- Trump’s war against Harvard isn’t about anti-Semitism, it’s about a war against being liberal;
- And how this fits into my running theme on this blog;
- The US is trying to impose its anti-DEI values on other countries;
- Crime is down, while conservatives/Republicans play crime anecdotes up to frighten their base;
- And thoughts about how cat toys are analogous to our obsession with crime in TV and movies;
- How indoor cats looking outside are like humans looking up into the sky.
The anti-Semitism rationale was always somewhat plausible; religious conservatives defend Israel no matter what it does, because of something about the Book of Revelation and the way the end times need to play out in the middle east, or something. But this is so much simpler, and so more likely to be true.
The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch, 6 May 2025: Trump Finally Drops the Anti-Semitism Pretext, subtitled “The latest letter to Harvard makes clear that the administration’s goal is to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.”
The intensely hostile letter that Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent to the leadership of Harvard yesterday has a lot going on. But the most notable thing about it is what it leaves out.
To hear McMahon tell it, Harvard is a university on the verge of ruin. […] She accuses it of admitting students who are contemptuous of America, chastises it for hiring the former blue-city mayors Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot to teach leadership (“like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation”), questions the necessity of its remedial-math program (“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics?”), and accuses its board chair, Penny Pritzker (“a Democrat operative”), of driving the university to financial ruin, among many other complaints. The upshot is that Harvard should not bother to apply for any new federal funding, because, McMahon declares, “today’s letter marks the end of new grants for the University.”
What you will not find in the McMahon letter is any mention of the original justification for the Trump administration’s ongoing assault on elite universities: anti-Semitism. As a legal pretext for trying to financially hobble the Ivy League, anti-Semitism had some strategic merit. […]
Now, however, the mask is off. Aside from one oblique reference to congressional hearings about anti-Semitism (“the great work of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik”), the letter is silent on the subject. The administration is no longer pretending that it is standing up for Jewish students. The project has been revealed for what it is: an effort to punish liberal institutions for the crime of being liberal.
The writer recalls the earlier attack on Columbia University, then returns to how Harvard — a university older than America! — has handled this. And ending:
In a 2021 speech titled “The Universities Are the Enemy,” then–Senate candidate J. D. Vance declared that universities, as left-wing gatekeepers of truth and knowledge, “make it impossible for conservative ideas to ultimately carry the day.” The solution, Vance said, was to “honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” We’ve been seeing the aggressive part of that formula for two months. With the McMahon letter, the administration has gotten much closer to honesty.
My take on this, a running theme on this blog, may seem simplistic, but it explains a lot. Conservative ideas have had hundreds or thousands of years to prevail. Some of their ideas have endured. But things change. We learn new things. Conservatives resent change, and reject new knowledge, presumably (to give them the benefit of the doubt) simply to maintain social stability. But we can’t escape the implications of having learned new things. Each generation of conservatives will lose its battles, leaving the next to find new things to complain about. (Prothero.) While the rest of us move ahead.
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And this is more of the same. Who does the US think it is to impose its current white supremacist values on other nations?
JMG, from Raw Story, 7 May 2025: US Demands That Stockholm End Diversity Policies
If this involves threats to cut off business dealings, well, the rest of the world is already doing that, because of tariffs. Trump doesn’t realize he’s turning over world control to China.
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Once again, frightened, paranoid conservatives are living in a fantasy world, not reality.
Slate, Henry Grabar, 7 May 2025: A Farewell to Arms, subtitled “With some American cities seeing their lowest murder numbers in decades, will Donald Trump change his tune?”
Nineteen people were killed in Chicago last month, which is the fewest murders the Windy City has experienced during any April since 1962. In Baltimore, there were just five murders in April—the lowest number in any month since 1970. Three other major cities—Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit—recorded their fewest first-quarter homicides since the 1960s.
Criminologists tend to speak in caveats, with warning of reversion to the mean and admonitions to wait for better data, but even they must admit: These are some eye-catching numbers. “It’s really encouraging,” said John Roman, a crime researcher at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. “It’s worth taking a moment and noting that we are approaching the numbers in most crime statistics we haven’t seen since the 1960s. In these cities, if you’re under 55, this is probably the safest moment you’ve ever lived in. That’s great, and it should be celebrated.”
Why is this happening? The article offers several ideas. Meanwhile, Trump frightens people — a certain minority of them will always be frightened by such anecdotes — with stories and baseless claims. Once again, conservatives/Republicans believe things that are not true.
Most people in the president’s orbit have been in denial about the crime drop, mired in conspiratorial thinking about FBI statistics and laser-focused on demonizing immigrants for grisly murders. At the beginning of the drop, in 2023, more than 90 percent of Republicans mistakenly believed that crime was on the rise. Interestingly, Americans were almost four times more likely to say crime is a problem nationally than they are to say it’s a problem for them personally. We’re a nation that consumes a lot of videos of people doing crimes. There may be fewer crimes these days, but the videos just keep getting better.
Again, social media is implicated here, and perhaps, as I’ve suggested before, TV and movies, that depicts more crimes on a weekly basis than actually happens in real life.
Why are people so drawn to watching images of violence and crime?
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Here’s my thought for the day, via that Tom Nichols book, and cat toys.
It’s because both cats and humans have minds that evolved in a wild environment. We take care of our indoor cats now, so that they live lovely, safe lives, but they still like the stimulation provided by toys like sticks with feathers or bells on them. A human wielding those mimics the hunt, especially for birds. Humans watching violent movies and TV shows do so for the same reason — we enjoy the stimulation of potential danger. Otherwise, safe modern life is boring, both for us and for cats.
Do cats adapt to indoor life? Do they know they are better off living indoors? I’m not sure that they do. They are always looking outside. Like humans looking up into the sky.
