Can Donald Trump “Fix” Higher Education in the United States?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post

When protests disrupted campuses nationwide in the United States last year celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, signs and chants demanded “Divest!” and “Cease-fire now!” This fall, much of the protest language has grown darker, echoing language used by Hamas, and declaring “Glory to the resistance!”

Some protesters now refer to them as the “al-Aqsa flood,” the name Hamas uses. “Oct. 7 IS FOREVER” has been spray-painted on walls at colleges. The shift is very apparent at Columbia University in New York, one of the main centres of the protests.

This new messaging has been noticed by Hillel chapters across the country, observed Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International. “The overall picture on campus,” he said, “has moved from a mass protest movement that embodied a diverse set of goals and rhetoric to this more concentrated and therefore more extreme and radical set of goals, tactics and rhetoric.”

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to crack down on these campus protests, and his allies expect the Department of Education to more aggressively investigate university responses to pro-Palestinian movements.

“If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he told donors last May. Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”

In an Agenda47 policy video released last July, he asserted that “the time has come to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left, and we will do that.” Trump promised to axe federal support and accreditation for universities that fail to put an end to “antisemitic propaganda” and deport international students that are involved in violent anti-Israel campus protests. “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”

At a recent antisemitism event in Washington DC, he pledged to protect Jewish students on American campuses. “Here is what I will do to defeat antisemitism and defend our Jewish citizens in America,” he declared. “My first week back in the Oval Office my Administration will inform every College president that if you do not end antisemitic propaganda they will lose their accreditation and federal support.”

He announced that he “will inform every educational institution in our land that if they permit violence, harassment or threats against Jewish students the schools will be held accountable for violations of the civil rights law.

“It’s very important Jewish Americans must have equal protection under the law and they’re going to get it. At the same time, my Administration will move swiftly to restore safety for Jewish students and Jewish people on American streets.”
When back in the White House, Trump announced that he would direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination “under the guise of equity” and will advance a measure to have schools that continue these illegal and unjust policies fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.

Citing Trump’s campaign pledge to push for significant reforms, the Stand Columbia Society, which is dedicated to restoring the university’s “excellence,” has identified a handful of ways in which the federal government could pull financial support from Columbia, or any other university. They estimate Columbia could lose out on $3.5 billion in federal funding should they face government retaliation. 

The most likely action, according to the group, would be for the government to slow down on issuing new research grants to the university, a move that would require no justification at all. The government could also squeeze the enrollment of international students by curbing issuance of student visas.

Columbia boasts upwards of 13,800 international students. Losing out on the cohort could cost them up to $800 million in tuition money. Neither one of these scenarios requires the administration to take legal action.

Moreover, the government could, additionally, push to withhold all federal funding should it determine that a university had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. That statute bars recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, colour, or national origin. It was later clarified in 2004 by the then-assistant secretary for the Department of Education, Kenneth Marcus, that Title VI also protected the rights of ethnic groups that shared a religious faith, such as Jews. 

Given the explosion of antisemitism that erupted on college campuses in the wake of Hamas’s attack, it doesn’t appear it would take much to make the case that Columbia, and a whole host of other universities, violated Title VI. 

Columbia, for its part, already faces at least three Title VI lawsuits over campus antisemitism. (Among other major universities, Harvard faces two, and the University of California Los Angeles, University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also on the list.) 

“These problems have existed for some time,” a contributing member of Stand Columbia, Alexandra Zubko, who is a Columbia graduate, contends. “This might be the moment that administrators look in the mirror and decide that they can’t let them continue.” 
 
 “All we need to do is listen to what President Trump has said during his campaign to understand that this administration will be serious about enforcing anti discrimination laws in ways that could be problematic to those institutions that have been getting a free pass for too long,” Marcus has said. 

With Trump promising to make higher education “great again” once he returns to office this coming January, American universities will face increasing pressure to comply with his administration, if they don’t want to lose billions in federal support.  

 

Winners and Losers as Trump Prepares to Take Power

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The American people have spoken, loud and clear. They gave Donald Trump a massive victory Nov. 5. How will his victory affect the rest of the world? Here are some winners and losers:

Winner: India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ideology will find no opposition from Trump, who has no issues with ethno-religious nationalism.  Modi’s program to make India great again (MIGA?) suits Trump just fine. They are populists and kindred spirits. Hardliners in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government will be delighted to have a man who has expressed pro-Hindu sentiments and has take a tough stand on Islamist fundamentalism.

Winner: Israel. Israelis trust Trump as the man who recognised Jerusalem as their capital, moved the U.S. embassy there, recognised Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and said that settlement-building was not per se against international law.

This will strengthen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called Trump the “best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” Israel will have more of a free hand dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and their paymaster, Iran. Netanyahu might even give in to the temptation to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump probably won’t stop him.

Winner: Russia. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day.” When asked how, he suggested overseeing a deal, but has declined to give specifics. Meanwhile, a Russian push through the northern Donbas is gaining momentum and could eventually threaten the largely Russian-speaking Kharkiv.

The coming administration is tired of the Russo-Ukrainian and other endless wars. Russia, undefeated, will keep Crimea and the Russophone Luhansk and Donetsk areas in eastern Ukraine, thereby creating a partition that should have taken place in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart. These were Communist-created borders, drawn up by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.

Losers and Winner: Latin America. Poor Cuba, which is already in major economic and political trouble, knows that there will be no relaxation of American pressure. In fact, Trump threatened that the leadership in Cuba could “be changed” once he’s in power. The left-wing regimes in Brazil and Venezuela also can expect little love from Trump.

But Argentina’s far-right libertarian President Javier Milei, who shares a similar brash style with Trump, is a winner. He called Trump’s win “formidable,” and has pledged to carry out a foreign policy with only two nations, the U.S. and Israel.

Loser: Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky made a big mistake accompanying Kamala Harris to a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, in September, providing a boost to the Harris campaign, which riled Trump. Already a skeptic when it comes to the war, Trump won’t forget this. Zelensky also called Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance “too radical” and “dangerous.” The new administration will stop sending endless billions of dollars to Kyiv, forcing Ukraine to reach a deal with Vladimir Putin.

Loser: China. When he was in office, Trump labelled China a “strategic competitor” and imposed tariffs on some Chinese imports to the U.S. This sparked tit-for-tat tariffs by Beijing on American imports. There were efforts to de-escalate the trade dispute, but the pandemic wiped out this possibility, and relations got worse as the former president labelled COVID a “Chinese virus.”

Trump has said he would impose tariffs of 60 per cent or more on all Chinese imports to protect U.S. industry as he attempts to revive the domestic American economy.

Loser: Iran. There will certainly be no new nuclear deal with the theocracy. Trump stated during his campaign that President Joe Biden’s policy of not rigorously enforcing oil-export sanctions has weakened Washington and emboldened Tehran, allowing it to sell oil, accumulate cash and expand its nuclear pursuits and influence through armed militias.

A Trump administration return to a “maximum-pressure” campaign on Iran could lead to a major decrease in Iranian crude exports. Iranians are worried that Trump may give Israel a green light to attack their oil assets and other infrastructure.

Loser: Great Britain. Foreign secretary David Lammy in July 2018 wrote an article about Trump in Time magazine, referring to Trump as a “tyrant in a toupee” and a “neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath.” Also, last month Trump’s campaign filed a formal legal complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal foreign election interference by the Labour Party.

The complaint cites a decision by Labour to send a hundred party activists to swing states to campaign for Kamala Harris. That puts Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the position of leader of a party Trump has accused of actively working against him.

Loser: Canada. Trump has no time for Justin Trudeau’s ideological “woke” foreign policy and thinks the prime minister is a fool. He will bear down on Canada’s “free ride” in NATO. Trump has long been a sceptic of the alliance, accusing Europe of free-riding on America’s promise of protection.  

He will demand Canada increase its defence spending, and quickly. He has also recently spoken about placing tariffs on Canadian imports, another issue that would be a sticking point with this country. Also in question is the future of United States-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. The three partners must decide in 2026 whether to extend it for another 16 years.

 Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, now that Trump is back for a second act.

 

Are Latin American Countries Settler Colonialist?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Does today’s settler colonialism construct, created by academics, have a religious predecessor? A number of scholars, including Donald Akenson (God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster) and Conor Cruise O’Brien (God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism), have studied Dutch South Africa, Ulster, and Israel as covenantal states of “chosen people.” The same theology held true for the Puritans in New England, the Mormons in Utah, and others.

The current term settler colonialism, a non-religious label, is almost exclusively applied to anglophone countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, pre-1994 South Africa, and the United States, plus Israel – countries all politically descended from these covenantal peoples.

The theory neatly divides societies into white oppressors who displaced the indigenous population and now require a program of “decolonization.”

But if that’s the case, why aren’t the states of Latin America also settler colonial? After all, there too a white elite, originating from Portugal and Spain, governs Black and indigenous peoples.

Dispossession and elimination of native peoples, which are key tenets of a settler colonial model, were not isolated to British imperialism; they were also central to Spanish and Portuguese imperial projects. Indigenous peoples in the region have been subject to physical elimination efforts, including massacres and sterilisation campaigns.

All these countries, even left-wing states such as Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, have virtually all-white political rulers. With a few exceptions, such as Bolivia, their presidents have always been white. Even their radicals usually share that identity. In 1973 in Chile, General Augusto Pinochet mounted a vicious coup against President Salvador Allende, a Marxist, and instituted an authoritarian dictatorship. But both men were white.

Peru has a large indigenous population -- yet there, even a Japanese man was once president. Mexico pretends to be “mestizo,” but all their leaders are white -- including now a Jewish woman.

This situation also holds true for Brazil and Cuba, though they are overwhelmingly Black in demography, due to their origins as slave plantation economies.

Latin American nations have long proclaimed a multiracial ideal: countries like Brazil and Mexico have celebrated the mixing of races and claimed to extend equal rights and opportunities to all. It has long been assumed that their deep economic and social disparities have no racial or ethnic component.

Yet Latin America belongs to the history of the global expansion of white-settler populations from Europe. They too have a history of displacing and oppressing native peoples and favouring European immigrants. Their settlers expropriated the land and evicted or killed the existing population; they exploited the surviving indigenous labour force on the land; they secured for themselves a European standard of living; and they treated the surviving indigenous peoples terribly, drafting laws to ensure they remained largely without rights, as second -class citizens.

Today’s elites are largely the product of the immigrant European culture that has developed during the two centuries since independence. Latin America’s settler elites were obsessed with all things European. They travelled to Europe in search of political models, ignoring their own countries beyond the capital cities, and excluding the majority from their nation-building project.

Their imported ideologies included the racist and social Darwinist ideas common among settlers elsewhere in Europe’s colonial world. This outlook led to the downgrading of their Black populations, and, in many countries, to the physical extermination of indigenous peoples. In their place came millions of settlers from Europe. This was especially true for the virtually all-white states of Argentina, Uruguay, and, to a lesser extent, Chile.

In the 1870–1930 period, the region received far more immigrants or settlers than during 300 years of Spanish and Portuguese rule. Between 1870 and 1914 five million Europeans migrated to Brazil and Argentina alone. In many countries the immigration campaigns continued well into the 20th century, sustaining the hegemonic white-settler culture that has lasted to this day.

Brazil even had a so-called “whitening” law, which encouraged European settlement to diminish the percentage of African origin Brazilians. The country, declared the political class, had to embrace “branquitude” (whiteness).

Just as in North America, the concept of settler colonialism makes visible how the colonization of indigenous peoples evolved after colonialism, when today’s independent Latin American states were founded. Yet these Catholic states mostly escape the settler colonialist label. (As do the Muslim conquests across north Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, for that matter. Wasn’t the Mughal Empire in India a settler colonial state?)

Perhaps it’s because most Marxists and socialists in Latin America have focused on the economic problems of the continent. They have argued that prejudice was class-based rather than racial. That included everyone in the country as being victims, except for the economic elite.

So, is today’s settler colonialism construct only about those movements of conquest that were not interested in proselytism and conversion of “non-believers,” and therefore doesn’t apply to Latin America? Or is it because the left has romanticized the struggles of Latin America against “yanqui” American imperialism?

Either way, shouldn’t these countries also be “decolonized?” If we are to take this concept seriously, something that many consider problematic, then at the least, incorporating the experiences and conditions that shape settler society and indigenous struggle outside the anglophone world is important in enriching our understanding of settler colonial relationships.