What’s the distinction between Harvard and UCLA in terms of combating President Trump’s assaults?
It could come all the way down to how a lot Gavin Newsom needs his shot on the White Home.
Harvard seems to be on the point of caving to the president’s calls for round claims of antisemitism and a bunch of points that almost all would describe as insurance policies for inclusiveness and variety, however which Trump derides as “woke,” no matter which means.
The storied college might pay out an enormous settlement — rumored to be about $500 million — to pacify an administration more and more bent on domination of American establishments. Armed with that success, the president has focused UCLA by freezing greater than $500 million in federal grants and demanding a payout of about $1 billion.
“We won’t be complicit in this sort of assault on educational freedom on this extraordinary public establishment,” Newsom mentioned lately. “We aren’t like a few of these different establishments which have adopted a special path.”
Let’s hope that’s true.
Technically, the College of California is run by the Board of Regents, of which Newsom is a member. However Newsom has thus far appointed or reappointed a number of voting members, and also you’re not going to persuade me that the remaining will go rogue on this resolution on easy methods to battle for the soul of UCLA, one of the necessary the board will ever make.
So Newsom would be the decider, to steal a phrase from President George W. Bush.
And deciding to capitulate not solely appears unhealthy, however has horrible penalties that will canine a candidate Newsom. To not point out crippling California as a complete.
Harvard might maintain a spot within the American psyche as one of the best of one of the best, however in terms of precise affect, UCLA and the College of California system are in a completely totally different league. Greater than 1 million Californians maintain a level from a UC, with about 200,000 at the moment enrolled throughout the system. Annually, UCLA alone contributes greater than $2 billion to the native economic system, and provides to the physique of human information with its unparalleled analysis in ways in which cash can not quantify.
“With all respect to Harvard, the College of California dwarfs Harvard when it comes to measurement and scale and the affect on the nation,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) informed me. “Once you have a look at the UC simply when it comes to science and healthcare and serving to to delivery Silicon Valley, serving to to delivery the pharmaceutical business, the UC has a cultural, academic and financial relevance in contrast to another establishment on the planet.”
The stakes are merely larger for California. Harvard, a personal college, cannot solely face up to extra financially, however in the end issues much less. UCLA, with nice respect to UC Berkeley, is the “individuals’s college,” as Zev Yaroslavsky places it. He’s a former L.A. County supervisor and present director of the Los Angeles Initiative on the UCLA Luskin Faculty of Public Affairs.
“There’s a distinction between a Harvard and a UCLA, or UC Berkeley or UC San Diego or College of Michigan,” he mentioned, and if the president managed to extract his pound of flesh, “it will bankrupt the No. 1 public college in the USA.”
The issue is this can be a lose-lose scenario. If the college settles, it will be compelled to pay a tribute of a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. Whereas it might be able to decrease the purposefully debilitating $1 billion Trump is demanding, it’ll nonetheless pay a value that damages it for years to come back. However at the least it’ll know the quantity.
If the college doesn’t settle, it dangers years of litigation with no certainty of an eventual win.
On Tuesday, a federal court docket in a separate lawsuit ordered the administration to unfreeze greater than $80 million in funding that’s at the moment being withheld. However even with that win, all the UC system stays in jeopardy of the president’s agenda, and there’s no purpose to imagine the Supreme Court docket would aspect with California if or when the case made it that far.
However even when UCLA had been to settle, what’s to cease Trump from coming again subsequent yr for an additional chew? As Yaroslavsky factors out, give a bully your lunch cash as soon as, and so they’ll hold coming again for extra.
“There’s at all times a temptation to barter and work it out,” mentioned Wiener, the state senator. “I don’t assume that that’s an possibility right here.”
Neither do I, although the business-minded resolution could be to chop a deal. However we even have a bigger problem to contemplate.
Schooling is resistance to authoritarianism, and crushing it has lengthy been a objective of the far proper. Level being, educated, free-thinking people typically want variety and democracy.
In 2021, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy,” which summed it up properly.
“We’ve to actually and aggressively assault the schools on this nation,” he mentioned. And right here we’re.
If the college of the fourth-largest economic system on the planet alerts that it might’t stand as much as this, what college will danger it?
“California must say, ‘No, we’re not going to present him management over the UC, we’re not going to pay him taxpayer {dollars} as extortion,’” Wiener mentioned. “If California can’t say no, then I don’t see who can.”
So as soon as once more, California — and Californians — are a line of protection. It’s as much as us to let our leaders know that we don’t need our taxpayer-funded universities to cave to this assault, and that we count on our governor to struggle.
It’s in his greatest curiosity, and ours.
