With the Department of Education firing an opening salvo against Princeton University, academics are scrambling to take Princeton’s side in the fracas.
Princeton University’s president wrote a letter admitting that the institution treated its minority students and staff unfairly due to “systemic racism” at the institution and throughout America. The Department of Education responded to the letter and said it will investigate whether the institution violated federal laws and regulations. Specifically, the department said it will look at Princeton’s federal grants and funds and determine whether they were unfairly used, since Princeton’s president admitted it had discriminated against its students and staff due to race.
The Academe Blog run by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) ran a blog with the title, “The Department of Education as a Right-Wing Troll.” The blog claimed that the department’s response “sounds like a bad joke,” but it is not a joke or prank by the federal agency. It added that the letter is an example of a “Twitter presidency” because the blog’s author said she can “hear the Trump administration laughing, like they had just posted a ‘gotcha’ comeback on Eisgruber’s Twitter feed.” Christopher Eisgruber is the president of Princeton University.
The blog claimed that this should be seen as “the start of another flurry of attacks on higher education and its autonomy from political interference.” Ironically, higher education is under attack because it is beholden to liberal and left-wing politics and is far detached from reality. For example, socialist and left-wing professors have indoctrinated college students for decades and the current social unrest is a direct consequence of said indoctrination.
Another example of irony in the blog said that maybe it is time for administrators and academics to work together to confront the Trump administration, after spending years at each other’s throats on labor disputes.
