No, it's the other way around!

The Trump-Harvard showdown is the latest front in a long conservative war against academia.

There is a war going on, but it is being initiated at the higher education levels, and it is aimed at conservatism. What Trump is doing is simply understanding that the war is going on and deciding to get into the fight.

It’s a fight by conservatives that dates back to Ronald Reagan, the hitherto spiritual leader of the Republican party, all the way to McCarthyism and beyond, experts say, as the rightwing scraps to seize more control in a manner that is “part of a standard playbook of authoritarianism”.

How many different things can you find wrong with that statement. The meaningless reference to McCarthyism, the required reference to the term rightwing, the reference to authoritarianism, as well as suggesting that all of this is true based on what unnamed "experts" suggest. The entire thing is a logical fallacy. Red herring, strawman, ad hominem, ad nauseum, as well as the classic appeal to authority (even if no such authority is established or even identified). Pretty impressive to include multiple logical fallacies into the same argument.

Let's start with this: McCarthyism is red herring. What does accusing people of being a communist have to do with merit-based enrollment decisions? It doesn't. The strawman is downplaying the idea that Harvard now has been reduced to offering a remedial math class, because people they are accepting cannot do remedial math. This is what people have issues with. No longer are Ivy league schools looking for the best of the best, but rather they are picking and choosing based on preferred ideology, races, and religions. Instead of defending that, they demand it is about authoritarianism. The ad hominem is obvious, as well as this whole argument being one giant parroting of the same claims that they believe if made enough times will become engrained into people (ad nauseum).

But let's be clear. The war here is not conservatives against Harvard or higher education as much as is it Harvard and higher education warring against conservatives. We just saw another example of college faculty attacking a student because they were wearing a Trump hat. I am not talking about a verbal assault or a intellectual attack on this student's beliefs, we are talking about a physical attack, that this faculty member believed they had the core right to engage in. Like everyone should understand that attacking conservatives is acceptable if not necessary.

I won't go too deep into the concept of how much liberal teachers are overrepresented in higher education or how conservative teachers have all but been drummed out of these schools. Many people have written much about this subject, and it simply goes without saying. These schools are becoming more about indoctrination than about teaching. If this is what they want to do, then so be it. But they cannot expect the public to give them a dime of tax-dollars to support it. They were told by the USSC to remove DEI based enrollment decisions. They were told by the high court to make their decisions based on merit. They openly flaunt this because the only people who should actually have to follow judge's orders are members of the Trump administration. Now the Administration is holding them accountable, because the courts cannot. This is not an attack on higher education, it is little more than doing what legally must be done.