Hardening soft power: US President Donald Trump is undermining the US

Harvard University, America’s oldest and wealthiest university, has offered the Donald Trump administration a salutary lesson in constitutional safeguards by invoking its First Amendment rights in rejecting sweeping demands to align its practices to a specific federal agenda. As part of a larger programme linked to federal funding in universities, a multidepartment taskforce pressured the university to end its initiatives on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), restrict the say of student and faculty members in university affairs, and institute systematic screening of student organisations. The university has responded by unequivocally refusing to comply, stating that the administration’s demands contravened guarantees of fundamental rights under the First Amendment, which had been recognised by the Supreme Court. For its stance, the administration has frozen $2.2 billion in federal grants, with the potential to freeze a further $7 billion.

 

The taskforce, which meets each week to supposedly discuss discrimination on college campus and reviewer grants, was ostensibly set up to counter anti-Semitism in universities. But it is largely being seen as a blunt instrument of a right-wing culture war against woke ideology and an attempt to tamp down opposition to Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Harvard is the first university to reject the Trump administration’s threats. With a massive endowment of $53.2 billion (as of June 2024), the university can afford to snub the Trump administration and demonstrate its independence. Its refusal stands in contrast to Columbia University’s decision to make extensive policy changes, including installing an oversight committee for the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department, following a freeze on $400 million federal funds. Columbia has an endowment size of $14.8 billion. The administration has since focused its attention on five more universities and the Education Department has warned 60 universities of repercussions from pending investigation into accusations of anti-Semitism.

 

Given that endowments form the bulk of the financial resources of American university funding, it remains to be seen if other wealthy institutions will follow Harvard’s example. Doing so could be challenging for a variety of reasons. First, endowments, however generous, are usually tied to restrictive conditions imposed by donors. Second, donor funds have been drying up of late, especially donations by those who support Mr Trump’s agenda. Harvard, for instance, has instituted a hiring freeze on account of donor cutbacks. But the more damaging long-term consequence is that these moves by the Trump administration — usually associated with insecure authoritarian potentates — represent a sustained attack on the best thing about the US, its soft power (ironically, a concept developed by Harvard professor Joseph Nye). As with his draconian anti-immigration policies, United States President Donald Trump’s attack on universities is another demonstration that he opposes the basic values the US has stood for. American universities, bastions of academic freedom, have been at the forefront of research, working closely with large corporations to drive innovation in medicine, engineering, and climate change. They have significantly broadened the ambit of independent research to bring fresh perspectives to the liberal arts. Mr Trump stands to destroy most of these invaluable gains. In the process, he is undermining the superpower he was elected to lead.