Sarah McLaughlin
The Next Move, Substack
Excerpt: For years, I’ve been sounding the alarm about foreign authoritarians’ pernicious influence on higher education in America and other countries. Especially concerning are the Chinese government’s efforts, which have harmed students and academics and incentivized universities to put their core values on the backburner.
But now, the call is coming from inside the house, too. Over the past six months, the Trump administration has undertaken efforts, ranging from illiberal to blatantly unconstitutional, to exact punishment on students, academics, and the universities they attend.
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Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.
If Johns Hopkins University wanted to signal its seriousness about creating an alternative to the left-leaning orthodoxy that permeates higher education, it couldn’t have done better than the recent hire of economist Peter Arcidiacono.
House Republicans have now formally backed President Donald Trump in fulfilling his campaign promise to dismantle the Department of Education, voting Wednesday to advance 10 bills that would codify the White House’s efforts to disperse numerous education programs and offices to other federal agencies.