GC Kevin Reed and VPRI Razdan to advise PIs on Trump rules – just don’t quote them

Very few public flagship university presidents did. A policy of institutional neutrality is the way to go. I strongly support Scholz’s decision to not sign this, or any other political statement, regardless of how strongly I agree with the contents. While even a strict reading of the Chicago principles may permit a president to sign on to a statement such as the one organized by the AACU, a “may permit” is not a “must do.”

Universities, including UO, have fallen off the wagon when it comes to the inappropriate adoption of controversial political political stances in rhetoric and policy. Universities are for everyone — not just the ideological majority (e.g., not just the progressive/moderate left), not just women and racial minorities or others on the top of the “hierarchy of non privilege”, not just the financial and credentialed elites.

While I partially disagree with the way Trump is going about rectifying this miserable situation the universities have found themselves in (international student deportations is a major sore point for me), as a swing voter I don’t have too much sympathy for the universities themselves right now when it comes to the government yanking funding and non-profit status. Universities have only got themselves to blame. Trump’s actions aren’t authoritarianism. Trump’s actions reflect the will of at least 40%+ of the American people finally having their longstanding concerns meaningfully addressed by academia, in the only language university administrators and professors seem to understand: money.

The gnashing of teeth of the progressive elites and the rhetoric of “Republican/Trumpian authoritarianism” by left-leaning scholars (which, due to years of unchecked ideological discrimination against undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty candidates at multiple levels, has resulted in the majority of scholars being left-leaning) is laughable, especially considering America’s recent history where actual authoritarianism was unjustly imposed on Americans and Oregonians for years during Covid by Democrats. Trump, like all presidents in recent memory, will see his favorability ratings diminish with time. But on the topic of higher ed reform, and the need to seriously shake up the sector, I’m still mostly rooting Trump on.

To those (overwhelmingly Democratic) innocents who are collateral damage: I have a little sympathy, but because you’ve collectively treated Republicans with contempt and discrimination for decades I have a hard time mustering too much of it. In their treatment of dissenters living outside their self-defined Overton windows, smug cruelty by Democrats towards dissenters has long been the norm in academia. Time for an overhaul, and you don’t make omelets for the whole of the American people without breaking all the eggs. Or, as my acquaintances on the progressive left might put it, the master’s tools will never tear down the master’s house; it’s time for an external demolition and rebuilding.