I used to work in an environment in which the attitude of some senior colleagues was to disrespect and undervalue the knowledge and skills of those who worked for them, on the basis, apparently, that “I didn’t need it to get to where I am!”. That seems to describe a certain US president. It is interesting to note in the context of Trump’s tariff wars, as illustrated in a recent meme, that whilst Canada has elected a leader with an Oxford PhD in Economics, and Mexico a woman with a PhD in Energy Engineering, the US has elected ‘a twice-impeached conman who bankrupted 4 casinos and has 34 felony convictions. It seems unlikely that such a person can be expected to display intellectual integrity and respect the value of education.
So many recent headlines have featured Trump’s attacks on education and the educated. The master of lies and fake news seems not to want Americans to study, to learn and to acquire the skill of critical thinking… after all, people educated in this way might be able to see right through his deluded ramblings and corrupt policies. He relies for popularity on the unthinking, uneducated masses who have voted for him. Hence, anyone who does manage to criticise him and his policies is the target of his slash and burn approach to governing his country. Trump does not understand the principle of free-thinking as a basic aspect of research and education: so why would he worry about stifling it by his butchery of the education sector to make it conform to his way of thinking, and thus silencing any dissent from that quarter?
US Universities
The very word ‘university’ seems to imply the broadest possible scope of learning, of knowledge and research from the world over. But not for Trump. Over recent weeks we have seen many examples of Trump’s philistine attitude to education, and he has only just started. A basic principle of education is freedom of thought: this is essential for research, but in Trump’s MAGA US this is not the case if you express opinions which are contrary to those of the president.
The most significant and best-known example of Trumps’ determination to impose his views in the education sector is the treatment of one of the best and most famous universities in the world: Harvard. Trump’s recent letter to Harvard demanded that the university make a series of policy changes in order to continue to receive federal funding. By threatening to withdraw funding from Harvard, and removing its tax-exempt status, Trump is compromising the university’s ability to continue to function as a major centre of excellence in education and research… surely an act of self-harm for the US! (We’ll consider the consequences later…)
The main target in Trump’s sights seems to have been student demonstrations against Israel’s behaviour in Gaza. Hence, this is really an attempt at thought control, an attack on freedom of speech. But students have always protested against what they see as injustice and cruelty; in my student days many decades ago I remember demonstrations in the UK against apartheid in South Africa, and the related boycotting of Barclays’s Bank. A couple of my friends were very active in JACARI, the Joint Action Committee against Racial Intolerance, set up by students at Oxford University in the 1950s; among the Oxford students involved early on are Melvyn Bragg, and its gatherings attracted speakers like Barbara Castle and James Callaghan. My wife and I took part a 28-mile sponsored walk in the late 60s to help raise funds. Established as a charity in later years, JACARI provides free tutoring, largely in the context of promoting solidarity between diverse communities. Oxford was also where OXFAM was set up in 1942, initially to provide aid for starving citizens of occupied Greece, occupied by the AXIS powers, and subjected to a blockade by the Allies. Funny old thing, that: two charities founded by university students driven by a sense of altruism and social conscience: student activism. The reason: when youngsters flee the cosy nest of home and family and experience the wider world, that is when they develop a social conscience. Indeed, part and parcel of the development of young people into young adult citizens of the world is becoming aware and concerned about things that are morally, ethically wrong. An intrinsic right in a free and democratic society is the ability to make your feelings known.
Trump not only seeks to remove this right, but in so doing he removes the right of the students to receive a balanced education based on truth: a concept alien to him. It is interesting to note that Harvard’s coat of arms contains just one word: Veritas! At least Harvard is sticking by its principles. By contrast, another US university has hit the headlines, but in this case, instead of defying Trump as Harvard did, Columbia University did as they were told and called in New York Police to deal with the demonstrators.
Trump seeks to control thought, thus denying a fundamental element of an open education and freedom of speech. Understandably, Columbia students expressed their feelings by booing at their principal. Trump showed his contempt for students in his reaction to the recent Florida State University Student Union shooting: “Things like this take place”. Does he care about the human consequences of his decisions? No, so long as he can claim to his supporters that he is sorting out migrants…
The reverse brain drain
We used to talk about the ‘brain-drain’; it is well-known that many of the greatest minds in Europe were sucked across the Atlantic after World War Two, contributing enormously to progress in, for example. The development of nuclear weapons and the space race. But now it seems that Trump’s funding cuts are reversing that flow! There have been several cartoons of the Statue of Liberty wading across the Atlantic back to France, but as a result of Trump’s US trampling over ‘Liberty’, she will be like the Pied Piper: France has started the process of attracting US academics to France; this move has been dubbed ‘scientific asylum’, and is attracting applicants from NASA, Yale, Stanford and John Hopkins. Significantly, many of the applicants work in research areas at risk of censorship or funding cuts in America. The EU is making efforts to recruit academics and students from the US, and the UK is in a position to benefit from this influx of academic talent too, provided our door is open!
Unwelcome foreign students
To make matters worse for US universities, Trump’s policies are making foreign students at US universities feel somewhat insecure, to say the least. Given threats to revoke visas, and targeted detentions, this is hardly surprising, yet US universities depend on foreign students, relying on this source of income (just like UK universities!) to balance their budgets. Thus, US academic institutions are being hit financially by Trump policies from two directions at the same time: threats to government funding unless they muzzle student protest, and the creation of a hostile environment which is making foreign families look elsewhere to buy education for their offspring… Funny old thing: many of those foreign students seeking an education in English will likely divert from the US to the UK, if the UK lets them in!
Furthermore, China’s attempts over the last few years to attract American academics and researchers –- have been given an enormous boost! In the words of the 20 May headline of Asia Times: “US brain- drain handing the global talent war to China”; and not just those Chinese currently teaching, researching or studying in the US. As so often happens with a story like this, something new happens when I think I’ve finished. This time it was the announcement on 22 May, that the Trump administration has ended Harvard’s ability to enrol international students. Then on 23 May, the Spanish newspaper online El Mundo reported that Trump’s decision “will only damage the international image and reputation of the US”. The Independent reported on 26 May that “China invites foreign students with ‘unconditional offers’ after Trump bans them from attending Harvard”.
Wow! Trump seems willing for US universities to be isolated from academia in the rest of the world… which ironically would mean that American universities would cease to have influence outside the US.
Elementary schools
Trump’s immigration crackdown is even affecting pupils in elementary schools. Government officials have been entering schools with the excuse of ‘checking the wellbeing of pupils who had arrived at the US border unaccompanied’. Given the climate of fear Trump’s policies are generating among all migrant communities, it is hardly surprising that this has caused alarm, causing school administrators to enforce the principle of ‘sanctuary’ and refuse access to these officials; significantly, they claimed to be from the Department of Homeland Security, which also controls the notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
Education, education, education
This statement by Tony Blair many years ago reminds us that education is an essential and characteristic prerequisite for a civilised society. The word ‘education’ derives from Latin words educare meaning ‘to bring up’ and educere, meaning ‘to bring forth’, ‘to lead out’: to make the infant human aware of the big, wide world outside the nest. An essential element of a complete education is travel, experiencing and studying other countries and their cultures… One of the most tragic aspects of Brexit was that it deprived UK citizens of freedom of movement, removed our youngsters from the Erasmus scheme, and had a hugely negative impact on school visits and exchanges to EU countries, as documented in several WCV articles I and others have written. Many of us would argue that the most negative characteristic of the US as a nation is already that so few Americans travel abroad; and that this accounts for the very isolationist attitudes which led them to elect the likes of Donald Trump. The UK post-Brexit has swung in that direction, though there are encouraging signs that the current Labour government is reversing some of those negative impacts of Brexit. Instead, Trump is making things worse – far worse, by alienating and demonising all that is foreign. The irony is that, whilst Americans are going to become more isolated, the ‘soft power’ which the US has wielded around the world for decades is being undermined, and the initiative is being handed to other nations.
The Manbaby
Trump is the very antithesis of an intellectually competent, educated head of state. Unaware of history, geography… and devoid of basic human morality. Like the worst pupil, he can’t even do his homework! He demonstrated this in his notorious meeting with Volodimir Zelenskyy, blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia. This president gets so many things wrong… bigly! He claimed that under Biden, nobody wanted to join the military, and he said this while addressing an entire graduating class at West Point military academy… who had joined under Biden! More recently, during his meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Trump’s claim of genocide on South African white farmers was easy to debunk, not least because the ‘evidence’ Trump used was actually a photo of a memorial monument, not of hundreds of graves, and the video still he used was from events in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Education!
That well-known Spanish master of film-making Pedro Almodóvar – in whose thought-provoking films every element makes a point – stated recently:
“You will go down in history as the greatest mistake of our time. Your naiveté is only comparable to your violence. You will go down in history as one of the greatest damages to humanity. … You will go down in history as a catastrophe.”
Trump – often referred to in a popular UK paper as the ’orange manbaby’ – needs to go back to school. Nursery school.