President Trump is RIGHT to Defund Higher Ed!

Harvard University is suing the Trump Administration calling on the court to restore more than $2.2 billion in research dollars from after their refusal to cooperate with a Trump multi-agency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and hate speech on campus against Jewish students and professors. Their main argument is President Trump’s demands are a First Amendment free speech violation but that argument is not likely to hold up in court when protests and speech make tuition paying students of Jewish heritage afraid to cross the campus to attend classes.

Some protests have called for the elimination of the Jewish state and have thus been deemed anti-Semitic.

A U.S. District Court in Boston received the filing which requests the court vacate and set aside the Trump Administration’s funding freeze to continue previously approved funding. It also asks the court to halt the administration’s efforts to freeze current, or deny future funding, without engaging in procedures contained in federal law.

The Trump Administration may soon double down taking away Harvard’s tax exempt status. President Trump also posted he is thinking of giving the 3 billion in taxpayer dollars taken from Harvard to trade schools across the country:

Donald Trump has a reputation of trying to do the right thing but somehow Harvard decided allowing Palestinian anti-Semitic protests to continue on their campus is a hill they are willing to die on. People also know Donald Trump for being the kind of New York guy who lives by the motto “You play ball with me, and I won’t cram the bat up your ass.”

Harvard President Dr. Alan M. Garber would have done well to listen to public relations specialists rather than his Law School because now President Trump seems to be engaging in a public relations campaign of “death by a thousand papercuts” as information is put out on what Harvard has really been all about.

• One of the first factoids the Trump Administration released is Harvard University’s endowment is valued at $53.2 billion, the largest academic endowment in the world! That is causing American taxpayers to ask the logical question: What do you need our $3 billion more for?
• Another interesting factoid President Trump just alluded to; Harvard is now engaging in hiring faculty who are some of the worst failures in our society and mentions former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by name. By almost every metric the two of them left their respective cities worse than when they took office to lead them.
• In one recent post to social media President Trump wrote another fact most American taxpayers had no knowledge of and do not approve of:

“Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31% of their students are from FOREIGN LANDS, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay NOTHING toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to. Nobody told us that! We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming. We want those names and countries. Harvard has $52,000,000, use it, and stop asking for the Federal Government to continue GRANTING money to you!”

President Trump has asked for a list of both foreign International students as well as a list of foreign countries who donate to the endowment of Harvard and Harvard has refused.

President Trump is not the only one coming down hard on Harvard either.

Journalist/author Batya Ungar-Sargon supports President Trump saying in a recent interview, “Donald Trump was simply asking Harvard to stop doing things against the mission of Harvard – like no more importing students who hate America and hate the Jews.”

CONCLUSION:

As a retired professor of higher education who taught in 4 different public colleges of Illinois, wrote 7 different textbooks, appeared on local television stations 7 times, and received numerous teaching awards, I have to say some of these administrations of higher education institutions are on some pretty thin ice these days!

This recent man/woman on the street interview offers a case to that point:

“INSANE! College Students CAN’T Answer BASIC Questions!” – KeroNgb

The video was shot at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. Kennesaw boasts such notable graduates as Ryan Seacrest, Ty Pennington, and retired Marine General Bradley Steven James. Students could not answer basic literacy questions such as:

• Whose face is on the dollar bill?
• What does 3x3x3 equal? (or) What is 3 cubed?
• How many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?
• How many weeks are in a year?

Celebrity personality Mike Rowe is famous for both telling the truth and being willing to get his hands dirty in the skilled trade fields. He has been exposing the problems in America of too many people going into higher education majors with no job openings and too few Generation Z youth wanting to work in any of America’s millions of open jobs.

“Who lied to us about college? Mike Rowe exposes the truth.”

“MISSING MOTIVATION? Mike Rowe evaluates Gen Z’s ‘warped’ understanding of unemployment market” – Fox News

I have written multiple articles concluding how when our politicians engage in criminal acts without consequences, it is a threat to our national security. Now we are seeing our youth wanting to live their lives without consequences.

“Deadline is just another word for consequence.” – Mike Rowe

Former president Joe Biden wanted to pay off the $1.7 trillion in college debt to garner favor and win votes from our youth. We are talking about college graduates who knowingly majored in fields where they knew there was little to know chance of employment. Many of these recent college graduates are looking at loan debt in the six figure amount.

FYI, student college loan debt surpassed credit card debt in American in 2010.

I retired from teaching in 2016 and was very proud of the fact that my college engineering technology program had both the highest paid graduates and placement rate of the college, $42,000 to start with 80% placed before commencement. My graduates were known for having their student loans paid off within 2 years after graduation.

And for the record, most of our doctors and engineers today are imported from other countries. This is a direct reflection on our nation’s failing education system which was #1 in the world when I began teaching in 1976. President Trump is also right about getting rid of the Department of Education, under it, things have only gotten worse!

And that college CAD/CAM program I retired from in 2016, it is almost completely dead and gone ten years later.

Why? The answers are twofold to make American socialists smile broadly.

• Illinois Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker is driving business and industry out of the state.
• Gen Z just doesn’t feel compelled to want to work anymore.

Just what socialists want, more takers replacing makers… more government dependency!

Two big questions remain now:

• Are today’s institutions of higher education really just diploma mills?
• How much of higher education today is just indoctrination?

Let’s replace our “liberal arts” colleges with “practical arts” colleges!

© 2025 by Mark S. Schwendau