Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard. I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
This is a moment of clarity in our national life. Harvard isn't the first higher-education institution whose president has decided that bravery in the face of fascism is the only choice. But it's by far the biggest and most influential – and in many ways it had, and has, the most to lose.
I hope you'll read both today's university response from its president, Alan M. Garber, and the extortion letter the Trump regime sent it last week. In a way, the latter is more illuminating in the way it lays bare the contempt for education's purpose and indifference to law, and channels mob-boss tactics.
I was honored to be a fellow and faculty associate at Harvard's Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society from 2006-2011. The people I met and worked with there were (and are) astonishing in their commitment to making our world a better and more open place.
In recent years some of my ardor cooled, for several reasons. Among them: The University has seemed to me to be weak in the face of rare but highly public left-wing attacks on freedom of expression. It has failed to defend some of its own people, meanwhile, from the bad faith of right-wing zealots.
But today's "hell, no" response is hugely praiseworthy, and important. I hope the university will follow it up by helping organize as much of higher education as it can muster to the vital task of putting up a more universal front to protect higher education – and, as Garber's letter says, the "enduring promise" of higher education.
By the way, Harvard's home page has been turned into a showcase of research – the function that the Trump regime has attacked by illegally withholding $2 billion in funding already promised or in the pipeline. I hope you'll take a look.
Let’s be absolutely clear about what we witnessed today: A foreign dictator stood in the White House and openly suggested that the path to “liberating” 350 million Americans requires imprisoning those deemed problematic — with the obvious implication (given how things have gone so far) being that this should happen without charges, without trials, without due process. And the President of the United States not only agreed, but was enthusiastic about adopting this framework of authoritarian repression. If you don’t see all of this as one of the darkest days in American history, in which the President is openly embracing disappearing people without due process in the name of “liberty,” you are a part of the problem. Fascism has risen in America, and it is being aided by a foreign dictator whom Trump admires.
This searing commentary makes clear what today's stunning Oval Office show-and-tell was all about. Having ordered Trump puppet El Salvador dictator to show his fealty to fascism, White House apparatchiks blatantly lied and misrepresented what courts have ruled about the totally illegal kidnapping and overseas imprisonment of a man they know to have done nothing wrong.
It was an announcement that the plan is to send more people to El Salvador's torture-and-slave-labor prison – obviously including American citizens soon enough.
It was an "Up yours" to the Roberts court, an expression of contempt for the judicial branch. It was a dare to the corrupt Roberts court to do something about it, or try.
More broadly, it was a loud expression of contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, period. It was the regime's latest announcement that fascist rule is the plan, that this is the era of the Rule of Trump.
And our feckless White House correspondents mostly just stood there and lapped it up. Big Journalism is still doing stenography instead of showing the reality of the Trump regime's headlong race into fascism.
The post I linked to above shows how journalism could work if its practitioners located a spine.
[M]ost of all you know, I hope, that regardless of their innocence or guilt sending them to a foreign prison described as “notorious” by both critics on MSNBC and fans on Fox News, absent any due process and likely in defiance of a court order, is the work of a regime, not an administration; a fascist authority, not the rule of law. You know all this, and Kristi Noem knows you know all this. She’s not worried about whether it thrills you or terrifies you—either pleases her. The point of her video isn’t to make an argument; it’s aesthetic.
This piece from Religion Dispatches provides more valuable context for last week's disgusting made-for-video appearance by a top Trump apparatchik at the El Salvador torture-and-slave-labor prison.
It's Fascism 101, where the propaganda is unsubtle by design. This stuff isn't violence porn, because it's obscene to the core. And it will get worse.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
Please send your suggestions
I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
Subscribe
Was this forwarded to you? If you would like to have your own free subscription, please click here.
Harvard University President
Mike Masnick
