atua777 Should Universities Resist Trump’s Tactics?

data de lançamento:2025-04-02 07:30    tempo visitado:93

elkpg777

To the Editor:

Re “Columbia Faculty Protests as Trump Officials Praise University’s Concessions” (news article, March 26):

As a graduate of the Columbia University business school, I write this letter with sadness and foreboding. In 1970, I was the student who organized the meeting where a majority of my fellow students voted for a strike that briefly closed the business school to protest the Vietnam War. The school, which was conservative for the time, had remained mostly open during the larger university protests in 1968.

There was not one official at the school who ever discouraged my actions. There were no recriminations. Amazingly enough, there was never a moment when I feared that any action would be taken against me or that any of my actions would be curtailed.

Universities like Columbia are the crown jewels of our civilization, advancing knowledge through freedom of thought. How disappointing to see this great university, a former bastion of free speech and expression, surrender its ideals to a president wielding the tawdry threat of money to tell it how to act and what to teach.

The surrender of the academy is an unmistakable step on the road to authoritarianism.

David ShactmanSarasota,66jogo.com Fla.

To the Editor:

As the not so proud mother of three Columbia graduates, I applaud President Trump’s actions. I am neither anti-science nor politically conservative. The university has had over a year to stanch the wave of virulent antisemitism sweeping the campus and has done nothing on its own. Only when President Trump set draconian rules for reinstating grants did the Columbia administration enact measures to ensure the safety of Jewish students. Unfortunately, that is today’s climate.

Sharon SenderowiczGreat Neck, N.Y.

To the Editor:

As retired university officials, we believe in the mission and the accomplishments of American colleges and universities. And we are appalled at the administration’s threats to withhold valuable federal funds from universities unless they behave in ways the administration approves. Finally, we are concerned at the apparent capitulation of Columbia University to the administration’s demands and worried that others may follow.

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Mr. Parkatua777, a Korean-born graduate of Georgetown University, leveraged a family fortune and an easy gregariousness to seduce the power brokers of Capitol Hill in the 1970s.