excessive penalty for a university's malfeasance on one issue that affects only one small part of the university's operations. Would the Trump administration levy a $175 million penalty if it were found that one small program within the university discriminated against black students?
But more importantly, as the conservative NY Times columnist David French pointed out in a recent article concerning the $400 million grants freeze on Columbia University, the relevant
federal statutes and regulations permit termination of federal financial assistance only when
“compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means” and when “there has been an express
finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply.”
There was no hearing. The administration simply acted. As a rule, our nation does not take the
approach of the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland”: “sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
At least, we are not supposed to.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/trump-khalil-columbia-speech.html
The Trump administration's actions in the U Penn case likewise violate the law, and the fundamental principle of due process.
"As a rule, our nation does not take the
approach of the Queen of Hearts in 'Alice in Wonderland': 'sentence first, verdict afterwards.'"
It is pretty funny that you accuse Trump of doing this, when it is very much what these universities actually did.
Why are you the expert to say that the penalty is grossly excessive for violations that have gone on for years? Can you tell me how many student loans to that university that the federal government is currently backing?
You are also beyond comical to suggest that compliance was going to be secured by voluntary means with Columbia absent the grant freeze.
P.S. David French is decidedly NOT a conservative any longer (if indeed he ever was); he is merely right of the median NYT writer and reader. There is a massive difference between that and a conservative.
Well said Colin. Thank you
We are seeing the awesome power (and funding) of the federal government used as a threat or cudgel to force people in universities, law firms, cities, states, our courts, and other entities bend towards this administration’s will and to force entities to embrace certain political positions. This is a terrible way to implement policy. Just like I opposed and resented having Obamacare shoved down the country’s throat on a strictly partisan basis, this will engender a similar backlash when the GOP is eventually not in power. It is authoritarian. You embrace and champion this at your peril.
admin is simply reversing policies previous administrations implemented in secret, or without most knowing. to implement policies based on gender beliefs activists lied to previous administrations about policy impacts and any benefits (there are no benefit to gender policies). they invented a new language to confuse their victims abd the public and then implemented their bogus quackery aggressively via a carefully crafted PR and lobby campaign. gender activists continue to lead progressives around by the nose via these lies. gender activists have to misrepresent their claims because they know most dont agree with men invading womens spaces. they know most don't agree with sterilizing and harming the most vulnerable members of our society. so they lied and continue to lie. lets get it out in the open.
not sure the comparison to the ACA works. the ACA was explained ad nauseam. every detail and penny and plan and religious argument was poured over with a fine tooth comb and ground finely via the courts. policies based on gender beliefs wouldnt last a second with similar scrutiny.
You have a valid point. But what's the option to undo 50 years of ideologically (Leftist) driven policies and laws?
Let me know when the Feds in this Administration want to stop funding this nonsense https://reason.org/commentary/liberty-university-a-cautionary-tale/
In the current situation, this is a double edged sword.
Public funds should only be granted to institutions of higher learning where we can be certain that the funds will be not be wasted on pseudoscientific or even antiscientific research and teaching. The case can be made that many institutions of higher learning, such as Penn State, have violated those standards.
However, granting or witholding public funds must always be the result of a robust process of assessment and judgement. I.e., there must be congressional or other public committees and bodies that make that call, and those judgements must themselves be subject to public scrutiny.
This is not what happened here. Here, these funds were witheld on a whim. However factually correct that whim may be, this is an authoritarian gesture, and has nothing to do with scientific standards.
On these grounds, I reject this - and other parts of - Trumpian politics as much as I reject the infiltration of large parts of academia by pseudoscientific ideologies as we have seen in the past 20 or so years. On the long run, both are really the same thing, and both undermine the scientific process as much as public trust in institutions of higher learning and research.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
A large portion of these grants are quite obviously pseudoscience and there is no reason at all we taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for any specific one of them, save if the specific grant was explicitly written into law by Congress.
this is hardly a "whim".
No, it is.
And that is not to challenge the factual basis of the decision. But Donald Trump and his administration are hardly concerned about eroding scientific standards or the quality of teaching and research. To them, it is just getting at who they perceive to be their political opponent. See their latest attempts at getting US museums to portray US history in a more patriotic light.
In essence, this Trumpian move is just a blitz version of how all those liberal identitarian notions such as gender identity entered academia in the first place. It's just the political opposite, that's all.
Now, I am very much in favor of defunding obviously pseudo- and antiscientific research. But those decisions have to be based on a sound and fair public debate, and they have to have clear legal outlines and definitions. In other words: This is a job the US Congress must make, in a number of hearings by a number of committees. Some of this could take months or even years, true.
But only this could ensure that public trust in science and academic institutions ins being restored, and only this could start a process within academia to define what's science, border science and pseudoscience etc. (again).
The way the Trump administration is going after this is likely to stir up resistance within academia and likely to potrait science in general as corrupt in the eyes of the public. This is hardly helpful.
So nice that you can be so certain of the exact and sole motivations of others.
https://unherd.com/2025/03/fortunes-are-changing-in-the-culture-war/
agree and thank you