Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump sees most relationships in terms of money. And when he is the one controlling the money, he sees it as a weapon. One to be used aggressively. He hates elite universities, even though he graduated from one of them (Penn). He sees them as a spawning ground for woke elites and as cultural power centers that need to be crushed like bugs under his heel.
Last week Trump (illegally) suspended dozens of research grants to Princeton University worth $210 million (after halting $400 million to Columbia University earlier). Last Friday, he announced an (illegal) freeze on $510 million in grants to Brown University, on some trumped-up excuse. Again, we are talking about breaching contracts the universities ALREADY signed with the government long ago. Trump's view is: "Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?" Losing so much money would be such a disaster for the universities that they just cave rather than spend years fighting in court, even if their lawyers tell their presidents that the law is on their side (which is different from the Supreme Court being on their side).
Now Trump is back at it. He unilaterally froze $1 billion in funding to Cornell University and $790 million in funding to Northwestern University. This time, he didn't even bother making up an excuse. The reason is to punish "elites," even though his cabinet is stuffed with them. But they are rich elites. He sees rich elites as good and academic elites as woke enemies of the state. It is not clear how much of his base makes this distinction, though. If a Democrat is sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 2029, there might just be a few civil suits from universities against Trump for the damages they have suffered from his illegal actions. While the Supreme Court granted presidents broad immunity from criminal charges, it didn't grant presidents any immunity from civil suits as a result of illegal actions on their part.
Trump hasn't hit Harvard yet, but is considering it. Harvard has such a large endowment ($53 billion) that it could probably make up for the shortfall in grants out of the endowment while the case played out in courts. The only university with a bit of leverage over Trump is Penn. It could revoke his degree. That would violate all its own rules, but since Jan. 20, rules and laws are only for fools. (V)