I'm glad to see states fighting back, finally. I was never really too sure if, from a purely academic point of view, I thought a stronger federal government ("united we stand, divided we fall") or more independent states were a better "system".
But I think the way the US is set up (districting, gerrymandering, redlined, electoral college, etc) makes it far too easy for fringe beliefs to take over and dictate policy. So having states simply being more independent puts up far more barriers to all of us just losing our freedom.
I live in IL. (Not near Chicago). My kids public school only gets about 15% of its funding from the federal govt. We could just finally stop having our stupid flat income tax and make up the shortfall. It might set back the universal preschool system, perhaps (which would be a tragedy but better than complete destruction).
Meanwhile, schools might not even exist in many other states if federal funding disappeared.
I've always thought more state power was probably a good thing - the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.
That said, as a fly on the wall, my obvious observation from people at large is a direct correlation between how much power they believe states should have and whether or not they belong to the party in power. So it's definitely worth the exercise of seeing if you'd feel the same way still if your exact clone ran the federal government.
>the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.
And Sir Peter Medawar agrees[0]:
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from
the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more
bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the world put together.
If a few states work together to make interstate relocation easier, then this should be a self-correcting problem over time. As you mentioned, there is no universal agreement on human rights—the constitution enumerates some basic ones, but there is wide disagreement in interpretation even within these. If we want to avoid a constantly escalating national tug-of-war (inevitably leading IMHO to armed conflict) then local laws should be devolved to the states, with the federal government acting as referee between states and as a neutral anti-corruption enforcer.
I don’t see how we get there, though. I think we may already be too far down the road of centralized power, which is likely to have very bad results for everyone in the end.
There is a fundamental issue with this kind of federalism though in that it increases strife and could easily lead to civil war.
Let’s say we get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and research funding at the federal level. What happens next?
The West Coast and North East form compacts, companies, or nonprofits that provide healthcare, retirement and funding for their schools. The south, parts of the Midwest, and the plains fail to do so (at least to the same level) and within a generation we have two separate countries and war.
> within a generation we have two separate countries and war
Or do we? Some states don’t seem to want these things, or at least that’s what their representatives say. So let them experiment. My guess is the loss of benefits will outweigh the meager tax savings, but there may be a couple of states that are fine with the tradeoff. As long as people can move freely, it should be a self-correcting problem.
The problem with centralization is that it creates an all-or-nothing battle for federal control. Right now the people winning that battle don’t seem to share your vision for social programs. Could be an issue, especially with ongoing gerrymandering efforts!
In a big country with strongly polarized political opinions, federalism is the best way to fight this sort of political capture and the associated back-and-forth escalation. As tensions boil over, the only other option that can maintain a semblance of order is brutal repression.
>The West Coast and North East form compacts, companies, or nonprofits that provide healthcare, retirement and funding for their schools.
These coastal states run blowout deficits despite having high taxes on workers and businesses. The companies there might migrate if they could save money on taxes.
>The south, parts of the Midwest, and the plains fail to do so (at least to the same level) and within a generation we have two separate countries and war.
The states are already supposed to be largely sovereign. It is the Federal government asserting authority to tax and regulate everyone that fouls things up. Unfortunately we already have extensive social programs that people have been robbed to pay for, so walking it back would leave too many people everywhere feeling ripped off.
There is NOTHING special about the coastal states that guarantees them supremacy in any area of production. They have lots of people and inertia. Whatever they can do, other states can do also (and probably already are). It's an elitist attitude of the residents of those states that makes them think they're better than the "flyover" states.
More than state power vs federal power, we the people should hold the power. Two meta issues at play are gerrymandering and judges.
Gerrymandering gives power to who the state legislators want. Federal and many state judges are appointed and serve for life. What good is states rights if your state passes a popular law and some federal judge or activist judge shoots it down because of who passed it?
A big reason we even have to discuss this at all is because Washington clearly doesn't represent regular Americans' best interests or desires.
Gerrymandering is just a symptom, not the problem. The US has had 435 house representatives since the Reapportionment Act of 1929. The population of the US during the 1930 census was about a third of what it is today. If we bumped it up to about 1300 representatives gerrymandering a district or two wouldn't really matter.
The software that gerrymanders 435 districts will just as happily gerrymander 1300. Since it is not an exact science, the higher number of districts may even help smooth things out and get the statistically desired outcome.
This push to force ideological “balance” on universities is incredibly dangerous. The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints, which hopefully approximate the truth.
What the Feds are doing here is just a hop skip and a jump from forcing universities to hire young Earth creationists alongside archaeologists, climate change deniers alongside climate scientists, etc.
Universities and the research they do must inform politics, but the reverse risks destroying the research enterprise all together.
The push to mandate an "ideological balance" is indeed a wrong move; allowing the state to determine such matters always leads to rot, examples abound.
It sadly does not mean that universities are laser-focused on seeking truth, and are free from ideological biases, often very obvious. Regarding truth, one of the leading theories in humanities is that of Michel Foucault, which states that there cannot be any objective truth, and what is considered true is determined by power structures.
I'm glad to see though that the four universities are making a stand, and value independence above whatever "federal benefits" the administration may offer. It's sad that these are only 4 out of 9.
What do you mean by laser focused? Do you have specific policies to address this? If not then this is a natural part of the unfocused nature of knowledge work, and the natural weakness of human organizations.
University research and knowledge work in general is backtracking search, not gradient descent in a friendly loss landscape.
I mean that universities, like any large organizations, are very not free from internal politics and peer pressure. Also, like any large group of people, they are subject to irrational but powerful phenomena like the intellectual fashion, or religious zeal (which does not take an established religion). These all are impediments on the way of truth-seeking, but are inevitable due to human nature.
Universities are free to have their own ideological biases. Some will certainly be biased in one direction. Others in another. Students aren't forced to go to a given university -- there any many to choose from.
But when the gov forces its ideological biases on Universities, then it begins to remove choice for students. It might start with only a dozen, but if successful, it will push on others, until it becomes the de-facto requirement to get government funding.
A top-down exertion of ideological power like this is terrible, it can't be the case that universities are bullied into toeing the line of whoever is in power at the moment, that much should be evident.
But surely it also can't be the case that colleges demand what are basically declarations of political allegiance in the form of DEI statements, institutional trust is nosediving and ideological capture is to blame in large part. I hope this push from the administration fails, but I also hope something changes because otherwise the result is going to be worse than if universities actually submitted to these demands.
I am not in favor of mandated DEI statements outside of basic respect for students and colleagues, I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.
>I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.
Because while I agree that
>The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints
I'm certain that demanding essays from which you could perfectly predict voting patterns is not the mark of viewpoints that prioritize the pursuit of truth.
Again, I am not in favor of those things. I am perfectly happy for interviewees to be filtered for basic respect for people of all walks of life. I hope the reasoning there is obvious.
Regardless governments must let the natural academic process handle these institutional issues.
Whatever the mechanism, they remain echo chambers and continue to present, as the only truth, systems of thought that diverge from objective reality and that poison the public discourse.
Is straining to carry the rest of this sentence. I responded to an assertion that a policy by certain limited universities was attempted and deemed unfit by the natural process was still active. This is how institutions grow and evolve.
> echo chambers
Publish your papers, rebut the research. This is actively happening every day in every field of science. It is happening in everything from gender studies to particle physics.
> poison the public discourse
What on Earth are you talking about. What public discourse are you frequenting which is driven primarily by this boogeyman of the university system rather than the attention driven rat race of national fear politics.
But i still think its possible for academics to get into echo chambers. They are human just like the rest of us. Especially in fields not easily subject to direct experimental verification. I think its important not to put researchers on a pedestal as if they are above folly. (After all, the saying "science advanced one funeral at a time" didn't come from nowhere)
Sure, that’s why I said the process is an approximation of truth and only then in the limit.
This is known in the scientific, philosophical, and research communities. It is a reality that is only solved by the slow inexorable application of the scientific process and exchange of ideas, not by outside political influence.
We should never put researchers on pedestals, but the process of science is the most prized accomplishment of humanity. It is a farcical weaponization of the slow and often backtracking nature of science by the anti-intellectuals of the world which we are witnessing now. Not a real crisis
I don't think it's the "process" of science that achieved much of anything. You could go back thousands of years ago, teach everybody the scientific method in excruciating detail and it's unlikely much of anything would change. And vice versa the researchers in modern times producing work that has basically 0 ability to be replicated or those overtly pursuing their own biases are equally well aware of the scientific method.
It's actually somewhat hard to say what did change. Einstein, for instance, went to his grave rejecting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics simply because he felt, solely due to his own personal biases, that the world must be deterministic and rational. His famous quotes like 'spooky action at a distance' or 'god doesn't play dice' were essentially sardonic mocking of the Copenhagen Interpretation, the interpretation we hold to be most accurate to this very day. That's not exactly the behavior of some guy able to step outside the normal ideological biases and bounds that constrains us all, to say the least.
But nonetheless something did change. And similarly, in modern times I think it's very arguable that science has again regressed. Trust in science and scientists isn't declining because of Facebook or Trump or whatever. It's declining because politics and science have once again become deeply intertwined - like they have been for about 99.99% of humanity's entire history, the overwhelming majority of which we achieved essentially 0 from a scientific perspective.
Einstein didn't outright reject the Copenhagen interpretation. We like a story, but such a story glosses over all the nuance and messy chaos of real life. The physicists of the time were friends and friendly rivals. We probably get the same for any story: there's the simple story most people believe, then several more complex stories and interpretations, then a chaotic and nuanced mess of data, then the actual goings on that weren't written, actions and thoughts and so forth. So we should always be very suspicious of pat stories about historical figures that are used for an argument about behavior.
Also, its not like Einstein was rejecting the data, as far as i understand he just felt the theory was unsatisfying and was hoping to come up with a better one.
Something physicists are still trying to do to this day. Science is never done. There is no "final" theory.
Many schools without huge endowments are in a tough spot, they really need the federal money but it goes against everything that they have fought for, for a very long time. I don’t envy those having to make these decisions.
Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?
It does seem fairly arbitrary. It’s not a list of schools with big labs, since Hopkins or Berkeley aren’t there. It doesn’t seem to be private vs state schools, it’s not Ivy League or blue state only.
One potential reason to select a diverse set would be to point to a few who may be forced to accept by their state governments as examples to paint the refusers in a negative light.
>Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?
That's a great question.
I wonder, shouldn't Oral Roberts University, Brigham Young University and other, similar institutions be required to be less biased in their ways too?
There's probably some piece on Fox News, or a blog post from some influencer that cites these institutions. Most regime policy begins with some media outrage like this. You and I aren't exposed to that content so it seems arbitrary.
I first realized this decades ago when I ran into someone socially who started on about how evil the red cross was. I'm like wtf? Then did some research and discovered some fringe belief originating in the Vietnam war. There are thousands of oddball grievances like this.
CNN published articles pushing the narrative that the 50 so called security experts believed Hunter's laptop was fake. It turned out to be true.
CNN also famously had the two reporters standing in the same parking lot pretending to be in different geographic locations. Viewers called out their bullshit when the noticed the exact same traffic driving through the backgrounds of both reporters.
The sets of "news organizations fabricating stuff" and "news organizations generating specific fringe outrage stories for consumption by the administration" are overlapping. Yet those are distinct sets. The outrage-inducing specific stories don't even have to be fabricated. Just not really that important in the grand scheme of things.
I bet they’re reading the room. They will have some problems if they’re the only ones who sign, but fewer if there’s at least two others who join them.
If I'm one of these universities, the rational course of action is to say no. Because you never know when this administration will change its mind, or try to change the terms of the deal and impose new conditions. I think the only reason for some universities to delay coming with an answer is that they have to first have a conversation with their biggest donors, and make sure they don't upset them.
We've observed what happens when you cave to Trump and his goons: they will want more and turn on you anyway. ABC settled and paid Trump $16M just for his FCC chair to later threaten their license over Jimmy Kimmel's comments. I'm glad these universities have a spine and aren't signing onto this attempt at an authoritarian takeover of higher education.
The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this.
You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.
This whole administration (and half the country that support them) is what happens when you allow large swaths of the country to remain backwaters of hate and ignorance. When all the intellectual liberals flee to the cities, you leave behind a stagnant pool in the country that just keeps growing. If you don't deal with it, you get a whole lot of angry ignorant people who are incredibly motivated.
1.Equality in admissions- with certain exceptions, universities have to publish and commit to objective criteria for accepting new students.
2.Marketplace of ideas and civil discourse - a bit vague, but basically calling for non violent exchanges of opinions and ideas, specifically not discriminating against conservatives, who frankly are a significant minority at universities.
3.Nondiscrimination in faculty and administrative hiring
4.Institutional neutrality - frankly i'm not sure what that's supposed to mean
5.Student learning -Signatories must make certain “grade integrity” commitments, including neither “inflat[ing]” nor “deflat[ing]” grades for any “non-academic reason.”
6.Student equality -Signatories must treat students “as individuals and not on the basis of their immutable characteristics, with due exceptions for sex-based privacy, safety, and fairness”
7.Financial responsibility - a raft of ideas aimed at protecting students
8. More restrictions on foreign student admissions etc.
1 The Compact explicitly makes federal funding conditional on compliance, meaning that universities must either align with federal definitions of “excellence” and “neutrality” or lose access to research grants, contracts, student loans, and tax exemptions. In practice, this could establish a centralized federal control mechanism over university policies effectively nationalizing large portions of higher education decision-making without direct legislation.
Sections 2 and 4 (“Marketplace of Ideas” and “Institutional Neutrality”) appear to promote pluralism, but they impose mandatory structural changes to ensure “no single ideology dominant”. This could require ideological balancing in faculty hiring, curricula, and departmental governance. The threat of Department of Justice enforcement transforms “neutrality” into a federally monitored ideological litmus test, likely constraining academic freedom more than protecting it.
Section 6 defines “male,” “female,” “woman,” and “man” strictly by biological function and requires single-sex spaces to be maintained on that basis. This departs from current federal civil rights interpretations under Title IX and would effectively prohibit recognition of gender identity in campus policy rolling back existing protections for transgender and nonbinary students.
By forbidding universities from commenting institutionally on “societal and political events” unless directly related to operations, the Compact silences institutional voices on issues like racial justice, climate change, or foreign policy—even if faculty consensus supports public engagement. The “marketplace of ideas” clause simultaneously allows punishment of university employees or centers deemed “dominant” in ideology, directly threatening critical studies programs (e.g., gender studies, ethnic studies).
Section 8 introduces anti-money-laundering and KYC requirements typically reserved for banks, applied here to universities. It also mandates information sharing with DHS and the State Department and caps foreign student enrollment at 15%, with a 5% per-country limit. Combined with civics instruction requirements for foreigners, this moves higher education toward national security oversight and ideological vetting creating a form of state-managed educational nationalism.
The enforcement section deputizes the Department of Justice to investigate compliance and allows it to reclaim all federal funds and even PRIVATE contributions during a violation year. This mechanism represents an extraordinary form of financial coercion that could bankrupt noncompliant universities, effectively forcing universal submission or privatization.
You are giving each section the most uncharitable possible interpretation. The universities are not owed anything by the federal government. If they want money, i think it's resonable for the government to make some demands in exchange. They don't have to but it's not outrageous.
> You are giving each section the most uncharitable possible interpretation.
Which is exactly how this Administration will interpret it.
> The universities are not owed anything by the federal government.
1. It's in the interests of US citizens -- who the gov represents -- to fund research at universities. It's a large part of what's made the US the superpower it is today.
> If they want money, i think it's resonable for the government to make some demands in exchange. They don't have to but it's not outrageous.
2. You clearly haven't lived in a country where universities are controlled by the government. Spend a decade in China and we'll talk about how you feel about it then.
And before you say "it isn't control!" -- it is because the entire university research system has become dependent on taxpayer funding (see also 1).
Why? It worked decades without these demands or federal oversight. The interpretation is also based on the possible outcomes. It's just facts and it's certainly not about feelings if you sign your rights and possible future as an institution away. Did you read my the last paragraph? Nobody - not a person, not a corporation, nor a government would sign shit like this.
Universities are increasingly broken. Look up some of the threads here discussing that. Their self indulgent excesses have gotten worse in recent years. Conservative thought in particular is increasingly rare, so it makes sense that a very conservative administration would be asking questions about what they are paying for, and it is they who are paying in the form of taxes. You are basing your outcomes on the worst possible intentions of the administration, which i think you are wrong about because you haven't properly looked at the situation from their point of view or even objectively.
I do agree however that if i was a university i wouldn't sign it without first amending 4 and 9.
These all sound like reasonable standards for universities to meet.
The only unnecessary part is explicitly calling out conservative opinions, some of which will have no place in some university subjects, e.g. a geology student insisting the Earth is 6000 years old.
They mostly sound reasonable at a bullet-point level, but reading closer turns up details such as:
> Signatories must commit to “defining and otherwise interpreting ‘male,’ ‘female,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘man’ according to reproductive function and biological processes.”
But interpreting male and female according to some other criteria would also not be ideologically neutral.
If your point is that the standards are not neutral, I guess on at least this point I have to agree. If your point is that the status quo is neutral, I disagree.
Biology is ideologically neutral. People who disagree with that position are anti-biology (anti-science) on this topic. It certainly makes sense to begin with how to treat men and women by noting they're biologically different instead of whatever they imagine themselves to be.
We certainly don't issue degrees based only on what expertise they identify as. We don't allow them in office based on whether they identify as President or Principal. We should likewise not use their feelings or unsubstantiated beliefs to determine if they're a man or a woman when biology has the answer almost every time. Intersex, the exceptions, we'll handle on a case by case basis.
What parts of the biology of sex mandates different treatment? Do you mean that medicine should be tailored to biology? Yes obviously, and even very progressive research hospitals take great pains to ensure the treatment is tailored to biology. Perhaps more so than conservative hospitals. You would know this if you engaged with the research outside of the news.
Outside of medicine? What different treatment does “biology” merit?
They sound good because they are being presented in a pleasant way that undermines that reality of what these requests are. First, adherence to this agreement shall be subject to review by the Department of Justice. Basically, the current administration can dictate what constitutes a violation. The government gets to dictate what is passing and what is not passing.
Basically, this is the government having a direct hand in dictating what the schools that receive government funding can say and do, full stop.
Further, this is a potential violation of the current administrations desire to eradicate DEI as this compact literally promotes DEI. So it's an odd request.
It's also a massive violation of the freedom of speech.
> Signatories shall maintain institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration. This requires policies that all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.
So, no one employed by the university can speak about societal or political events unless it has a direct impact on the university. Imagine not being able to talk about modern events in the classroom? I was doing this in high school in the 90s in Missouri!
And now the administration wants to take that away.
There are many reasons this is bad. But predominantly it's this: I get to decide what any of this means. So you have to defend this from MY POV, because this establishes me as the ultimate arbiter here.
* Why me? Because it's whoever is in charge at the time, which means you need to be able to defend the merits of this when it doesn't necessarily fit your wants or needs. Which means me.
It reads as reasonable but is really saying: no diversity hires. That’s more significant in universities than in the job market. In general, the most educated Americans are the children of the wealthy. So without DEI, the faculty, which is thereby a product of the economic elite, will be teaching primarily the children of that elite. Universities recognized the problem with this closed system long ago and used DEI as a way to address it. That’s what the Trump administration is targeting in part with these compacts.
They do push DEI, just for conservative voices. Remember, DEI is good when it's for conservatives. Just see how many people are complaining about the Super Bowl halftime show. A bunch of anit-DEI people asking for DEI is crazy.
Yes, DEI is racist so i'm glad it's being called out. DEI anyway benefits primarily upper class people of colour rather then helping out a community. What help is it to most black people that Obama is black, for example? What kind of people send their kids to universities anyway? It's not disadvantaged working class, so positive discrimination in universities won't help them.
>Universities recognized the problem with this closed system long ago and used DEI as a way to address it.
That's preposterous. It's obscenely disingenuous to now pretend that DEI was about class and economic status. Are women just poorer? Are Asians just richer? Please.
You are literally arguing against history, not me. The history I described is playing out even today as more universities abandon preferential admissions for children of alumni.
>We face many challenges as a community, including entrenched bias, both conscious and unconscious; self-reinforcing cycles of preferential treatment towards people with particular characteristics; limited awareness of the impediments faced by our colleagues that stem from racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia
It goes on to talk about actions taken to deal with this:
>We will provide resources - including time, materials, financial support, and facilities - to promote education about diversity, equity, and inclusion within our department and to support our engagement on these themes with external communities
>An atmosphere of trust and accountability is a prerequisite for complete and honest reporting. Discrimination in academic settings can be subtle and complex, and it is not always recognized immediately. Even when racism, gender discrimination, and harassment are overt, victims can have a legitimate perception of powerlessness to address it.
There's LITERALLY not a single one mention of wealth, or money, or class in the entire document. There is about bias, about race, about sex. It ends with this:
>We ask that all community members pledge:
>● To seek out knowledge on the forms, causes, and impacts of bias
>● To acknowledge that we are all susceptible to bias, and to strive to be anti-discriminatory with respect to race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, religion, disability, socioeconomic status, citizenship, and cultural background
>● To engage constructively and respectfully with people of varied backgrounds and perspectives
>● To prioritize empathy and consideration, and to avoid making assumptions or judgements
>● To be alert for instances of injustice or discrimination, and to intercede by speaking out against
injustice
Pray tell, what part of all of this is supposed to be about dealing with wealth disparities? And again, how can you possibly argue about wealth disparities in terms of gender for college-aged people? It's insane.
DEI is about expanding the talent pools and considering more people for something. If you have problems with specific implementations of DEI, that's fine, but to pretend it's all bad is disingenuous. Please list a specific program that you have an issue with so that people can actually discuss substance.
No it isn't. It's about filling in quotas ignoring talent and objectifying people based on their ethnicity, race and gender. It exists in order to assuage the guilt of elite white liberals. You just moved the goalposts to include things that nobody can argue against in order to make it sound resonable. My issue is that it's racist because it discriminates for people based on the colour of their skin.
> It's about filling in quotas ignoring talent and objectifying people based on their ethnicity, race and gender.
That's illegal[0]. If this is going on, then enlighten us or the EEOC.
> You just moved the goalposts to include things that nobody can argue against
What? You said: "disingenuous to now pretend that DEI was about class and economic status" when it clearly is about those things. Again, please show one example of a program that you think isn't doing that. I understand that you think DEI is a sinister initiative, but bickering over a conservative boogeyman is unproductive.
They are reasonable only if you do not read between the lines or think critically about how the administration will choose to interpret and enforce these standards against the universities in question.
having representatives from the Party oversee curriculum, hiring, and admissions is reasonable only if your explicit goal is to emulate China or the former USSR at its worst.
These are all reasonable standards - if they came from Congress. They are not reasonable standards if they came for a fickle and corrupt mafia at gunpoint.
The entire no kings protest is exactly about that - executive overreach overriding will of the people and causing irresponsible harm.
Yes, they are not objectively "reasonable" that's why I added the "- if they came from Congress" part. And I can't imagine Congress would pass these rules because of the Senate structure.
"Reasonable" is a distributed discovery process. A unitary order can never be "reasonable".
I'm not sure I follow your argument. If these would be considered reasonable standards if exactly the same were proposed by Congress, then how would they cause harm if implemented on request of the Executive?
When requested by the executive under threat of cutting funding, these requests are not requests, they are demands.
When executive demands something of private citizens and private entities, it means they are bossing over said people/entities. Nobody elected the executive to boss over people. When Congress attempts to set these same regulations, these entities get a chance to reach out to their reps and ask for changes. When Congress sets regulations, power is dispersed among 400+ reps.
You are thinking about the outcome of the regulations feeling the same. "No kings" are demanding that the means to setting rules be distributed among reps - when the rulemaking is distributed, you'll find that the rules demanded will change - because most people don't want these exact rules as they stand. And they don't want to submit to a fickle corrupt executive who will change these rules selectively on a dime on a random Friday.
They are not objectively "reasonable standards". Who said they are objectively reasonable standards? They are standards sent by a unitary. They might seem reasonable to one person but not to another. This is why Congress is supposed to set these rules - so that the definition of reasonable is spread all over the country. Reasonable standards are a discovery process, not a unitary dictatorial step.
Hell, this is the whole logic of the American Republic - no kings - since 1776.
I'm glad to see states fighting back, finally. I was never really too sure if, from a purely academic point of view, I thought a stronger federal government ("united we stand, divided we fall") or more independent states were a better "system".
But I think the way the US is set up (districting, gerrymandering, redlined, electoral college, etc) makes it far too easy for fringe beliefs to take over and dictate policy. So having states simply being more independent puts up far more barriers to all of us just losing our freedom.
I live in IL. (Not near Chicago). My kids public school only gets about 15% of its funding from the federal govt. We could just finally stop having our stupid flat income tax and make up the shortfall. It might set back the universal preschool system, perhaps (which would be a tragedy but better than complete destruction).
Meanwhile, schools might not even exist in many other states if federal funding disappeared.
I've always thought more state power was probably a good thing - the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.
That said, as a fly on the wall, my obvious observation from people at large is a direct correlation between how much power they believe states should have and whether or not they belong to the party in power. So it's definitely worth the exercise of seeing if you'd feel the same way still if your exact clone ran the federal government.
>the US is simply so huge and diverse in thought and religion that you'll always be upsetting a large swath of people no matter what you decide.
And Sir Peter Medawar agrees[0]:
[0] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1064507The primary issue with state power is human rights. If you don't guarantee certain rights, some other state will gladly exploit its citizens.
The neverending struggle of course is what does one consider a human right.
If a few states work together to make interstate relocation easier, then this should be a self-correcting problem over time. As you mentioned, there is no universal agreement on human rights—the constitution enumerates some basic ones, but there is wide disagreement in interpretation even within these. If we want to avoid a constantly escalating national tug-of-war (inevitably leading IMHO to armed conflict) then local laws should be devolved to the states, with the federal government acting as referee between states and as a neutral anti-corruption enforcer.
I don’t see how we get there, though. I think we may already be too far down the road of centralized power, which is likely to have very bad results for everyone in the end.
There is a fundamental issue with this kind of federalism though in that it increases strife and could easily lead to civil war.
Let’s say we get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, social security, and research funding at the federal level. What happens next?
The West Coast and North East form compacts, companies, or nonprofits that provide healthcare, retirement and funding for their schools. The south, parts of the Midwest, and the plains fail to do so (at least to the same level) and within a generation we have two separate countries and war.
> within a generation we have two separate countries and war
Or do we? Some states don’t seem to want these things, or at least that’s what their representatives say. So let them experiment. My guess is the loss of benefits will outweigh the meager tax savings, but there may be a couple of states that are fine with the tradeoff. As long as people can move freely, it should be a self-correcting problem.
The problem with centralization is that it creates an all-or-nothing battle for federal control. Right now the people winning that battle don’t seem to share your vision for social programs. Could be an issue, especially with ongoing gerrymandering efforts!
In a big country with strongly polarized political opinions, federalism is the best way to fight this sort of political capture and the associated back-and-forth escalation. As tensions boil over, the only other option that can maintain a semblance of order is brutal repression.
> as long as people can move freely
But they won’t be able to. We’ve already seen this attempted (e.g. https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/pressroom/first-in-t... ) and if we went in that direction that’s the kind of thing that would happen.
I’m OK with having a small but well-armed federal agency to ensure freedom of movement if that’s what it takes.
Great! You’ve just put the final piece in place for the civil war.
I disagree, and the status quo is taking us in that direction regardless.
>The West Coast and North East form compacts, companies, or nonprofits that provide healthcare, retirement and funding for their schools.
These coastal states run blowout deficits despite having high taxes on workers and businesses. The companies there might migrate if they could save money on taxes.
>The south, parts of the Midwest, and the plains fail to do so (at least to the same level) and within a generation we have two separate countries and war.
The states are already supposed to be largely sovereign. It is the Federal government asserting authority to tax and regulate everyone that fouls things up. Unfortunately we already have extensive social programs that people have been robbed to pay for, so walking it back would leave too many people everywhere feeling ripped off.
There is NOTHING special about the coastal states that guarantees them supremacy in any area of production. They have lots of people and inertia. Whatever they can do, other states can do also (and probably already are). It's an elitist attitude of the residents of those states that makes them think they're better than the "flyover" states.
Those states have a much larger GDP, allowing them to actually afford those things.
The reality is California gives much, much more to the federal government than it takes. The same is not true for a lot of other states.
More than state power vs federal power, we the people should hold the power. Two meta issues at play are gerrymandering and judges.
Gerrymandering gives power to who the state legislators want. Federal and many state judges are appointed and serve for life. What good is states rights if your state passes a popular law and some federal judge or activist judge shoots it down because of who passed it?
A big reason we even have to discuss this at all is because Washington clearly doesn't represent regular Americans' best interests or desires.
Gerrymandering is just a symptom, not the problem. The US has had 435 house representatives since the Reapportionment Act of 1929. The population of the US during the 1930 census was about a third of what it is today. If we bumped it up to about 1300 representatives gerrymandering a district or two wouldn't really matter.
The software that gerrymanders 435 districts will just as happily gerrymander 1300. Since it is not an exact science, the higher number of districts may even help smooth things out and get the statistically desired outcome.
This push to force ideological “balance” on universities is incredibly dangerous. The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints, which hopefully approximate the truth.
What the Feds are doing here is just a hop skip and a jump from forcing universities to hire young Earth creationists alongside archaeologists, climate change deniers alongside climate scientists, etc.
Universities and the research they do must inform politics, but the reverse risks destroying the research enterprise all together.
The push to mandate an "ideological balance" is indeed a wrong move; allowing the state to determine such matters always leads to rot, examples abound.
It sadly does not mean that universities are laser-focused on seeking truth, and are free from ideological biases, often very obvious. Regarding truth, one of the leading theories in humanities is that of Michel Foucault, which states that there cannot be any objective truth, and what is considered true is determined by power structures.
I'm glad to see though that the four universities are making a stand, and value independence above whatever "federal benefits" the administration may offer. It's sad that these are only 4 out of 9.
None of the other universities have agreed yet.
What do you mean by laser focused? Do you have specific policies to address this? If not then this is a natural part of the unfocused nature of knowledge work, and the natural weakness of human organizations.
University research and knowledge work in general is backtracking search, not gradient descent in a friendly loss landscape.
> What do you mean by laser focused?
I mean that universities, like any large organizations, are very not free from internal politics and peer pressure. Also, like any large group of people, they are subject to irrational but powerful phenomena like the intellectual fashion, or religious zeal (which does not take an established religion). These all are impediments on the way of truth-seeking, but are inevitable due to human nature.
> are free from ideological biases,
you're missing the point.
Universities are free to have their own ideological biases. Some will certainly be biased in one direction. Others in another. Students aren't forced to go to a given university -- there any many to choose from.
But when the gov forces its ideological biases on Universities, then it begins to remove choice for students. It might start with only a dozen, but if successful, it will push on others, until it becomes the de-facto requirement to get government funding.
That is totalitarianism.
Having a bias and pursuing truth can interfere with each other, that was my point.
A top-down exertion of ideological power like this is terrible, it can't be the case that universities are bullied into toeing the line of whoever is in power at the moment, that much should be evident.
But surely it also can't be the case that colleges demand what are basically declarations of political allegiance in the form of DEI statements, institutional trust is nosediving and ideological capture is to blame in large part. I hope this push from the administration fails, but I also hope something changes because otherwise the result is going to be worse than if universities actually submitted to these demands.
I am not in favor of mandated DEI statements outside of basic respect for students and colleagues, I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.
Most universities have moved away from those.
>I’m not sure why that’s relevant or why you responded to me about it.
Because while I agree that
>The pursuit of truth is difficult and has its pitfalls but it naturally leads to the dominance of certain viewpoints
I'm certain that demanding essays from which you could perfectly predict voting patterns is not the mark of viewpoints that prioritize the pursuit of truth.
Again, I am not in favor of those things. I am perfectly happy for interviewees to be filtered for basic respect for people of all walks of life. I hope the reasoning there is obvious.
Regardless governments must let the natural academic process handle these institutional issues.
Is approval of affirmative action or DEI policies a mark of basic respect for people of all walks of life?
> Most universities have moved away from those.
Whatever the mechanism, they remain echo chambers and continue to present, as the only truth, systems of thought that diverge from objective reality and that poison the public discourse.
> whatever the mechanism
Is straining to carry the rest of this sentence. I responded to an assertion that a policy by certain limited universities was attempted and deemed unfit by the natural process was still active. This is how institutions grow and evolve.
> echo chambers
Publish your papers, rebut the research. This is actively happening every day in every field of science. It is happening in everything from gender studies to particle physics.
> poison the public discourse
What on Earth are you talking about. What public discourse are you frequenting which is driven primarily by this boogeyman of the university system rather than the attention driven rat race of national fear politics.
I'm opossed to what trump is doing, its abhorent.
But i still think its possible for academics to get into echo chambers. They are human just like the rest of us. Especially in fields not easily subject to direct experimental verification. I think its important not to put researchers on a pedestal as if they are above folly. (After all, the saying "science advanced one funeral at a time" didn't come from nowhere)
Sure, that’s why I said the process is an approximation of truth and only then in the limit.
This is known in the scientific, philosophical, and research communities. It is a reality that is only solved by the slow inexorable application of the scientific process and exchange of ideas, not by outside political influence.
We should never put researchers on pedestals, but the process of science is the most prized accomplishment of humanity. It is a farcical weaponization of the slow and often backtracking nature of science by the anti-intellectuals of the world which we are witnessing now. Not a real crisis
I don't think it's the "process" of science that achieved much of anything. You could go back thousands of years ago, teach everybody the scientific method in excruciating detail and it's unlikely much of anything would change. And vice versa the researchers in modern times producing work that has basically 0 ability to be replicated or those overtly pursuing their own biases are equally well aware of the scientific method.
It's actually somewhat hard to say what did change. Einstein, for instance, went to his grave rejecting the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics simply because he felt, solely due to his own personal biases, that the world must be deterministic and rational. His famous quotes like 'spooky action at a distance' or 'god doesn't play dice' were essentially sardonic mocking of the Copenhagen Interpretation, the interpretation we hold to be most accurate to this very day. That's not exactly the behavior of some guy able to step outside the normal ideological biases and bounds that constrains us all, to say the least.
But nonetheless something did change. And similarly, in modern times I think it's very arguable that science has again regressed. Trust in science and scientists isn't declining because of Facebook or Trump or whatever. It's declining because politics and science have once again become deeply intertwined - like they have been for about 99.99% of humanity's entire history, the overwhelming majority of which we achieved essentially 0 from a scientific perspective.
Einstein didn't outright reject the Copenhagen interpretation. We like a story, but such a story glosses over all the nuance and messy chaos of real life. The physicists of the time were friends and friendly rivals. We probably get the same for any story: there's the simple story most people believe, then several more complex stories and interpretations, then a chaotic and nuanced mess of data, then the actual goings on that weren't written, actions and thoughts and so forth. So we should always be very suspicious of pat stories about historical figures that are used for an argument about behavior.
Also, its not like Einstein was rejecting the data, as far as i understand he just felt the theory was unsatisfying and was hoping to come up with a better one.
Something physicists are still trying to do to this day. Science is never done. There is no "final" theory.
Many schools without huge endowments are in a tough spot, they really need the federal money but it goes against everything that they have fought for, for a very long time. I don’t envy those having to make these decisions.
Univ of Virginia announced yesterday they would no sign. So now it’s five universities.
These whole thought police type policies baked into these proposals are absurd.
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?
It does seem fairly arbitrary. It’s not a list of schools with big labs, since Hopkins or Berkeley aren’t there. It doesn’t seem to be private vs state schools, it’s not Ivy League or blue state only.
One potential reason to select a diverse set would be to point to a few who may be forced to accept by their state governments as examples to paint the refusers in a negative light.
>Having casually attended one of these schools, I'm so confused about why they are even in this group. What is making this group of schools best suited for this sort of blackmail?
That's a great question.
I wonder, shouldn't Oral Roberts University, Brigham Young University and other, similar institutions be required to be less biased in their ways too?
If not, why not?
There's probably some piece on Fox News, or a blog post from some influencer that cites these institutions. Most regime policy begins with some media outrage like this. You and I aren't exposed to that content so it seems arbitrary.
I first realized this decades ago when I ran into someone socially who started on about how evil the red cross was. I'm like wtf? Then did some research and discovered some fringe belief originating in the Vietnam war. There are thousands of oddball grievances like this.
> There's probably some piece on Fox News
CNN published articles pushing the narrative that the 50 so called security experts believed Hunter's laptop was fake. It turned out to be true.
CNN also famously had the two reporters standing in the same parking lot pretending to be in different geographic locations. Viewers called out their bullshit when the noticed the exact same traffic driving through the backgrounds of both reporters.
Who cares about CNN? Who brought them up?
> It turned out to be true.
It didn't.
The sets of "news organizations fabricating stuff" and "news organizations generating specific fringe outrage stories for consumption by the administration" are overlapping. Yet those are distinct sets. The outrage-inducing specific stories don't even have to be fabricated. Just not really that important in the grand scheme of things.
Guess that makes them morally completely even then, is that your point?
See also, whataboutism
So is that 4 of 9 so far, with the others not answering yet? 5 still deliberating vs 5 bent knees are two very different stories.
None of the 9 colleges have accepted so far, according to this article that was linked at the bottom of the article we are discussing: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/no-takers-yet-white-hous...
They should have noted this in the article we are discussing since it does change the story, as you said.
University of Texas put out a public statement early on, sounding very receptive and praising the Trump administration.
I bet they’re reading the room. They will have some problems if they’re the only ones who sign, but fewer if there’s at least two others who join them.
If I'm one of these universities, the rational course of action is to say no. Because you never know when this administration will change its mind, or try to change the terms of the deal and impose new conditions. I think the only reason for some universities to delay coming with an answer is that they have to first have a conversation with their biggest donors, and make sure they don't upset them.
We've observed what happens when you cave to Trump and his goons: they will want more and turn on you anyway. ABC settled and paid Trump $16M just for his FCC chair to later threaten their license over Jimmy Kimmel's comments. I'm glad these universities have a spine and aren't signing onto this attempt at an authoritarian takeover of higher education.
Up to 6 now: MIT Brown Penn University of Virginia Dartmouth University of Southern California
No response yet (due tomorrow BTW) from: Vanderbilt University of Texas University of Arizona
The good part is that, now that we are up to numbers like these, you just can't sign onboard to this.
You bet your behind Greg Abbott (Texas Governor) is doing everything he can to kiss the ring, gut his local university, push UT to joining. But no one could take UT seriously ever again, it'd be a laughingstock joke to accept state control like this.
UT Board of Regents Chair already publicly expressed enthusiastic support. There will be a show down between the board and the academics.
This whole administration (and half the country that support them) is what happens when you allow large swaths of the country to remain backwaters of hate and ignorance. When all the intellectual liberals flee to the cities, you leave behind a stagnant pool in the country that just keeps growing. If you don't deal with it, you get a whole lot of angry ignorant people who are incredibly motivated.
These are the main policy points[1]
1.Equality in admissions- with certain exceptions, universities have to publish and commit to objective criteria for accepting new students.
2.Marketplace of ideas and civil discourse - a bit vague, but basically calling for non violent exchanges of opinions and ideas, specifically not discriminating against conservatives, who frankly are a significant minority at universities.
3.Nondiscrimination in faculty and administrative hiring
4.Institutional neutrality - frankly i'm not sure what that's supposed to mean
5.Student learning -Signatories must make certain “grade integrity” commitments, including neither “inflat[ing]” nor “deflat[ing]” grades for any “non-academic reason.”
6.Student equality -Signatories must treat students “as individuals and not on the basis of their immutable characteristics, with due exceptions for sex-based privacy, safety, and fairness”
7.Financial responsibility - a raft of ideas aimed at protecting students
8. More restrictions on foreign student admissions etc.
9.enforcement
[1]i got all my information from this article:https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/10/white-h...
As always summaries only paint a shallow picture.
This is the original compact https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/1...
1 The Compact explicitly makes federal funding conditional on compliance, meaning that universities must either align with federal definitions of “excellence” and “neutrality” or lose access to research grants, contracts, student loans, and tax exemptions. In practice, this could establish a centralized federal control mechanism over university policies effectively nationalizing large portions of higher education decision-making without direct legislation.
Sections 2 and 4 (“Marketplace of Ideas” and “Institutional Neutrality”) appear to promote pluralism, but they impose mandatory structural changes to ensure “no single ideology dominant”. This could require ideological balancing in faculty hiring, curricula, and departmental governance. The threat of Department of Justice enforcement transforms “neutrality” into a federally monitored ideological litmus test, likely constraining academic freedom more than protecting it.
Section 6 defines “male,” “female,” “woman,” and “man” strictly by biological function and requires single-sex spaces to be maintained on that basis. This departs from current federal civil rights interpretations under Title IX and would effectively prohibit recognition of gender identity in campus policy rolling back existing protections for transgender and nonbinary students.
By forbidding universities from commenting institutionally on “societal and political events” unless directly related to operations, the Compact silences institutional voices on issues like racial justice, climate change, or foreign policy—even if faculty consensus supports public engagement. The “marketplace of ideas” clause simultaneously allows punishment of university employees or centers deemed “dominant” in ideology, directly threatening critical studies programs (e.g., gender studies, ethnic studies).
Section 8 introduces anti-money-laundering and KYC requirements typically reserved for banks, applied here to universities. It also mandates information sharing with DHS and the State Department and caps foreign student enrollment at 15%, with a 5% per-country limit. Combined with civics instruction requirements for foreigners, this moves higher education toward national security oversight and ideological vetting creating a form of state-managed educational nationalism.
The enforcement section deputizes the Department of Justice to investigate compliance and allows it to reclaim all federal funds and even PRIVATE contributions during a violation year. This mechanism represents an extraordinary form of financial coercion that could bankrupt noncompliant universities, effectively forcing universal submission or privatization.
You are giving each section the most uncharitable possible interpretation. The universities are not owed anything by the federal government. If they want money, i think it's resonable for the government to make some demands in exchange. They don't have to but it's not outrageous.
> You are giving each section the most uncharitable possible interpretation.
Which is exactly how this Administration will interpret it.
> The universities are not owed anything by the federal government.
1. It's in the interests of US citizens -- who the gov represents -- to fund research at universities. It's a large part of what's made the US the superpower it is today.
> If they want money, i think it's resonable for the government to make some demands in exchange. They don't have to but it's not outrageous.
2. You clearly haven't lived in a country where universities are controlled by the government. Spend a decade in China and we'll talk about how you feel about it then.
And before you say "it isn't control!" -- it is because the entire university research system has become dependent on taxpayer funding (see also 1).
Why? It worked decades without these demands or federal oversight. The interpretation is also based on the possible outcomes. It's just facts and it's certainly not about feelings if you sign your rights and possible future as an institution away. Did you read my the last paragraph? Nobody - not a person, not a corporation, nor a government would sign shit like this.
Universities are increasingly broken. Look up some of the threads here discussing that. Their self indulgent excesses have gotten worse in recent years. Conservative thought in particular is increasingly rare, so it makes sense that a very conservative administration would be asking questions about what they are paying for, and it is they who are paying in the form of taxes. You are basing your outcomes on the worst possible intentions of the administration, which i think you are wrong about because you haven't properly looked at the situation from their point of view or even objectively.
I do agree however that if i was a university i wouldn't sign it without first amending 4 and 9.
So it's not reasonable got it.
These all sound like reasonable standards for universities to meet.
The only unnecessary part is explicitly calling out conservative opinions, some of which will have no place in some university subjects, e.g. a geology student insisting the Earth is 6000 years old.
They mostly sound reasonable at a bullet-point level, but reading closer turns up details such as:
> Signatories must commit to “defining and otherwise interpreting ‘male,’ ‘female,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘man’ according to reproductive function and biological processes.”
Which is not exactly ideological neutral.
That sounds reasonable too, certainly when compared to the very controversial alternative.
But interpreting male and female according to some other criteria would also not be ideologically neutral.
If your point is that the standards are not neutral, I guess on at least this point I have to agree. If your point is that the status quo is neutral, I disagree.
Biology is ideologically neutral. People who disagree with that position are anti-biology (anti-science) on this topic. It certainly makes sense to begin with how to treat men and women by noting they're biologically different instead of whatever they imagine themselves to be.
We certainly don't issue degrees based only on what expertise they identify as. We don't allow them in office based on whether they identify as President or Principal. We should likewise not use their feelings or unsubstantiated beliefs to determine if they're a man or a woman when biology has the answer almost every time. Intersex, the exceptions, we'll handle on a case by case basis.
What parts of the biology of sex mandates different treatment? Do you mean that medicine should be tailored to biology? Yes obviously, and even very progressive research hospitals take great pains to ensure the treatment is tailored to biology. Perhaps more so than conservative hospitals. You would know this if you engaged with the research outside of the news.
Outside of medicine? What different treatment does “biology” merit?
They sound good because they are being presented in a pleasant way that undermines that reality of what these requests are. First, adherence to this agreement shall be subject to review by the Department of Justice. Basically, the current administration can dictate what constitutes a violation. The government gets to dictate what is passing and what is not passing.
Basically, this is the government having a direct hand in dictating what the schools that receive government funding can say and do, full stop.
Further, this is a potential violation of the current administrations desire to eradicate DEI as this compact literally promotes DEI. So it's an odd request.
It's also a massive violation of the freedom of speech.
> Signatories shall maintain institutional neutrality at all levels of their administration. This requires policies that all university employees, in their capacity as university representatives, will abstain from actions or speech relating to societal and political events except in cases in which external events have a direct impact upon the university.
So, no one employed by the university can speak about societal or political events unless it has a direct impact on the university. Imagine not being able to talk about modern events in the classroom? I was doing this in high school in the 90s in Missouri!
And now the administration wants to take that away.
There are many reasons this is bad. But predominantly it's this: I get to decide what any of this means. So you have to defend this from MY POV, because this establishes me as the ultimate arbiter here.
* Why me? Because it's whoever is in charge at the time, which means you need to be able to defend the merits of this when it doesn't necessarily fit your wants or needs. Which means me.
It reads as reasonable but is really saying: no diversity hires. That’s more significant in universities than in the job market. In general, the most educated Americans are the children of the wealthy. So without DEI, the faculty, which is thereby a product of the economic elite, will be teaching primarily the children of that elite. Universities recognized the problem with this closed system long ago and used DEI as a way to address it. That’s what the Trump administration is targeting in part with these compacts.
They do push DEI, just for conservative voices. Remember, DEI is good when it's for conservatives. Just see how many people are complaining about the Super Bowl halftime show. A bunch of anit-DEI people asking for DEI is crazy.
Yes, DEI is racist so i'm glad it's being called out. DEI anyway benefits primarily upper class people of colour rather then helping out a community. What help is it to most black people that Obama is black, for example? What kind of people send their kids to universities anyway? It's not disadvantaged working class, so positive discrimination in universities won't help them.
>Universities recognized the problem with this closed system long ago and used DEI as a way to address it.
That's preposterous. It's obscenely disingenuous to now pretend that DEI was about class and economic status. Are women just poorer? Are Asians just richer? Please.
You are literally arguing against history, not me. The history I described is playing out even today as more universities abandon preferential admissions for children of alumni.
>You are literally arguing against history, not me.
I'm not arguing against history, you are arguing against reality.
University of Pennsylvania, which I picked because it was the literal first university mentioned in the article in the OP:
https://www.ese.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ESE-Sta...
And I quote:
>We face many challenges as a community, including entrenched bias, both conscious and unconscious; self-reinforcing cycles of preferential treatment towards people with particular characteristics; limited awareness of the impediments faced by our colleagues that stem from racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia
It goes on to talk about actions taken to deal with this:
>We will provide resources - including time, materials, financial support, and facilities - to promote education about diversity, equity, and inclusion within our department and to support our engagement on these themes with external communities
>An atmosphere of trust and accountability is a prerequisite for complete and honest reporting. Discrimination in academic settings can be subtle and complex, and it is not always recognized immediately. Even when racism, gender discrimination, and harassment are overt, victims can have a legitimate perception of powerlessness to address it.
There's LITERALLY not a single one mention of wealth, or money, or class in the entire document. There is about bias, about race, about sex. It ends with this:
>We ask that all community members pledge: >● To seek out knowledge on the forms, causes, and impacts of bias
>● To acknowledge that we are all susceptible to bias, and to strive to be anti-discriminatory with respect to race, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, religion, disability, socioeconomic status, citizenship, and cultural background
>● To engage constructively and respectfully with people of varied backgrounds and perspectives
>● To prioritize empathy and consideration, and to avoid making assumptions or judgements
>● To be alert for instances of injustice or discrimination, and to intercede by speaking out against injustice
Pray tell, what part of all of this is supposed to be about dealing with wealth disparities? And again, how can you possibly argue about wealth disparities in terms of gender for college-aged people? It's insane.
> are women just poorer?
Within living memory absolutely 100%.
College-aged women are poorer than college-aged men?
Wealthier families have male children at such a disparate rate that they warp the statistics or something?
DEI is about expanding the talent pools and considering more people for something. If you have problems with specific implementations of DEI, that's fine, but to pretend it's all bad is disingenuous. Please list a specific program that you have an issue with so that people can actually discuss substance.
No it isn't. It's about filling in quotas ignoring talent and objectifying people based on their ethnicity, race and gender. It exists in order to assuage the guilt of elite white liberals. You just moved the goalposts to include things that nobody can argue against in order to make it sound resonable. My issue is that it's racist because it discriminates for people based on the colour of their skin.
> It's about filling in quotas ignoring talent and objectifying people based on their ethnicity, race and gender.
That's illegal[0]. If this is going on, then enlighten us or the EEOC.
> You just moved the goalposts to include things that nobody can argue against
What? You said: "disingenuous to now pretend that DEI was about class and economic status" when it clearly is about those things. Again, please show one example of a program that you think isn't doing that. I understand that you think DEI is a sinister initiative, but bickering over a conservative boogeyman is unproductive.
0: https://www.eeoc.gov/prohibited-employment-policiespractices
They are reasonable only if you do not read between the lines or think critically about how the administration will choose to interpret and enforce these standards against the universities in question.
having representatives from the Party oversee curriculum, hiring, and admissions is reasonable only if your explicit goal is to emulate China or the former USSR at its worst.
These are all reasonable standards - if they came from Congress. They are not reasonable standards if they came for a fickle and corrupt mafia at gunpoint.
The entire no kings protest is exactly about that - executive overreach overriding will of the people and causing irresponsible harm.
The government has no business making ideological demands on universities. Period.
Yep, they don't. That's why these demands are bogus coming from the president.
If they were to come from Congress, they'd never pass as they stand because these entities would demand their elected reps don't let this pass
They are not reasonable. Ideological “balance” has no place in any of the sciences. Science is about truth not balance.
Yes, they are not objectively "reasonable" that's why I added the "- if they came from Congress" part. And I can't imagine Congress would pass these rules because of the Senate structure.
"Reasonable" is a distributed discovery process. A unitary order can never be "reasonable".
I'm not sure I follow your argument. If these would be considered reasonable standards if exactly the same were proposed by Congress, then how would they cause harm if implemented on request of the Executive?
When requested by the executive under threat of cutting funding, these requests are not requests, they are demands.
When executive demands something of private citizens and private entities, it means they are bossing over said people/entities. Nobody elected the executive to boss over people. When Congress attempts to set these same regulations, these entities get a chance to reach out to their reps and ask for changes. When Congress sets regulations, power is dispersed among 400+ reps.
You are thinking about the outcome of the regulations feeling the same. "No kings" are demanding that the means to setting rules be distributed among reps - when the rulemaking is distributed, you'll find that the rules demanded will change - because most people don't want these exact rules as they stand. And they don't want to submit to a fickle corrupt executive who will change these rules selectively on a dime on a random Friday.
If they are "reasonable standards", it shouldn't matter what the source of them are.
This appeals to a dangerous view of morality where some entities/people are good/bad intrinsically and all their actions are good/bad by definition.
They are not objectively "reasonable standards". Who said they are objectively reasonable standards? They are standards sent by a unitary. They might seem reasonable to one person but not to another. This is why Congress is supposed to set these rules - so that the definition of reasonable is spread all over the country. Reasonable standards are a discovery process, not a unitary dictatorial step.
Hell, this is the whole logic of the American Republic - no kings - since 1776.