New from me at Cato: in its demands that Columbia surrender its academic and administrative independence to federal overseers, the Trump administration has violated one law after another. And there's every reason to think it's planning to roll out the same game plan to other universities. /1 - ThreadSky

walterolson.bsky.social • 9 days ago

New from me at Cato: in its demands that Columbia surrender its academic and administrative independence to federal overseers, the Trump administration has violated one law after another. And there's every reason to think it's planning to roll out the same game plan to other universities. /1

Comments

cplourde.bsky.social•9 days ago

Laws no longer matter, SCOTUS made POTUS immune, so he can declare an emergency and rule like a king.

btdgreg.bsky.social•9 days ago

Trump's criminal immunity doesn't make this legal.

cplourde.bsky.social•9 days ago

It makes the issue of legality moot.

btdgreg.bsky.social•9 days ago

No, it doesn't. It just means he can't be criminally prosecuted.

cplourde.bsky.social•9 days ago

Trump is going to continue to break the law, and the law is forbidden from even investigating his lawbreaking (that on 5-4, being a step too far for ACB) and you claim this means the law can stop him.

How?

What is the mechanism by which the law constrains a man SCOTUS placed beyond the law.

btdgreg.bsky.social•9 days ago

There are other remedies beyond throwing Trump in jail.

Mootness is a standing issue. Nothing here is moot.

dougwar40k.bsky.social•9 days ago

If only there were some sort of league that these universities could join to fight back.

lva01.bsky.social•9 days ago

Just like in hungary

r5-to-philly.bsky.social•9 days ago

Not the first time for Columbia.....

r5-to-philly.bsky.social•9 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/jacobtlevy.bsky.social/post/3lklwqxz4hc2s

traceyhtweet.bsky.social•9 days ago

Columbia has a top notch law school. Please please please use it to file lawsuit after lawsuit

btdgreg.bsky.social•9 days ago

I went to a top notch law school, and in my experience, this isn't what top notch law schools are particularly good at.

I do hope they aggressively litigate this, tho.

carl3settlemyer.bsky.social•6 days ago

📌

banker925.bsky.social•9 days ago

#Trump and #Musk have no idea about the amount of research and resulting patents for the US that Universities supply us with. Just another bad decision in their part that will cost us hugely for decades to come.

latedaysun.bsky.social•9 days ago

How do we know who was ACTUALLY deported by the Nazis regime yesterday?

jaymar201.bsky.social•9 days ago

Columbia has an endowment of close to $15 billion. Why doesn't it just tell the feds to keep their money and get the hell off its campus?

maggiethecatz.bsky.social•9 days ago

Endowments are like the foundations of buildings - they support and shouldn't be touched. The INTEREST generated by the endowment is used, not the principle.

In the 90s, the endowment was dipped into @ CU...it took debade+ to recover and hindered its ability to meet rising costs.

johnbrownbread.bsky.social•9 days ago

Check out this article on why not

heingoemans.bsky.social•9 days ago

Why do people make these kind of claims? What do you think that $15 billion is for? Do you think it's just sitting there, doing nothing?

planetabsurdia.bsky.social•9 days ago

Project 2025 targets the endowments. They will be plundered. Universities should be creative and aggressive about their use and leverage now, whether on attorney’s fees, free tuition as Harvard is planning, replacement of some grants, etc.

eubanksengineeringresearch.com•9 days ago

If it’s not for protecting the integrity of the university’s academic mission and the safety of its students and faculty at a time like this then it is doing nothing of any importance.

johnbrownbread.bsky.social•9 days ago

Check out this article

eubanksengineeringresearch.com•9 days ago

I’m well aware of how NIH funds research and university overhead. They can’t just keep trucking like nothing’s changed.

But complicity will not save them and they have resources. They had best get creative and use those resources while they can.

eubanksengineeringresearch.com•9 days ago

The problem is, they want nothing to change. That ship has sailed and sunk. Leveraging that desire is how fascists take power.

coconutlizard.bsky.social•9 days ago

Is that legal? Everything he does seems to be illegal or partially.

calixthe.blue-ocean.social•9 days ago

@unroll.bsky.social

beccanalia.bsky.social•9 days ago

📌

khadijah.bsky.social•9 days ago

Great analysis — thank you

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

Among its demands are that Columbia 1) “place the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under ‘academic receivership,’” a "frank assault on a private university’s freedom to maintain an academic department that federal overseers regard as ideologically hostile." /2

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

Columbia, it says, must commit to “arrest and removal” of any protesters “who foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment or disrupt university operations.” No civil rights law I know of prescribes that those fostering a hostile environment must be arrested. /3

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

And much more that is alarming. All of it's based on the enormous coercive leverage the threat of a federal funding cutoff puts in Washington's hands. But "formidable as that coercive leverage is, it is still subject to some legal limits that appear not to have been respected here." /4

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

The due process protections universities have against arbitrary or spiteful funding cutoffs aren't great, but they aren't nonexistent either. None were observed here, from the hearing and investigation process to the scope of penalties. It was "Sentence First, Verdict Afterward." /5

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

Unfortunately, one longstanding problem is that "the nature of the funding coercion makes it unusual to obtain a courtroom review. Few universities wish to take their chances with potentially severe funding cutoffs, so they fold and comply." /6

readsettle.rs•9 days ago

The irony here is that power mad Trump is going to make demands that are so overreaching that it’s worth the risk

walterolson.bsky.social•9 days ago

I conclude: "To that set of incentives must be added these days the new administration’s seemingly insatiable appetite for retaliating against institutions that resist its will." @cato.org Read the whole thing here: /7, end

niais.bsky.social•9 days ago

The question, Walter, is how do we convince our administrators that as fascism descends, we must actually prepare for the coming storm at all our institutions. (And by prepare, I do not mean "hide in the closet")

jacksonmcbride.bsky.social•9 days ago

If Columbia or any university complies with this, the Nazification of our education system will have begun.

Let's not mince words, the leadership of our higher ed institutions may not be up to the moment

http://new.wymaninstitute.org/2006/12/columbia-defends-its-nazi-links-everyone-was-doing-it/

@columbiauniversity.bsky.social

johnbrownbread.bsky.social•9 days ago

For those asking about the endowments, here is a great article on why the endowments are not enough:

californianorma.bsky.social•9 days ago

o m g 😞

My father taught there

in the 50s

😩🤨

justinholbrook.bsky.social•9 days ago

If SCOTUS backs the administration’s claim to expansive impoundment powers, we can toss out the Schoolhouse Rock videos that said Congress holds the purse strings.

https://youtu.be/pKSGyiT-o3o?si=qLKND8wP3Mn9Xvfy

darksapiens.bsky.social•9 days ago

📌

ewwdavid1.bsky.social•9 days ago

And Chuck Schumer told the New York Times that he supports Trump doing all of this

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