The Big Chill
Friends,
I was talking yesterday to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say. When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts. His response floored me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, suddenly worried.
“They! The university! The government! Gotta go!” He was off.
My friend has never before shown signs of paranoia.
I relate this to you because the Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each another. It is beginning to create mass paranoia, which is exactly what Trump intends.
The chill affects the four pillars of civil society — universities, science, the media, and the law.
Start with America’s major universities. Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s demands that the university identify every demonstrator and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership” — or else lose $400 million in government funding — is chilling communications there.
The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder without criminal charges merely for participating in protests at the school. The regime’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and announced the “removal” of two other students who participated in such protests.
Other major universities are on Trump’s target list.
Now, consider science. Trump has mounted a direct attack on the three biggest funders of American science — the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation.
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