When I was being inculcated with the basic rules of reporting (ages ago), I was told that, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news.” In other words, the aphorism, attributed to several people and New York Sun editor John B. Bogart among them, points out that an unusual, infrequent event is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday event. You have never read about a plane that did not crash, for instance.
Later, I learned that it is a mathematical basic principle of information theory: “Reports of unusual events provide more information than those for more routine outcomes.”
Well then! Why did the global media report that, as a higher education institute, Harvard University had tossed the Trump administration’s politically motivated and clearly over the line demand that the university should stop propagating illiberal, left-wing ideas and cease implementing policies based on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in staff and student staff recruitment because it “allows anti-Semitism to rot academia”?
Not only Harvard but almost all universities get such letters from the dead-necks (not the Deadnecks, a Grateful Dead Tribute band from Melbourne, Australia) who fancy themselves as gatekeepers of society writing letters to all the universities, newspapers and television channels. What do those institutions do? They, respectfully, throw it into the nearest waste basket, while the secretaries mail back a perfunctory thank-you-for-the-suggestion letter. Because dogs bite men, and the bitten men do something about it without real interest, feeling or effort.
Then, why on earth didn’t the media treat Harvard’s perfunctory (not exactly a thank-you but rather please-mind-your-own-damn-business) letter as such a news-worthy event?
Could it be because we all are imprisoned “in the circles that” Trump finds “in the windmills of” his mind?
Universities under siege
The U.S. government’s response was, in fact, more newsworthy. Trump vaingloriously claimed that the free-speech environment of Harvard was a disruption of learning for Jewish students and intolerable, so he decided to withhold funding worth $2.2 billion promised to Harvard.
Do you remember the movie “Ordinary People” (1980) in which Mary Tyler Moore, playing the mother of a wasteful, spoiled brat who wouldn’t touch his food at the dinner table, throws it into the garbage can, shouting that she hates waste. In MAD magazine’s satire cartoon of the movie, the father, played by Donald Sutherland, who always taking his son’s side, explains the situation to him: “Your mother not only hates waste but also logic.”
Yeah, your Donald Duck not only hates the environments that make Jewish students’ studies difficult, but also logic. If not, why should he freeze federal grants that more than 200,000 students benefit from in nine higher education institutions? Not only Harvard’s $2.2 billion, but also $1 billion for Cornell, $790 million for Northwestern, more than $19 billion at the University of Michigan and other universities. Like many others, Cornell and Northwestern were the site of clashes over the war in Gaza. Cornell also recently defended itself against claims that it was not doing enough to stop anti-Semitism. In a New York Times opinion essay, Michael Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell and professor of molecular physiology, described the nation’s universities as institutions built to uphold and advance democratic norms even in the face of escalating political and legal risks.
America upside down
“A messy event that turns into viral videos causes understandable concern to trustees and alumni, and adds more fuel to already burning fires,” Kotlikoff wrote last week. “But if we are to preserve our value and our meaning, we cannot let our caution overtake our purpose. Our colleges and universities are cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy.”
To whom are you addressing those dignified and high-minded words, sir? President Donald Trump, in three 97 days, managed to erase the “cradles of democracy and bulwarks against autocracy.” Can a government department pool private information from private sources like pharmacies in a democracy? The National Institutes of Health began collecting Americans’ private health records as part of a controversial plan to discover a cause and a cure for autism! NIH’s own director, Jay Bhattacharya, told a panel of experts that, “This plan is dangerous, unethical and a serious threat to privacy.” Does Trump listen? No, he might probably label Bhattacharya as “anti-Semitic” and fire him.
By the way, no one other than that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the crazy as a loon secretary of health and human services, believes that a cure is possible for autism spectrum disorder, and there is no one-size-fits-all treatment. The goal of treatment is to maximize your child’s ability to function by reducing autism spectrum disorder symptoms and supporting development and learning. But that fruitcake is going to gather people’s private medical data anyway.
One judge after another orders new limits on DOGE data access to this or that administration, to no avail! If any U.S. government department still implements the rules of DEI proposals, hackers under the command of Elon Musk, a businessperson and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, would bust their computer systems. Shareholders of Goldman Sachs, Inc., an American multinational investment bank and financial services company, voted to reject two anti-DEI proposals; now, Elon Musk’s thugs are after Goldman Sachs.
Elon Musk has been trying rancorously to drag Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan into his bitter legal feud with Twitter. Now he can legally go into the confidential records of the company. The desperate Goldman Sachs fluffers helplessly that: “Diversity and inclusion are our greatest asset. We believe that a major strength and principal reason for our success is the quality, dedication, determination and collaboration of our people.” Shareholders at Costco, Apple, John Deere and Disney have likewise emphatically rejected the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) anti-DEI proposals.
DEI was born out of a compelling need for a “correction.” In America, 60% of students enrolled in four-year universities, 70% of those with doctorates, 80% of hospital doctors and 90% of engineers are white. This “fault” creates new fault lines in the society. In other words, African, Asian and Latin American doctors, engineers and scientists are decreasing. The main focus in ensuring fair treatment and full participation in professional life for groups that have historically been underrepresented or discriminated against based on ethnicity and disability must be on the universities.
Immigration becomes nightmare
Harvard is not an “Islamist outpost,” and it has not “nurtured resentful leftists and anti-Semitism” as Ruth R. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish Literature and Jewish history and culture in Canada, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Against those jarring because of their this or that affiliations, there is a burgeoning movement among Big Ten universities that would create an alliance to counter government attacks on higher education. Several faculty members have been asking their universities to sign an agreement that would allow the institutions to share attorneys and pool financial resources in case Trump’s administration targets one of its members.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities, representing more than 100 presidents and higher education leaders, rejected the “coercive use of public research funding.” While saying they were open to constructive reform and not opposed to “legitimate” government oversight, they drew a line: “We must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live and work on our campuses.”
Yeah, yeah… go and tell that to Trump’s cronies.
Trump stirs the birthright citizenship row; he expels legal H-1B visa holders. The future of millions of legal immigrants in the U.S. now hangs in limbo. When reminded that his decision on the legal visa holders would destroy hundreds of high-tech businesses at the cutting edge of the artificial intelligence revolution, he simply shrugged and said, “I didn’t see!”
Of course, you couldn’t see if you hold the telescope to your blind eye. Trump’s “willful blindness” or (as lawyers describe it) “contrived ignorance” is ruining the lives of people. When Harvard pushed back against Trump’s freezing of funds illegally, the Trump team claimed that they had mistakenly sent a demand letter.
Harvard responded, “The letter was a mistake, but the actions the government took this week have real-life consequences.”