BY JOHN K. WILSON
Today, Donald Trump tweeted: “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status…and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”
Trump’s endless stream of horrible, indefensible statements and actions (such as tonight’s clemency for Roger Stone) makes it tempting for people to overlook a comment so appalling, so disgusting, and so indefensible that it would be universally denounced if anyone else said it.
The idea that the president would order the IRS to investigate all colleges and schools accused of “Left Indoctrination” is a horrifying abuse of power and a direct violation of the First Amendment. It should be noted that nonprofit organizations have First Amendment rights to believe in whatever they want to, and the government cannot discriminate against them. Even if the absurd charge of “Radical Left Indoctrination” against universities were true, it would be well within their legal rights to do that without losing nonprofit status, just as Trump’s friend Jerry Falwell Jr. at Liberty University is free to impose radical right-wing indoctrination (as he does at times).
Trump’s threat against universities is an attempt at brute intimidation, an effort to pressure colleges to silence students and faculty who wish to speak out against the Trump Administration this fall. At too many colleges, as FIRE has noted, the misguided fear of losing nonprofit status leads them to censor political views on campus. Imagine how much worse it will be in 2020 with a president illegally trying to use his power in order to influence his reelection by ordering colleges to censor views that Trump dislikes.
All colleges should resist Trump’s attempts at censorship, and announce that they will support the expression of all views, pro-Trump and anti-Trump. And students and faculty should organize to ensure that critiques of Trump are widely spoken in defiance of his attempts to silence students around the country.
Just as colleges have united to sue Trump for seeking to deport international students, they must sue Trump for giving this unconstitutional order to the Treasury Department.
Ironically, one of the biggest faux-scandals conservatives invented during the Obama Administration was the so-called IRS targeting controversy. Conservative groups falsely claimed that the Obama Administration had ordered the IRS to reject applications from right-wing nonprofit groups. Peggy Noonan even blamed Obama’s re-election in 2012 in part on “IRS corruption” because “the president’s fiercest foes, in the Tea Party, were being thwarted, diverted and stopped.”
In reality, when the Supreme Court’s CItizens United decision opened the door for corporations to spend millions to help secret donors influence elections, right-wing groups began forming large numbers of new non-profit 501(c)4 organizations to help fund Republican efforts, even though it clearly violated the law. For the past two decades, Republicans have been defunding the tax police known as the IRS. Massive cuts in funding and personnel, to help rich tax criminals like Donald Trump avoid being caught, left the IRS badly understaffed. The IRS no longer had enough workers to handle all the new non-profit applications, so they used keywords to identify political groups on the left and the right likely to be created for political purposes and deferred action on them.
Outraged conservatives proclaimed that it was a political attack on them. Speaker of the House John Boehner declared in 2013, “Someone made a conscious decision to harass and to hold up these requests for tax-exempt status….Clearly someone violated the law.”
In 2017, an extensive report by the Treasury Department’s Inspector General found that the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny. A conservative Republican official appointed by George W. Bush was largely responsible for targeting Tea Party groups. Nevertheless, the Trump Administration settled the lawsuit brought by right-wing groups, paying them a “very substantial” settlement and an apology to help perpetuate the myth of political bias by the IRS.
While the story of political bias by Obama was essentially fabricated, Trump’s threat is very real. It’s time to revisit all the Republican politicians and pundits who were appalled by the allegations against the Obama Administration and the IRS, and ask them if they support Trump’s tweet.
Back in 2014, Newt Gingrich proclaimed, “We are watching the most significant crisis of constitutional order since Watergate, the last time an administration broke the law deliberately and repeatedly. And none of the current cases look more Nixonian than what has been happening at the IRS.” What will Newt say about an administration that actually orders the IRS to retaliate against his political enemies?
Donald Trump’s sickening attack on free speech at public and private schools and colleges represents one of the largest assaults on the First Amendment in recent memory. When before has a president openly announced an attack on the free speech rights of tens of millions of students and teachers at tens of thousands of educational institutions?
Time for a “full court press.”
I’m having some difficulty separating the writer’s very strong partisan expression, from the larger theme of his essay, which appears to be: there is no ideological problem on America’s campuses, or within its academy, such that mechanisms and incentives for re-equilibrating the faculty political spectrum need be positively advanced?
Let’s looks at just some very basic data: the current 2020 ratio of Liberal to Conservative among aggregate US university and college faculty (including US law schools) has been estimated at 13 to 1. That strikes me as a problem. But as UChicago Nobel economist George Stigler said, “the plural of anecdote is data,” and the anecdotal evidence from students, parents, company recruiters, donors and foundations, is that there is a run-away, out-of-control, unstable Left and Marxist, anti-American radicalized sect deeply embedded within the faculty ranks, and to a great extent even, the administration, and that universities have been widely penetrated at the leadership level by a Neo-Bolshevism special interest.
Blame much of the new pubic awareness of the problem, on your own faculty whistleblower: Some of this dramatic radicalism on our nation’s campuses has been maturely and professionally reported by UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus Dr. John Ellis, in his 2020 eye-opening book, “The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done,” which has been showcased across major media. It’s got the attention of thousands of parents, students, student loan agencies, foundations, and the political economy. His recommendations–as a senior faculty professional–necessary to solve the problem he lays out with devastating facts and data, make Trump’s response seem very measured and reserved.
In the middle of all this contention, it is instructive to keep in mind, for example, that BLM is literally a terrorist organization, backed by foreign and domestic private funds, and run by a former convicted, jailed violent terrorist (plentifully reported in the public domain). And who is right out in front, leading the vocal charge for radical destruction, violence and accommodation? The University and its faculty are (literally, by explicit public racial agitation and incitement–see UChicago Law Dean Tom Miles and his “Community Letter”).
Last, it is unfortunate that the writer launches into such a heated political vitriol. It detracts from his credibility, but more importantly, it tells parents and others, what degree of bias and intolerance exists in the AAUP, and by extension, our universities. Indeed, he exactly ratifies Trump’s judgement. This is likely just the beginning of university accountability, and universities have no one to blame but themselves. Regards, ’96, The University of Chicago
Looks like the other neuron kicked in. So, are we looking at “Fake News,” meet the new official spokesthought for Campaign 2020, “Fake Education”? It seems a natural fit. As the likely facts settle in, Trump will take it as a personal slight, and the base often heartily enjoys reveling at the fantasy of burning down ivory towers that are not in an acceptable form of Falwellian thrall
The problem is, Trump stinks at gambling, truth be told. He might very well think this is a good angle, a good bet. I would not be at all surprised.
But this is a perverse plan. This is a bad, bad, bad bet, from where I sit. I am just a decently educated laymen on the ways of psyche, but speaking as such, ever since the “gotta somehow inject that disinfectant” coup de grace moment, I get the feeling of a bunker mentality taking over, some probably very dangerous denial episode. His ego might have been breached, and I am not sure how well he handles having to stand in, well, that breach. It might have been a bad shock. I said this the first time in 2015 (!!): “Donald Trump” does not make sense in a serious world. It only makes sense in a playhouse world.
As of sometime in March the entire globe become a serious world. It is getting more, not less, serious. Each week, as a result, Donald Trump is becoming less and less real.
But the idea of having to think about Trump turning his mouth-cannon at my profession, this is not a good time. I think we are all on our last nerve. But that’s just saying in another way my point: in anything resembling a serious time, Donald Trump is the opposite of someone you want around.
Welp, I guess that proves I’m not a nihilist. I got that. It’s a good day.
The irony of this bizarre declaration by Trump may catch the attention of many, but I wonder how many people realize just how destructive he may well become as he senses he will not be returned to office.
In my report, “Does Donald Trump have the know-how to save the United States?”, I asked the question What are the ways of knowing employed by Donald Trump in arriving at statements involving public policies, programs, plans, or operations, and do the chosen ways of knowing represent substantive grounds for believing his statements about matters of public interest? http://wellar.ca/informationresearch/TrumpReport.pdf
I used science, intuition, revelation, anatomical sourcing, everyday experience or common sense, and authority as the diagnostic tool to answer the question.
The results of the investigation into Trump’s know-how capability regarding U.S. federal government policies, programs, plans, and operations are that 99.9%, that is, 999 of 1,000 statements by Trump are based on intuition, revelation, anatomical sourcing, and authority; 0.1% or 1 in 1,000 is based on everyday experience or common sense; and, 0.0% or 0 in 1,000 are based on his demonstrated knowledge of science.
The irony is that this declaration is about education of which he has no demonstrated substantive knowledge, no aptitude, and continues to suffer the deep-stain humiliation of his Trump University fiasco.
And the message of danger in this bizarre act is that education is just one of many failed parts of Trump’s life, and he could decide to commit as many other acts of vengeance as he can get away with prior to departure.
http://wellar.ca/informationresearch/