I feel like this is a wild mis-characterisation. American isn't in danger of becoming a victim; America is trying to suppress academic pursuits and intellectualism. It is politically inconvenient, which means it needs to be eradicated.
America is currently a victim of Trump's batshit insane policies. A plurality of Americans voted for Trump, but not all of even that percentage actually support or desire what is happening now.
Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
> A plurality of Americans voted for Trump, but not all of even that percentage actually support or desire what is happening now.
> Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
But it's cathartic for Trump's political opponents to blame Americans, so they do so. IIRC, they're still less popular than Trump.
They felt entitled to win since they think he is bad. Instead of blaming others they really need to spend their time figuring out why they lost to someone so flawed, and make the difficult (including ideological) changes to fix their electoral issues. Especially since last time they seemed to genuinely believe he was dangerous, but refused to pull their heads out of their asses to respond to that danger.
>Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
And saying "this is happening to America" ignores all those people who very much do. Trump's election wasn't an act of God nor an unavoidable consequence of physical laws. People voted for him.
Between the two, it's more correct to say "America is doing this to itself." If I stab myself in the leg, it's still a conscious and willful act on my part even though my leg wasn't holding the knife. It didn't just "happen."
>America is currently a victim of Trump's batshit insane policies.
You're not a victim over your voters' democratic choice. If I choose to cut my nose to spite my face, I'm not a victim. Why are people so bad about taking accountability over their actions? It's always someone else's fault.
>Most Americans are not in favor of this
Most American voters voted for this, this is how democracy works: sometimes your candidate wins, sometimes the other candidate wins, and you have to just suck it up and live with it till the next elections, this isn't being a victim. Rinse and repeat.
> You're not a victim over your democratic choice. If I choose to cut my nose to spite my face, I'm not a victim. Why are people so bad about taking accountability over their actions? It's always someone else's fault.
Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
Democrats like to pretend they were so much better than Trump that the choice was obvious, but they basically spent four years doing dishonest things like attempting to gaslight the American public on things like Biden's age. They need to take responsibility for their loss, instead putting their energy into blaming others (including scapegoats). But it's so much easier to try to climb back into a bubble.
>Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
Choices aren't being "given". You're making it sound like Americans are being forced to choose some sort of alien invaders and not peers cut from the cloth of their own citizens.
In a democracy the politicians are a direct reflection of society. If Trump says "drill baby drill" and everyone applauds, you can't claim otherwise
>> Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
> Your making it sound like Americans are being forced to choose some sort of alien invaders and not peers of their own citizens. In democracy the politicians are a direct reflection of society.
Come on. Do you remember 2024? Biden was anointed, then Harris. In 2016 it was Clinton (so something had to be done about Sanders). Those choices weren't made by democracy, they were made by the Democratic party.
a) I am currently a victim of other people's choices. This isn't me cutting my nose off to spite my face: this is a group of people deciding "we will now all cut off our noses", and the ones who don't want to being held down and cut against our will.
b) Again, it was a plurality of Americans, not a majority, who voted for Trump. And, again, polls increasingly show a majority of Americans disapproving of what Trump is doing.
Acting like this is just "politics as usual" is a big part of what got us into this absolute mess.
Acting like this is just "politics as usual" now, after all the stuff he's already done that is blatantly unconstitutional, illegal, and treasonous, is pretty clearly based on some motivated reasoning.
So, which is it? Do you support his rise to dictator, or do you just enjoy shitting on people who are experiencing a horrifying disaster that will destroy their country and their entire lives as they know them?
> Again, it was a plurality of Americans, not a majority, who voted for Trump. And, again, polls increasingly show a majority of Americans disapproving of what Trump is doing.
People who are eligible to vote but do not are giving an implicit vote in favor of whoever wins. There is no sense in thinking of it an any other way. (As an aside, you can also think of them as cowards who are unwilling to take a stand and choose the least bad option. Something all adults do on a regular basis).
So sure, if you count children and felons it may not be an absolute majority. On the other hand, you’re assuming that they would have voted for the person you voted for had they had that chance.
>a) I am currently a victim of other people's choices.
You're not a victim in a democracy when your candidate looses and have to put up with the policies you don't like but which are popular with the majority of the voting population. It's the feature of democracy, not a bug. Grow up.
>Acting like this is just "politics as usual"
IT IS politics as usual. Always has been when you look at history. The difference is now you have Twitter and social media to rile you up for the sake of monetizing engagement. Lay off social media and your TDS will heal itself naturally.
> Do you support his rise to dictator
As someone born in a dictatorship, you have no idea what a dictatorship actually is. If you were in a dictatorship, a black Volga would show up at your door and arrest you for your previous comment. You don't have the right to complain in a dictatorship, let alone to vote.
I don't see why you don't apply some good faith reasoning for the other side to see the poster's point. Looking at it from a broader perspective, it's perfectly possible to be a victim of a Biden admin and a Trump admin. If you went back in time and voted for the other guy but end up getting screwed in some other or same way by the other candidate -- which is very likely -- you could easily claim that you're a victim no matter who you vote for. Cause at the end of the day you're essentially voting for the lesser of two evils. And if they both are "evil" in some form then it wouldn't be out of place for you to suffer in one context or another no matter who the president is.
That's why voting against the incumbent is a thing. You're not voting for Trump, you're voting against Biden hoping (not knowing) Trump will be better, because if things are shitty already, voting for Biden seems like doing the same thing and expecting different results.
And viewing Americans as victims also has a pragmatic benefit because you allow people who have buyer's remorse to speak up about the things they regret about the guy they voted for.
>as someone who was born in a dictatorship
Since you were born in one, it stands to reason you didn't see a country drift towards one in realtime. It can very much be a boiling the frog sort of thing depending on how the pieces on the board are arranged.
> You're not a victim in a democracy when your candidate looses and have to put up with the policies you don't like but which are popular with the majority of the voting population. It's the feature of democracy, not a bug. Grow up.
What an utterly absurd statement.
Hitler was elected democratically, so I guess none of the non-Nazi Germans are allowed to complain about the murder of millions of innocent people and start WW2.
I can't even believe you would say something so ridiculous.
> a black Volga would show up at your door and arrest you for your previous comment.
So, surely, you are even more paranoid about an executive accumulating power and acting extrajudicially and against the constitutional bounds of their office? You, of course, recognize the similarities when plain-clothes ICE agents who refuse to identify themselves throw innocent VISA students into unmarked vehicles and detain them in unknown places under the threat to deport them to foreign prisons without a trial, becaude they spoke against the executive's policy?
And comparing the election of Trump to the election of Hitler is not absurd? I'll end this conversation here due to you not being willing to argue in good faith. Please have a read on the history of WW1, Weimar Republic and the circumstances that led to Hitler getting elected, including the election process, then maybe you can stop bringing up the Hitler every time someone mentions Trump.
Left for Berlin in 2021 and do not regret it one bit.
Edit: I had a choice between a masters program in the US for about $30,000/year or in Berlin for €700/year. It was obvious which choice was not only cheaper, but also more interesting in terms of life experience.
Not if you're from outside the EU/EEA and don't qualify for scholarships or other waivers. I just checked TU Munich as an example and they charge 6000 euros/semester for non EU/EEA CS Masters students.
In 1920 they might have said “expatriate” or “emigrant” instead. “Expat” is a recent shortening. I haven’t seen it used with “going” much, but the meaning is clear.
Oh, I understand the history and nomenclature. I'm referring specifically to how blueflow quoted "going expat" as if that were a common phrase, albeit which I didn't recognize.
It doesn't seem to be one people actually use, so IMO shouldn't be quoted.
Care to elaborate in detail? I think the term "expats" and "brain drain" are two distinct groups that even though are often used interchangeably, can have little overlap. All brain drains are expats, but not all expats are valuable brains who's draining is worth anything.
For example, it's one thing to import a math/physics Olympiad winner from India/China/Romania prioritizing to move to the hottest place in tech funding and cutting edge R&D, and another to import an unemployed standup comedian seeking to move to the most hipster city for raves and parties where he can tweet form his MacBook how happy he is he left Trump's "fascist" America.
In my case, I also see a lot more American expats where I live here in my European college town, but when I talk to them about their jobs/careers, most seem to be net drain on our system (au pairs, dog walkers, under the table English teachers, etc) who moved here for the chill life and free healthcare, rather than some highly ambitious well paid engineers or scientists who are gonna boost our economy to overtake the US. Most valuable brains are met here still seem to come from Balkans, Eastern Europe, India, Iran and Asia in general. Do you see my point?
Edit: please see my grandchild comment below for detailing on my thoughts on this
A friend who heads a well-funded research group here in Denmark says the recent change is not so much in the number of Americans applying, but the quality/prestige. He's now receiving serious enquiries from graduates of Stanford, MIT etc, who previously were unlikely to leave the USA.
I don't doubt that, but researchers and post-docs always tend to move around he world, especially in niche fields, where you can't usually find an opportunity in your area of expertise right in your back yard in a timely manner(some PhD friends had to move from the EU to Korea because of that), but my main point is whether that will dethrone the US economically and boost the EU in the same way, or if the end result will be negligeable in practice.
I suspect as long as the US pays the highest wages in the world by a long shot, and hosts the world's top companies, both civilian and military, it will not run out of brains willing to move there. Because for every American leaving to Copenhagen because of Trump, the US might get 10 new brains in return from China, India, Vietnam, Korea, Turkey, Serbia, etc. for the wages.
Plus, Trump is a passing event that will be replaced in 3,5 years with someone else who could turn things around. You'd probably need 10-20 Trumps in a row to cause any lasting damage to the US. And also, no matter how moronic Trump or a US president can be, corporations like Apple, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, etc are not, and will always lobby Trump or whoever will be president to maintain policies that will keep the US attractive to brains for them so they can get the best talent in the world. Do you see where I'm coming from when I say I doubt the US will suffer much or at all?
> I suspect as long as the US pays the highest wages in the world by a long shot, and hosts the world's top companies, both civilian and military, it will not run out of brains willing to move there.
If fewer of the world's smartest people are willing or able to move to the US, then competition for labor will shrink and so will wages.
to do... what? WFH on some "sharing platform" with 16Mbps DSL in aparthotel and keep applying for long term rental for 12 months? Tremble from anxiousness on seeing a letter in their postbox?
People don't move to Berlin to WFH, since apartments are almst impossible to get for outsiders. They move to Berlin to party and cosplay hip start-up founder.
Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state.
Red states have had the worst outcomes for generations but they keep going back to republicans. The reasons escape me. The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing.
Maybe China will motivate them to get their act together.
Conservatives and a lot of moderates are single issue voters.
As long as trump protects babies or props up the right religious ideology, they're fine with everything else.
I recently read "Strangers in their own Land". The author interviewed hundreds of conservatives in the south. The jist was that as Christians they should protect the environment, but the oil refinery will bring jobs. The jobs are more important. So they'll vote for the jobs.
It's really that simple. Republicans have mastered single issue stances. They don't need to be honest or trustworthy.
It could be the quality of the opposition. The frame of "trying to be a red state" seems a bit unfair, the message seemed to be more that voters were really, really disappointed with the Biden's performance as opposed to any specific draw the Republicans had. Kamala making it a close race was miraculous given where the election looked to be going in early June 2024 up to the infamous debate.
It seems very fair given how the Democrats follow Clinton's triangulation strategy to try to appeal to Republican voters through "red state"-lite legislation, on the assumption that Democrats would hold their nose and vote Democrat no matter how disappointed they are.
That line of reasoning is actually a classic right-wing gaslighting strategy: "the radical left forced us to act this way, we had no choice". No, voters made an explicit and clear vote of conscience. The democratic campaign may have been a strategic disaster, but the difference in proposed policies - for which the candidate was completely irrelevant - couldn't have been any more stark. The people have spoken. Everybody knew what they were voting for. Pretending they didn't is to disrespect the voice of the people. The majority voted for lower taxes and severely cutting government spending at the cost of higher import expenses, the majority voted for increased US manufacturing at the cost of high-tech jobs and immigration, for more presidential authority and less accountability, for more magical thinking and less science and research. Own your choices.
It’s not a black or white thing. You can be disappointed with Biden, but by itself that’s not a reason to just switch parties ignoring the Republican performance, especially after Jan6. At the end of the day, Trump’s “burn everything down” racist position was not a dealbreaker to the majority of voters, and that’s on them.
It’s much easier to complain and destroy than to create. It takes 30 seconds to cut down a tree, but years, decades or sometimes centuries to grow a big one.
No, a majority either wanted him, or didn’t care. Only a minority didn’t want him. In the US, you don’t vote FOR a candidate. You only vote against a candidate. If you cast your vote for the Republican, or don’t cast a vote (or cast your vote for a third party), and live in a red state, then you voted against the Democrat. And vice versa. So the only people that you can fairly say didn’t want him were the democratic voters.
It’s not a good system, it’s utter garbage, but it’s the current reality in the US, and the longer people fail to acknowledge this, the longer it will remain like this.
1. Many voters do not know about strategic voting. They vote for the candidate they think is best for the job.
2. A voter who knows their vote won't make a difference in the outcome due to the electoral college might vote third party to increase the chances of there being viable third parties in later elections.
Red states block anything and everything that could help anyone but themselves. To "compromise" Dems put investments into bills that help Red states in the hopes that something will get passed(Sometimes it still fails). Examples include all these battery factories being located in purple states so that those senators will be forced to vote for the package. Dems help out the red states just to try and move the needle forward.
Red politicians then get elected and further cut things that help Blue states. See all the medicaid cuts, soon social security, last trump admin cut the homeowner tax exemptions that mainly helped blue states, cutting tax benefits that encouraged companies to hire software engineers and timing it so that it takes place after trump left office.
The blue states are held hostage by the Red states because of the structure of the system(a mess left over from the post Civil War).
You can argue that Blue states drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the future: Ex: The California CARB mandates setting emission standards forcing manufacturers to adopt their standard for emissions, The East and West coast define culture in the arts that the rest of the world see and knows as American, top universities are where the future ways of thinking are challenged and explored.
Every time the Red side gets into power they try to claw back even this stuff so that the Blue states are essentially nothing more than vassals contributing more but getting little back in return. Blue states need a Democratic party that will play extremely dirty just like the Republicans.
Battery factories are being placed in red states because they're still largely functional governments with fast go-to-market permitting and are pro-growth in general. Tesla built their new HQ (which is the largest building in the country) in Texas in 14 months, which would be impossible to do in California. It would take 5 years if they allowed them to do it at all.
Blue states have ineffective, slow, dysfunctional governments that tax heavily and regulate heavily. They also do indescribably stupid things, like Prop 47 in CA.
Red state / blue state categories have nothing to do with the civil war. CA wasn't even in the civil war, obviously, and for the longest time, they were a red state (until the early 90s). All of California's foundational industries (tech, entertainment, agriculture, aerospace, etc) were brought there when it was red.
> Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia
> Personal income, in current dollars, increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2024
These are from your link. Where did you get the idea that red states are the only ones that grow?
GDP growth is higher in red states in that link, but red states also received something like 80–90% of the funding from the trillion dollars or so passed by the Democratic Congress and President.
Also to see how this actually plays out, compare CA to TX. gdp Growth in TX is much higher. But personal income growth in CA is much higher than in TX.
I think you’ll need a better analysis (longer timescale, more fine-grained, more explanations - education, age, productivity, investment, r&d, immigration etc)
> The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing.
I thought that was all northern propaganda. The real reason being that the south refused to be in a confederation where there was more and more power given to the presidency and the senate while the states had fewer.
The north of course couldn't say they fought to force these states to remain in the confederation, negating their right to self determination, and instead pushed the slave narrative which was really secondary.
If the slave issue was secondary is seems weird that so many of the states explicitly mentioned it:
>"Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, the seven states that would constitute the future Confederate States of America before Fort Sumter was bombarded began the process of seceding from the Union. Those states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. All of them formed "conventions of the people" to adopt ordinances severing the tie with the Union. (2) Five of them--South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Texas--commissioned delegates to their respective conventions to draft public documents detailing the reasons behind the secession. (3) Historians call these documents "declarations of causes," a phrase used in the titles of several of these documents. Although, for reasons unknown, Florida never officially completed its declaration, a draft of it exists in the Florida state archives. All of the declarations are explicit: maintaining slavery was the reason for secession. For example, the Mississippi declaration begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world."
And even if you didn't have a huge archive to support the claim that slavery was the primary reason for the secession and had to guess, i would buy the economics explanation over the political one almost each time.
The Civil War was 100% about the Confederacy's desire to preserve slavery. The "State's Rights" argument is revisionist to downplay things, especially given the fact that southern states would be hypocritical and demand that the northern states enforce laws like the Fugitive Slave act, which directly went against the rights of the states that had declared themselves as free states.
You're talking about "Lost Cause Theory" [1], a negationist re-narrativization of the Civil War. Any serious Historian will tell you the Civil War was 100% about slavery if you ask them.
For the several decades I've been alive and reading multiple takes on history slavery has always featured as one of the major three causes of the US Civil War for the majority of historians of note.
banning Harvard from enrolling international students is a pretty clear signal to elite intellectual capital that the US is no longer the obvious place to study. Trump 2.0 is fascinating social experiment - can reducing aggregate brainpower lead to better outcomes for the country? Not a rhetorical question, being smart is not the only way to win
That's obvious: the brain is the most energy-intensive organ in the body, so shutting down the brain leads to significant energy savings. The energy saved this way can then be spent on drilling for more oil, and the oil can be burned to power AI datacenters where the real thinking is done.
being smarter doesn't always lead to better decision making - many people overly intellectualise a problem and fail to move to action. Trump is definitely action oriented, a lot of it really dumb, but it does alter the external conditions which may produce better outcomes.
China doesn't have a leadership problem atm, though certainly has had its fair share of anti-intellectual leaders. Trump's actions are very familiar to Chinese people, especially ones who have been educated on the excesses of Maoism.
That said, point of post is - will Trump anti-intellectualism 'work', where work = benefiting America. Ostensibly, the answer looks like 'of course not' but in my view, it is too early to say
Putting aside the negatives, I see zero upsides of reducing brain power. The people being more equal perhaps? Maybe the path to the fabled middle class is to bring down the upper class.
These days, a lot of brainpower is spent on scamming people (case in point: Vivek Ramaswamy). One can really make quite a good living off of scamming people these days. If you could reduce the brainpower of that demographic, I think this would be good for everyone else.
To where will these scientists go? Europe, only those willing to accept much lower wages and more bureaucracy. China, unlikely to even accept them. Rest of the world, far fewer resources and often far more doubtful regimes.
"Most doctoral positions and some postdoc positions will be categorized as TV-L 13, which can range from about €4630 to €6580 (gross monthly salary). The exact salary is determined by your years of experience."
-> €6000*12 -> 72K Euro, ~US$ 80K
And that is without including the various social benefits.
> The highest possible salary anyone in the university gets is 96k Euros.
The link your parent posted is current. The Entgelttabelle there was last updated in 2022.
Also the PDF's (Tarifvertrag, Entgelttabelle) linked there are the authoritative source for this information - they are the legal document defining it.
>We have 2025, not 2022. So it is certainly not current. Inflation is a thing! ;-)
Do you not understand that the document I linked is the up to date contract? If you think what I linked is getting "inflation adjusted" you are totally clueless about how you get paid under a Tarifvertrag in Germany.
The document contains the exact amount of the employee is going to get paid next month.
Why don't you look at the document I linked which tells you exactly what people working in that university are earning. That is not a guess, not an estimate and it is not out of date it is literally exactly what they are getting paid next month.
Instead of talking about hypotheticals and ranges, why do you refuse to look at the document which talks about the exact salaries? This is very bizarre behavior.
>That is wrong, too. But not the topic of my post.
I literally linked you the literal document where it is literally written what the literal highest paid person will literally get paid in the literal next month. What evidence against this could you possibly have? Unless you have the bank statements of that person your evidence cannot possibly be better.
It is weird that this is downvoted. No one else is close to making up the funding. And Harvard is just ignoring requests from DHS? They were warned for a month? If the Secretary of Homeland Security sends a letter requesting information, do you not have to comply?
If the demands are illegal, then yeah, by any means, you shouldn't comply. Do resist a criminal state that's using intimidation instead of laws, isn't this the American spirit?
Is there a good analysis of which demands are illegal? Is Harvard suing?
I sort of agree with you, but also don't buy into the victim narrative from Harvard, which has been happy to comply with illegal requests before and has clearly violated Civil Rights laws for years.
The Harvard Crimson seems to have done a decent job in a couple articles. It seems some of the request is legal, and some is broad so they don't know what to do. They were probably waiting for this action to file a lawsuit, since now they can argue they complied.
And the US does have the first amendment which a whole bunch of right wing free speech warriors start whining about immediately the moment someone criticizes them in public, but in reality the first amendment exists primarily to protect private speech (defined broadly, including things like making your own hiring decisions, etc) from government censorship.
https://archive.is/2025.05.23-060333/https://www.economist.c...
I feel like this is a wild mis-characterisation. American isn't in danger of becoming a victim; America is trying to suppress academic pursuits and intellectualism. It is politically inconvenient, which means it needs to be eradicated.
Except that "America" is not monolithic.
America is currently a victim of Trump's batshit insane policies. A plurality of Americans voted for Trump, but not all of even that percentage actually support or desire what is happening now.
Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
> A plurality of Americans voted for Trump, but not all of even that percentage actually support or desire what is happening now.
> Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
But it's cathartic for Trump's political opponents to blame Americans, so they do so. IIRC, they're still less popular than Trump.
They felt entitled to win since they think he is bad. Instead of blaming others they really need to spend their time figuring out why they lost to someone so flawed, and make the difficult (including ideological) changes to fix their electoral issues. Especially since last time they seemed to genuinely believe he was dangerous, but refused to pull their heads out of their asses to respond to that danger.
>Most Americans are not in favor of this, so saying that "America is doing this to itself" rather than "this is happening to America" feels like it ignores all those people who very much do not want this.
And saying "this is happening to America" ignores all those people who very much do. Trump's election wasn't an act of God nor an unavoidable consequence of physical laws. People voted for him.
Between the two, it's more correct to say "America is doing this to itself." If I stab myself in the leg, it's still a conscious and willful act on my part even though my leg wasn't holding the knife. It didn't just "happen."
>America is currently a victim of Trump's batshit insane policies.
You're not a victim over your voters' democratic choice. If I choose to cut my nose to spite my face, I'm not a victim. Why are people so bad about taking accountability over their actions? It's always someone else's fault.
>Most Americans are not in favor of this
Most American voters voted for this, this is how democracy works: sometimes your candidate wins, sometimes the other candidate wins, and you have to just suck it up and live with it till the next elections, this isn't being a victim. Rinse and repeat.
> You're not a victim over your democratic choice. If I choose to cut my nose to spite my face, I'm not a victim. Why are people so bad about taking accountability over their actions? It's always someone else's fault.
Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
Democrats like to pretend they were so much better than Trump that the choice was obvious, but they basically spent four years doing dishonest things like attempting to gaslight the American public on things like Biden's age. They need to take responsibility for their loss, instead putting their energy into blaming others (including scapegoats). But it's so much easier to try to climb back into a bubble.
>Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
Choices aren't being "given". You're making it sound like Americans are being forced to choose some sort of alien invaders and not peers cut from the cloth of their own citizens.
In a democracy the politicians are a direct reflection of society. If Trump says "drill baby drill" and everyone applauds, you can't claim otherwise
>> Americans are a victim of being given shitty choices.
> Your making it sound like Americans are being forced to choose some sort of alien invaders and not peers of their own citizens. In democracy the politicians are a direct reflection of society.
Come on. Do you remember 2024? Biden was anointed, then Harris. In 2016 it was Clinton (so something had to be done about Sanders). Those choices weren't made by democracy, they were made by the Democratic party.
a) I am currently a victim of other people's choices. This isn't me cutting my nose off to spite my face: this is a group of people deciding "we will now all cut off our noses", and the ones who don't want to being held down and cut against our will.
b) Again, it was a plurality of Americans, not a majority, who voted for Trump. And, again, polls increasingly show a majority of Americans disapproving of what Trump is doing.
Acting like this is just "politics as usual" is a big part of what got us into this absolute mess.
Acting like this is just "politics as usual" now, after all the stuff he's already done that is blatantly unconstitutional, illegal, and treasonous, is pretty clearly based on some motivated reasoning.
So, which is it? Do you support his rise to dictator, or do you just enjoy shitting on people who are experiencing a horrifying disaster that will destroy their country and their entire lives as they know them?
> Again, it was a plurality of Americans, not a majority, who voted for Trump. And, again, polls increasingly show a majority of Americans disapproving of what Trump is doing.
People who are eligible to vote but do not are giving an implicit vote in favor of whoever wins. There is no sense in thinking of it an any other way. (As an aside, you can also think of them as cowards who are unwilling to take a stand and choose the least bad option. Something all adults do on a regular basis).
So sure, if you count children and felons it may not be an absolute majority. On the other hand, you’re assuming that they would have voted for the person you voted for had they had that chance.
>a) I am currently a victim of other people's choices.
You're not a victim in a democracy when your candidate looses and have to put up with the policies you don't like but which are popular with the majority of the voting population. It's the feature of democracy, not a bug. Grow up.
>Acting like this is just "politics as usual"
IT IS politics as usual. Always has been when you look at history. The difference is now you have Twitter and social media to rile you up for the sake of monetizing engagement. Lay off social media and your TDS will heal itself naturally.
> Do you support his rise to dictator
As someone born in a dictatorship, you have no idea what a dictatorship actually is. If you were in a dictatorship, a black Volga would show up at your door and arrest you for your previous comment. You don't have the right to complain in a dictatorship, let alone to vote.
I don't see why you don't apply some good faith reasoning for the other side to see the poster's point. Looking at it from a broader perspective, it's perfectly possible to be a victim of a Biden admin and a Trump admin. If you went back in time and voted for the other guy but end up getting screwed in some other or same way by the other candidate -- which is very likely -- you could easily claim that you're a victim no matter who you vote for. Cause at the end of the day you're essentially voting for the lesser of two evils. And if they both are "evil" in some form then it wouldn't be out of place for you to suffer in one context or another no matter who the president is.
That's why voting against the incumbent is a thing. You're not voting for Trump, you're voting against Biden hoping (not knowing) Trump will be better, because if things are shitty already, voting for Biden seems like doing the same thing and expecting different results.
And viewing Americans as victims also has a pragmatic benefit because you allow people who have buyer's remorse to speak up about the things they regret about the guy they voted for.
>as someone who was born in a dictatorship
Since you were born in one, it stands to reason you didn't see a country drift towards one in realtime. It can very much be a boiling the frog sort of thing depending on how the pieces on the board are arranged.
>you didn't see a country drift towards one in realtime
What are history books for then?
I live in a country that's doing that, and it's not like the US.
> You're not a victim in a democracy when your candidate looses and have to put up with the policies you don't like but which are popular with the majority of the voting population. It's the feature of democracy, not a bug. Grow up.
What an utterly absurd statement.
Hitler was elected democratically, so I guess none of the non-Nazi Germans are allowed to complain about the murder of millions of innocent people and start WW2.
I can't even believe you would say something so ridiculous.
> a black Volga would show up at your door and arrest you for your previous comment.
So, surely, you are even more paranoid about an executive accumulating power and acting extrajudicially and against the constitutional bounds of their office? You, of course, recognize the similarities when plain-clothes ICE agents who refuse to identify themselves throw innocent VISA students into unmarked vehicles and detain them in unknown places under the threat to deport them to foreign prisons without a trial, becaude they spoke against the executive's policy?
>What an utterly absurd statement.
And comparing the election of Trump to the election of Hitler is not absurd? I'll end this conversation here due to you not being willing to argue in good faith. Please have a read on the history of WW1, Weimar Republic and the circumstances that led to Hitler getting elected, including the election process, then maybe you can stop bringing up the Hitler every time someone mentions Trump.
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Has been happening since 2015, and in such scales that "going expat" is synonymous to "moving to Berlin".
You make me feel like a cliche...
Left for Berlin in 2021 and do not regret it one bit.
Edit: I had a choice between a masters program in the US for about $30,000/year or in Berlin for €700/year. It was obvious which choice was not only cheaper, but also more interesting in terms of life experience.
€700/year without EU citizenship?
Studying in the EU is cheap. I mean Germans pay almost 45-50% personal income taxes, money has to go somewhere!
Studying in the EU is cheap
Not if you're from outside the EU/EEA and don't qualify for scholarships or other waivers. I just checked TU Munich as an example and they charge 6000 euros/semester for non EU/EEA CS Masters students.
I hadn't heard the phrase "going expat" before, so I was curious if the Lost Generation ex-pat American writers in Paris in the 1920s used it.
Google n-grams hasn't seen the term.
DDG hasn't either.
Google has all of 122 matches. I didn't spot Germany in a quick scan. The Netherlands was pretty high on the list.
I therefore don't think that "going expat" is all that common.
I'm not privy to how it's used in isolated corporate exchanges like on Meta and X so perhaps that's why I haven't seen that phrase used?
In 1920 they might have said “expatriate” or “emigrant” instead. “Expat” is a recent shortening. I haven’t seen it used with “going” much, but the meaning is clear.
Oh, I understand the history and nomenclature. I'm referring specifically to how blueflow quoted "going expat" as if that were a common phrase, albeit which I didn't recognize.
It doesn't seem to be one people actually use, so IMO shouldn't be quoted.
Care to elaborate in detail? I think the term "expats" and "brain drain" are two distinct groups that even though are often used interchangeably, can have little overlap. All brain drains are expats, but not all expats are valuable brains who's draining is worth anything.
For example, it's one thing to import a math/physics Olympiad winner from India/China/Romania prioritizing to move to the hottest place in tech funding and cutting edge R&D, and another to import an unemployed standup comedian seeking to move to the most hipster city for raves and parties where he can tweet form his MacBook how happy he is he left Trump's "fascist" America.
In my case, I also see a lot more American expats where I live here in my European college town, but when I talk to them about their jobs/careers, most seem to be net drain on our system (au pairs, dog walkers, under the table English teachers, etc) who moved here for the chill life and free healthcare, rather than some highly ambitious well paid engineers or scientists who are gonna boost our economy to overtake the US. Most valuable brains are met here still seem to come from Balkans, Eastern Europe, India, Iran and Asia in general. Do you see my point?
Edit: please see my grandchild comment below for detailing on my thoughts on this
A friend who heads a well-funded research group here in Denmark says the recent change is not so much in the number of Americans applying, but the quality/prestige. He's now receiving serious enquiries from graduates of Stanford, MIT etc, who previously were unlikely to leave the USA.
I don't doubt that, but researchers and post-docs always tend to move around he world, especially in niche fields, where you can't usually find an opportunity in your area of expertise right in your back yard in a timely manner(some PhD friends had to move from the EU to Korea because of that), but my main point is whether that will dethrone the US economically and boost the EU in the same way, or if the end result will be negligeable in practice.
I suspect as long as the US pays the highest wages in the world by a long shot, and hosts the world's top companies, both civilian and military, it will not run out of brains willing to move there. Because for every American leaving to Copenhagen because of Trump, the US might get 10 new brains in return from China, India, Vietnam, Korea, Turkey, Serbia, etc. for the wages.
Plus, Trump is a passing event that will be replaced in 3,5 years with someone else who could turn things around. You'd probably need 10-20 Trumps in a row to cause any lasting damage to the US. And also, no matter how moronic Trump or a US president can be, corporations like Apple, Nvidia, AMD, SpaceX, etc are not, and will always lobby Trump or whoever will be president to maintain policies that will keep the US attractive to brains for them so they can get the best talent in the world. Do you see where I'm coming from when I say I doubt the US will suffer much or at all?
> I suspect as long as the US pays the highest wages in the world by a long shot, and hosts the world's top companies, both civilian and military, it will not run out of brains willing to move there.
If fewer of the world's smartest people are willing or able to move to the US, then competition for labor will shrink and so will wages.
>If ...
Yes, if. I addressed that in my previous comment. It's unlikely that "if" will happen.
> "moving to Berlin"
to do... what? WFH on some "sharing platform" with 16Mbps DSL in aparthotel and keep applying for long term rental for 12 months? Tremble from anxiousness on seeing a letter in their postbox?
People don't move to Berlin to WFH, since apartments are almst impossible to get for outsiders. They move to Berlin to party and cosplay hip start-up founder.
I couldn't rent anything when attempting to switch after almost ten years of full time employment there. I say good luck, "true Berliners"!
Vote for republicans => get red state policies.
Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state.
Red states have had the worst outcomes for generations but they keep going back to republicans. The reasons escape me. The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing.
Maybe China will motivate them to get their act together.
Conservatives and a lot of moderates are single issue voters.
As long as trump protects babies or props up the right religious ideology, they're fine with everything else.
I recently read "Strangers in their own Land". The author interviewed hundreds of conservatives in the south. The jist was that as Christians they should protect the environment, but the oil refinery will bring jobs. The jobs are more important. So they'll vote for the jobs.
It's really that simple. Republicans have mastered single issue stances. They don't need to be honest or trustworthy.
> The reasons escape me.
It could be the quality of the opposition. The frame of "trying to be a red state" seems a bit unfair, the message seemed to be more that voters were really, really disappointed with the Biden's performance as opposed to any specific draw the Republicans had. Kamala making it a close race was miraculous given where the election looked to be going in early June 2024 up to the infamous debate.
It seems very fair given how the Democrats follow Clinton's triangulation strategy to try to appeal to Republican voters through "red state"-lite legislation, on the assumption that Democrats would hold their nose and vote Democrat no matter how disappointed they are.
That line of reasoning is actually a classic right-wing gaslighting strategy: "the radical left forced us to act this way, we had no choice". No, voters made an explicit and clear vote of conscience. The democratic campaign may have been a strategic disaster, but the difference in proposed policies - for which the candidate was completely irrelevant - couldn't have been any more stark. The people have spoken. Everybody knew what they were voting for. Pretending they didn't is to disrespect the voice of the people. The majority voted for lower taxes and severely cutting government spending at the cost of higher import expenses, the majority voted for increased US manufacturing at the cost of high-tech jobs and immigration, for more presidential authority and less accountability, for more magical thinking and less science and research. Own your choices.
It’s not a black or white thing. You can be disappointed with Biden, but by itself that’s not a reason to just switch parties ignoring the Republican performance, especially after Jan6. At the end of the day, Trump’s “burn everything down” racist position was not a dealbreaker to the majority of voters, and that’s on them.
It’s much easier to complain and destroy than to create. It takes 30 seconds to cut down a tree, but years, decades or sometimes centuries to grow a big one.
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> Trump won the popular vote. America is trying very hard to become one big red state.
He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him.
> He won with a plurality. A majority did not want him.
Tomato tomato.
No, a majority either wanted him, or didn’t care. Only a minority didn’t want him. In the US, you don’t vote FOR a candidate. You only vote against a candidate. If you cast your vote for the Republican, or don’t cast a vote (or cast your vote for a third party), and live in a red state, then you voted against the Democrat. And vice versa. So the only people that you can fairly say didn’t want him were the democratic voters.
It’s not a good system, it’s utter garbage, but it’s the current reality in the US, and the longer people fail to acknowledge this, the longer it will remain like this.
1. Many voters do not know about strategic voting. They vote for the candidate they think is best for the job.
2. A voter who knows their vote won't make a difference in the outcome due to the electoral college might vote third party to increase the chances of there being viable third parties in later elections.
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With respect to red states, they're the only ones that still grow:
https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-state-a...
Its all a giant scam:
Red states block anything and everything that could help anyone but themselves. To "compromise" Dems put investments into bills that help Red states in the hopes that something will get passed(Sometimes it still fails). Examples include all these battery factories being located in purple states so that those senators will be forced to vote for the package. Dems help out the red states just to try and move the needle forward.
Red politicians then get elected and further cut things that help Blue states. See all the medicaid cuts, soon social security, last trump admin cut the homeowner tax exemptions that mainly helped blue states, cutting tax benefits that encouraged companies to hire software engineers and timing it so that it takes place after trump left office.
Red states typically get more out then they put in in terms of taxes: https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo...
The blue states are held hostage by the Red states because of the structure of the system(a mess left over from the post Civil War).
You can argue that Blue states drag the rest of the country kicking and screaming into the future: Ex: The California CARB mandates setting emission standards forcing manufacturers to adopt their standard for emissions, The East and West coast define culture in the arts that the rest of the world see and knows as American, top universities are where the future ways of thinking are challenged and explored.
Every time the Red side gets into power they try to claw back even this stuff so that the Blue states are essentially nothing more than vassals contributing more but getting little back in return. Blue states need a Democratic party that will play extremely dirty just like the Republicans.
Battery factories are being placed in red states because they're still largely functional governments with fast go-to-market permitting and are pro-growth in general. Tesla built their new HQ (which is the largest building in the country) in Texas in 14 months, which would be impossible to do in California. It would take 5 years if they allowed them to do it at all.
Blue states have ineffective, slow, dysfunctional governments that tax heavily and regulate heavily. They also do indescribably stupid things, like Prop 47 in CA.
Red state / blue state categories have nothing to do with the civil war. CA wasn't even in the civil war, obviously, and for the longest time, they were a red state (until the early 90s). All of California's foundational industries (tech, entertainment, agriculture, aerospace, etc) were brought there when it was red.
What in particular do you disagree with in Prop 47?
> Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia
> Personal income, in current dollars, increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2024
These are from your link. Where did you get the idea that red states are the only ones that grow?
GDP growth is higher in red states in that link, but red states also received something like 80–90% of the funding from the trillion dollars or so passed by the Democratic Congress and President.
Also to see how this actually plays out, compare CA to TX. gdp Growth in TX is much higher. But personal income growth in CA is much higher than in TX.
Yeah ~1% growth is anemic while states like Arkansas are growing at more than 5%.
California is losing population at all income levels. Texas is growing. Meanwhile the personal income growth is about the same between the two.
I think you’ll need a better analysis (longer timescale, more fine-grained, more explanations - education, age, productivity, investment, r&d, immigration etc)
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/america-has-two-economies.... (2019)
> The Civil War was basically southerners strongly preferring to use slaves instead of modernizing.
I thought that was all northern propaganda. The real reason being that the south refused to be in a confederation where there was more and more power given to the presidency and the senate while the states had fewer.
The north of course couldn't say they fought to force these states to remain in the confederation, negating their right to self determination, and instead pushed the slave narrative which was really secondary.
If the slave issue was secondary is seems weird that so many of the states explicitly mentioned it:
>"Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, the seven states that would constitute the future Confederate States of America before Fort Sumter was bombarded began the process of seceding from the Union. Those states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. All of them formed "conventions of the people" to adopt ordinances severing the tie with the Union. (2) Five of them--South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Texas--commissioned delegates to their respective conventions to draft public documents detailing the reasons behind the secession. (3) Historians call these documents "declarations of causes," a phrase used in the titles of several of these documents. Although, for reasons unknown, Florida never officially completed its declaration, a draft of it exists in the Florida state archives. All of the declarations are explicit: maintaining slavery was the reason for secession. For example, the Mississippi declaration begins, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world."
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+cause+of+the+civil+war+ac...
And even if you didn't have a huge archive to support the claim that slavery was the primary reason for the secession and had to guess, i would buy the economics explanation over the political one almost each time.
The Civil War was 100% about the Confederacy's desire to preserve slavery. The "State's Rights" argument is revisionist to downplay things, especially given the fact that southern states would be hypocritical and demand that the northern states enforce laws like the Fugitive Slave act, which directly went against the rights of the states that had declared themselves as free states.
The States Rights argument also falls apart the moment you dig 1 level deeper.
Which Right were these states worried about when Lincoln was elected?
It was the right to keep Slaves.
So to the extent it was about “states rights” it was about the “states rights to keep slaves” ie about slavery.
You're talking about "Lost Cause Theory" [1], a negationist re-narrativization of the Civil War. Any serious Historian will tell you the Civil War was 100% about slavery if you ask them.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy
Sounds like you have a wikipedia article to heavily edit to bring into line with your thinking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_...
For the several decades I've been alive and reading multiple takes on history slavery has always featured as one of the major three causes of the US Civil War for the majority of historians of note.
The correct play for Harvard is to make no changes to their enrollment polices, and then fight the Trump administration in court.
The administration can shake you like a snow globe longer than you can keep functioning.
(what if Harvard loses half of its faculty next, because some visa category is declared "illegal" by the administration?)
Same thing.
banning Harvard from enrolling international students is a pretty clear signal to elite intellectual capital that the US is no longer the obvious place to study. Trump 2.0 is fascinating social experiment - can reducing aggregate brainpower lead to better outcomes for the country? Not a rhetorical question, being smart is not the only way to win
I'm genuinely curious: how do you think reducing aggregate brainpower could lead to better outcomes?
That's obvious: the brain is the most energy-intensive organ in the body, so shutting down the brain leads to significant energy savings. The energy saved this way can then be spent on drilling for more oil, and the oil can be burned to power AI datacenters where the real thinking is done.
If you primarily reduce the brainpower of scammers, like Vivek Ramaswamy, I think that would help, even if it reduces overall brainpower.
being smarter doesn't always lead to better decision making - many people overly intellectualise a problem and fail to move to action. Trump is definitely action oriented, a lot of it really dumb, but it does alter the external conditions which may produce better outcomes.
True. Because clearly the problem for China the last few decades has been a failure to move to action.
The Chinese need to start installing a whole dumber bunch of people to lead their country so their leaders are more action oriented.
China doesn't have a leadership problem atm, though certainly has had its fair share of anti-intellectual leaders. Trump's actions are very familiar to Chinese people, especially ones who have been educated on the excesses of Maoism.
That said, point of post is - will Trump anti-intellectualism 'work', where work = benefiting America. Ostensibly, the answer looks like 'of course not' but in my view, it is too early to say
Sigh
Brainpower is not a commodity and this discussion is absurd
It's not the only way in an "Attention Economy" cause you don't need to be Einstein to collect the most likes and followers in the land.
Where the Attention Economy takes the real US Economy we shall see soon as AI explodes Supply of content with Demand hardly growing.
smart or educated?
Studying at Harvard isn’t about the books or the lectures. It’s about rubbing elbows with future CEOs at late-night pizza runs.
Arguably, smart people seek better education, such that making American universities less competitive will lead to smart people going elsewhere.
fair observation
Putting aside the negatives, I see zero upsides of reducing brain power. The people being more equal perhaps? Maybe the path to the fabled middle class is to bring down the upper class.
I see zero upsides of reducing brain power
You have fewer annoying people pointing out logical problems with your policies.
These days, a lot of brainpower is spent on scamming people (case in point: Vivek Ramaswamy). One can really make quite a good living off of scamming people these days. If you could reduce the brainpower of that demographic, I think this would be good for everyone else.
To where will these scientists go? Europe, only those willing to accept much lower wages and more bureaucracy. China, unlikely to even accept them. Rest of the world, far fewer resources and often far more doubtful regimes.
You think of CEO salaries. PhD students and PostDocs earn more (or at least equal) in most of Europe compared to even the US top universities.
Harvard Postdoc salary: $67,600
Germany Postdoc salary: ~$80,000 plus benefits like health insurance
It is about grant money, not salaries.
That is hysterical. You know that salaries for most universities are public in Germany? You can just look up your ridiculous lies.
https://vertretungen.hu-berlin.de/de/personalrat/tarif
The highest possible salary anyone in the university gets is 96k Euros. That is 64k Euros a year after taxes.
Did you actually read the page you linked??? It supports exactly what I wrote. Just keep in mind that the latest salary data there is for 2022.
The postdoc salaries I quoted are for 2024, of course.
Source: https://www.research-in-bavaria.de/what-salary-does-a-postdo...
"Most doctoral positions and some postdoc positions will be categorized as TV-L 13, which can range from about €4630 to €6580 (gross monthly salary). The exact salary is determined by your years of experience."
-> €6000*12 -> 72K Euro, ~US$ 80K
And that is without including the various social benefits.
> The highest possible salary anyone in the university gets is 96k Euros.
That is wrong, too. But not the topic of my post.
The link your parent posted is current. The Entgelttabelle there was last updated in 2022.
Also the PDF's (Tarifvertrag, Entgelttabelle) linked there are the authoritative source for this information - they are the legal document defining it.
We have 2025, not 2022. So it is certainly not current. Inflation is a thing! ;-)
My data (see above) is from the same source ("Tarifvertrag"), but from 2024.
I am really surprised that PhD/PostDocs earning more (or at least same) in EU than the US is controversial. I tought everyone knows that.
>We have 2025, not 2022. So it is certainly not current. Inflation is a thing! ;-)
Do you not understand that the document I linked is the up to date contract? If you think what I linked is getting "inflation adjusted" you are totally clueless about how you get paid under a Tarifvertrag in Germany.
The document contains the exact amount of the employee is going to get paid next month.
You are good with insulting, but weak on math.
Even with your 2022 data/source, I get a salary that is >=Harvard.
And if you look at the latest 2025 salaries the difference is even more striking and in favor of Germany:
https://www.jobs-beim-staat.de/tarif/tvoed-bund_e13
But according to you, how much does a German Postdoc earn per year, in US$?
First year 50,260.56 Euros at TV13 at the Humboldt University Berlin compared to Harvard's MINIMUM salary of $67,600. See https://postdoc.fas.harvard.edu/salarystipend-level
Given that taxes are much, much higher in Germany the difference is quite drastic.
Again I am NOT using a source for 2022, it is the exact contract in force for May 2025.
The controversy is your egregious dismissal of a legal source that you have now edited out of your post.
So you are saying the average German Postdoc salary is NOT >= Harvard salary?
What numbers do you have in mind?
Unfounded provocation. Get lost, troll.
>Just keep in mind that the latest salary data there is for 2022.
Haha. This is NOT data, this is the current contract. It is exactly what you get paid. It is the exact salary you get paid there.
>Source: https://www.research-in-bavaria.de/what-salary-does-a-postdo...
Why don't you look at the document I linked which tells you exactly what people working in that university are earning. That is not a guess, not an estimate and it is not out of date it is literally exactly what they are getting paid next month.
Instead of talking about hypotheticals and ranges, why do you refuse to look at the document which talks about the exact salaries? This is very bizarre behavior.
>That is wrong, too. But not the topic of my post.
I literally linked you the literal document where it is literally written what the literal highest paid person will literally get paid in the literal next month. What evidence against this could you possibly have? Unless you have the bank statements of that person your evidence cannot possibly be better.
Salaries are definitely lower in Europe for seasoned professionals, but for students I don't think that holds.
Switzerland reporting in. Lower wages? More burocracy? You must be confusing something
If scientists are out of a job, then Europe can pick them up at a discount.
It is weird that this is downvoted. No one else is close to making up the funding. And Harvard is just ignoring requests from DHS? They were warned for a month? If the Secretary of Homeland Security sends a letter requesting information, do you not have to comply?
If the demands are illegal, then yeah, by any means, you shouldn't comply. Do resist a criminal state that's using intimidation instead of laws, isn't this the American spirit?
Is there a good analysis of which demands are illegal? Is Harvard suing?
I sort of agree with you, but also don't buy into the victim narrative from Harvard, which has been happy to comply with illegal requests before and has clearly violated Civil Rights laws for years.
The Harvard Crimson seems to have done a decent job in a couple articles. It seems some of the request is legal, and some is broad so they don't know what to do. They were probably waiting for this action to file a lawsuit, since now they can argue they complied.
No, not if the demands are blatantly illegal.
And the US does have the first amendment which a whole bunch of right wing free speech warriors start whining about immediately the moment someone criticizes them in public, but in reality the first amendment exists primarily to protect private speech (defined broadly, including things like making your own hiring decisions, etc) from government censorship.
Reading trough the comments, it seems Harvard is the only university in the US. Didn't know that.. :-D
No, but Harvard is being made example of because it dared try standing up to the Trump administration.
What kind of comment is that?
Do you not think something similar could ever happen to another university?