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Dan Rather: Trump’s War on Science Is Outrageous!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
6

Dan Rather, the esteemed journalist, wrote on his blog Steady about the dreadful consequences of Trump’s defunding of science, medicine, and public health.

But on Friday night, when we weren’t looking for a controversial announcement, Trump fired every single member of the 24-person National Science Board. Why? The simplest answer is that the members of the board were not his sycophants. They allegiance is to science, not to the person of Donald J. Trump. He couldn’t control them. They had to go.

Dan Rather wrote:

We toss around terms like “American exceptionalism” far too easily. But there is little debate that, in areas of science and medicine, this country has long been the world leader. We have more top scientists, elite doctors, and preeminent researchers than anywhere else. Their work has meant people live longer, healthier lives.

It is also a cornerstone of American influence around the world.

Scientific and medical research requires significant funding. It has thrived because our elected officials have had the political will to provide a financial pipeline to the public and private sectors.

President Donald Trump is severing that lifeline.

As the mainstream media was renting tuxedos and getting manicures ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was busy pounding nails into the coffin of the American scientific research community.

Tucked away on Friday evening, in a terse, two-line email, the White House personnel office fired the entire National Science Board. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” the email read.

No reason was given in the email, and the White House has had no additional comment on the firings.

The independent, 24-person board is made up of top scientists and engineers who serve staggered, six-year terms, to ensure overlap between presidential administrations. They are chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

The board advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports a wide range of research, from Antarctic exploration to quantum computing. NSF-funded research helped develop the MRI machine, LASIK eye surgery, and Wi-Fi, among many other innovations. It distributes $9 billion in research grants annually.

“[I]t is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership,” President Harry Truman said in 1950, when he established the board.

Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, called the Trump purge “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally,” to the Los Angeles Times.

Although the president is often reluctant to explain why he does imprudent and detrimental things, if one looks hard enough, a reason can usually be found. In this case, there may be two.

Reason one: to save face. The board was set to meet in early May to work on the release of a new report. The report outlines how the U.S., once the world leader in scientific research, is losing ground to China. If there is no board, the report can’t be released.

Reason two: money. In its 2026 budget, the Trump administration recommended a 55% cut to the NSF. After lobbying by the National Science Board, Congress rejected the White House’s proposal and funded the NSF at 2025 levels.

To avoid the same fate for this year’s budget, which again recommends slashing the foundation’s funding, Trump did away with the board before its members could convince members of Congress.

Friday’s firings are just the latest in Trump’s long list of objectionable actions to cast doubt on scientific findings and thwart research.

The United States has been on the cutting edge of scientific and medical research since the end of World War II. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been the world leader in funding biomedical research. A 2020 study found that NIH-funded research was associated with every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

But all of that is now changing. And Trump is to blame.

Science is “explicitly designed to counter human self-deception,” psychologist Steven Pinker told Chris Mooney in his book “The Republican War on Science.”

When deception is your modus operandi, you will naturally try to squash, discount, and demonize the truth. Being anti-science helps protect established special interests. Think climate change denialism and fossil fuel companies.

Trump called the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at last year’s United Nations General Assembly. He said this even as the globe is in the midst of the warmest 10-year span on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The NSF’s board is not the first the Trump administration has hamstrung. In June of last year Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, fired the 17-person vaccine advisory board and replaced many with vaccine skeptics. Trump himself replaced leading scientists with tech billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The administration significantly cut funding to the National Cancer Institute, once the gold standard for rigorous, evidence-based research. It no longer funds mRNA research, a revolutionary technology that has the potential to radically improve cancer care.

It canceled 22 separate mRNA contracts, including one working on a vaccine for brain cancer in children. Kennedy is an mRNA skeptic, claiming the vaccines aren’t safe while providing no evidence.

Pancreatic cancer is an incurable disease with a dismal survival rate. Fortunately for pancreatic cancer patients, research into an mRNA vaccine was far enough along that the cuts didn’t affect the very promising treatment.

BioNTech, a German biomedical research company, partnered with Moderna, an American company, to develop pancreatic cancer vaccines using mRNA technology.

The technology, already in development when the pandemic hit, was used to create the Covid vaccine. The Lancet estimated that mRNA vaccines prevented 14.4 to 19.8 million deaths just in the first year of use.

MRNA vaccine technology was in the pipeline thanks to billions of dollars in federal grants over decades. This allowed researchers to get Covid vaccines to market incredibly quickly. This technology is now helping people with pancreatic cancer live years longer than ever before.

Moderna is also using mRNA therapy in combination with other drugs to cut melanoma death rates by 49%. Applications for a variety of cancers are in the works.

Paul Darren Bieniasz, a British-American virologist, wrote in The Guardian, “If we continue the destructive course plotted by this administration, medicines that would otherwise have saved lives in future generations, will not be invented. Technologies that would have ensured future employment and prosperity in the U.S. will not be devised. Solutions that allow the generation of power while causing less damage to the environment, will never be developed. Clearly, if we decline to nurture science, the lives of future Americans will be shorter, sicker and poorer.”

While Donald Trump won’t be around to see that, millions of Americans will. Trump doesn’t like inconvenient truths. Science is a kaleidoscope of inconvenient truths. Rather than deal with them like the world leader he should be, he gaslights, he rages, he denies all.

And as with so much else in this administration, we the people pay the price.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Health, Injustice, Medicine, Science, Stupid, Trump

Jan Resseger: Linda McMahon Decides Which Federal Programs Live or Die, Not Congress

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger, the most reliable analyst of federal programs, reports on the Trump administration’s decisions to increase or decrease or eliminate federal programs at will–regardless of Congressuonal direction.

By the way, be sure to read The New Yorker‘s fascinating dissection of the career path of wrestling entrepreneur and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Wrestling prepared her for politics, says writer Zach Helfand.

A brief excerpt:

Eventually, Linda McMahon came to be “tombstoned” (held upside down and slammed on her head) by a wrestler named Kane, “stunnered” (put in a three-quarter facelock jawbreaker) by Stone Cold Steve Austin, sexually assaulted, cheated on, driven to seek a divorce, lusted over, and sedated. Vince tried to get Shane to slap her in a scene, but Shane [her son] refused. Stephanie [her daughter] slapped her, though, and she slapped Stephanie. McMahon’s most memorable story arc involved Vince demanding a divorce, triggering a nervous breakdown in the ring which rendered her catatonic. For months, Vince would roll out her limp body in a wheelchair and subject her to various humiliations. The wrestler Trish Stratus, who was kissed and groped by Vince in a scene in front of a vegetative McMahon, has recalled that during rehearsal Linda asked, “If I drool, would that be more effective for my character?”

Before the election, I foolishly predicted that Trump would never get rid of the Department of Education because many Republicans support it. I did not anticipate that Trump would appoint a Secretary willing to hollow it out by transferring most of its programs to other departments.

Resseger follows up by showing how McMahon has cut and rearranged the budget:

If you have been tracking what is happening to federal funding for the nation’s public schools, you won’t be surprised to learn that Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman continues his role as the best reporter on this subject.  Here are two updates from last week.

How will federal funding flow this year once most of the Department of Education’s programs have been sent to other federal departments through interagency agreements?

Lieberman reassures state education officials and school district leaders that most key programs will continue to have their funds released “through the U.S. Department of Education’s grant portal this summer… Programs like Title I aid for disadvantaged students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)… allocate funds for school districts, but by law the money flows first to states in two batches, one on July 1 and another three months later… In a statement, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency is ‘committed to delivering formula funding by the July 1 deadline.”

Operation of Title I is traveling to the Department of Labor, and the work IDEA is traveling to the Department of Health and Human Services.  Lieberman describes what is expected to happen with Title I: “The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration in recent months has advertised new education grant competitions ‘on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education,’ and the two agencies have touted their collaboration in jointly running the competitions.  Still, most staffers overseeing those programs still work for the Department of Education. The postings announcing grant availability list Education department email addresses under the section with contact information.”

To what extent did the Trump Administration Violate the Congressional power of the purse last year?

Lieberman reports that data recently released by the Department of Education shows that under Linda McMahon’s leadership, the Department of Education “sidestepped Congress on more than $1 billion in education spending.”

“The Education Department, under President Donald Trump, subsequently subtracted appropriated funding from more than a dozen programs and instead added those dollars to other priorities, according to an Education Week analysis of congressional justification documents the White House published this month as part of its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal… The Education Department typically publishes its ‘spending plan’ mere weeks after Congress passes a new fiscal year budget, confirming allocations lawmakers laid out in their budget bills.  Congress approved fiscal 2025 spending (last year’s final federal budget) in March of last year, but the Education Department’s spending plan never materialized. That means the recently published numbers offer the first glimpse at how the executive branch decided to spend funds Congress appropriated more than a year ago.”

Here are merely some of Lieberman’s examples of what the new numbers show.  “For four Education Department programs, the Trump administration spent more than what Congress had prescribed: charter schools ($60 million added), civics instruction ($140 million added), historically Black colleges and universities ($439 million added), and tribal colleges ($56 million added).  To come up with those added expenditures, the Trump administration effectively zeroed out another four programs entirely, rerouting a total of $463 million for teacher preparation, public television, university foreign-language studies programs, and Hispanic-serving higher education institutions.  For another eight programs, the executive branch underspent the allocation Congress approved. That included redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars for minority-serving institutions within a higher education grant program—Aid for Institutional Development—that the Trump administration has argued violates the Constitution.”

Lieberman explains where McMahon’s department found $60 million to add to charter school spending: “To bolster the Charter Schools program, the agency depleted the entire $31 million allocation for the Ready to Learn grant program, which supports the development of educational TV programming for young children. The remaining $29 million boot for charter schools came from portions of fiscal 2025 allocations for four other programs: Magnet Schools ($14 million), Javits Gifted and Talented ($9 million),  Statewide Family Engagement Centers ($3 million), and Assistance in Arts Education ($3 million). The Trump administration last year slashed ongoing grants for each of those four programs as well as dozens of others, arguing in many cases that individual grantees were engaged in diversity-related initiatives that contradicted the president’s priories. But for most of those changes, the department offered no public announcement, instead notifying individual grant recipients with little warning that their awards had been discontinued.”

Perhaps there will be less cutting or rearranging of Congressionally allocated education dollars in the coming year: “Lawmakers included language in the fiscal 2026 budget law they approved in February that much more explicitly restricts movement of money from one program to another. The Department has already begun soliciting new grant applications for programs it moved to disrupt or shutter last year… Lieberman reports that the ranking members of the Senate and House appropriations committees, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) “said they prioritized unambiguous guardrails in the fiscal 2026 budget to block the Trump administration from further reprogramming funds.”

Lieberman adds, however, that Office  of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought has threatened to use “pocket rescissions,’ in which the executive branch proposes to rescind appropriated funds so late in the fiscal year that the money expires whether Congress approves the changes or not. In other words, this year, Congress could allow Congressionally appropriated dollars expire.

Lieberman quotes Sarah Abernathy, who served for a decade as executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a federal budget advocacy group: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an administration say, ‘We have tons of authority to make our own decisions about funding levels for programs.’ “

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Extremism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Viktor Orban’s Best Friends: Trump and Putin

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
14

A very important election takes place on Sunday. Hungarians will vote whether to keep Viktor Orban or to replace him with Peter Magyar, leader of the center-right party Tisza. The latest polls show Magyar leading Orban’s Fidesz party. The election is close, and there are many undecided voters.

Orban is a favorite of Trump and his MAGA base. He is also admired by Putin because he has been a disruptive force within NATO, blocking aid for Ukraine. Orban has fascist tendencies: he has clamped down of freedom of the press and expressed hostility to immigrants. He has a special hatred for gays.

JD Vance visited Hungary this week to convert support for Orban’s “illiberal democracy.”

In this post in The American Prospect, editor-at-large Harold Meyerson describes what is at stake in Sunday’s election in Hungary.

The friends of Viktor Orbán

Trump and Putin, Bibi and Tucker Carlson, thug-ocrats of all nations flock to Orbán’s banner.

If you wanted to find some way to cluster in a single room the individuals who pose a genuine threat to liberal freedoms, egalitarian values, and scientific epistemology, you might want to call a meeting of the Viktor Orbán fan club. There, Donald Trump would rub elbows with Vladimir Putin, JD Vance with Xi Jinping, Tucker Carlson with—yes—Bibi Netanyahu. Orbán, whose longtime rule over Hungary is threatened by Sunday’s election there, is uniquely positioned at the center of a set of overlapping Venn diagrams representing every xenophobic, obscurantist, homophobic, ethno-nationalist, and anti-democratic thug either currently in power or maneuvering to get there.

Right now, the two major players working to save Orbán from defeat on Sunday are Trump and Putin. Ukraine, Schmukraine: Both see in Orbán a fellow immigrant-hater, who, like them, has walled off his borders, seized control of his nation’s judiciary, created (through the miracle of kleptocracy) a new oligarchic elite devoted to bolstering his rule, taken control of the news media (both public and private), turned education into indoctrination, banished an entire university endowed by George Soros (whose legacy includes bringing down Putin’s beloved USSR and backing anti-Trump candidates and initiatives), served as Putin and Trump’s inside operator to undermine the European Union, mobilized homophobia when it’s been politically useful, and done his damnedest to curtail freedom of speech. Is it any wonder that Putin’s agents have tried to rig the upcoming election in his favor, or that MAGA culture warriors have rushed to bolster his cause because he’s demonstrated that even partial authoritarianism can impede the woke and exile the empiricists? Is it any wonder that Vance was stumping for him in Budapest last weekend as a way to solidify his own support from the American MAGAnauts whose affection he needs to rekindle? Is it any wonder that Trump himself has endorsed Orbán, or that Putin sees him as his man inside the EU?

Idolizing Orbán is also the common thread linking Tucker Carlson, who probably has done more to promote Orbán to MAGA conservatives than anyone else, and Bibi Netanyahu, who sent a message last month to the MAGA faithful attending their annual CPAC conference in Budapest, hailing Orbán as a leader who can “protect against this rising tide” of Islamic terrorism. “Viktor Orbán,” he added, “means safety, security, stability.” If that didn’t suffice, Yair Netanyahu, Bibi’s son, traveledto that Budapest conference to echo his father’s endorsement.

Orbán has emerged as a kind of Jeffrey Epstein of geopolitics. Just as Epstein managed to assemble a mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of sex with underaged girls, so Orbán has also brought together an equivalently mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of ethno-nationalistic anti-liberalism—a cause, clearly, that can unite communists and capitalists, Jews and antisemites.


The Trump-Orbán lovefest is nothing new. Orbán has endorsed Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns, and last October, Trump rewarded him by exempting Hungary from the sanctions his administration has placed on nations buying Russian oil and gas. Trump later made clear that this agreement was specifically between him and Orbán; were Orbán not re-elected (the most recent polls show him trailing his opponent by roughly ten percentage points), Trump made clear there was no guarantee that he would continue to honor it.

But Orbán’s ties to America’s Christian nationalists go beyond Trump’s “what’s in it for me?” ethos. When a number of Hungary’s European neighbors were welcoming Muslim refugees a decade ago, Orbán built barricades on the borders and made clear that Muslims were not welcome. While endorsing Orbán during his drop-in to Budapest, Vance said he’d come there “because of the moral cooperation between our two countries,” that each was engaged in a “defense of Western civilization” based on their common adherence to “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

As even the most cursory course in Hungarian history can make clear, one of the nation’s defining Christian values has long been antisemitism. Imagine the kind of 20th-century Silicon Valley that Hungary could have cultivated had it not compelled such Jewish scientific and mathematical geniuses as John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, and Theodore von Kármán to leave their homeland in their late teens or early twenties. Imagine how many more Hungarian Jews would have survived the Holocaust had Hungarian Christians not been steeped in antisemitism well before the Gestapo arrived.

“Will you stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers?” Vance concluded. “Then, my friends, go to the polls and stand for Viktor Orbán.”

But, hey: If Bibi is willing to overlook such incidents, who am I to cavil?

Of course, there have always been lots of Hungarians who never cottoned to Orbán, the God of their fathers notwithstanding. Like most big, cosmopolitan cities, Budapest has been a bastion of anti-Orbán sentiment, favorably disposed to the arts and sciences; his support, like that of most Christian nationalist leaders, is disproportionately rural and parochial. But the redistribution of Hungarian wealth and income to the oligarch class that Orbán has created has apparently taken a political toll even among some longtime Orbánistas—much as its American equivalent seems to be taking a political toll on Republicans here in the States.

JD Vance was right: Illiberal kleptocratic Christian nationalism is on the ballot in Hungary this Sunday, just as it will be on the ballots that Americans will cast in November. Here and there, may it be massively repudiated.


Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, International

A Song About Trump’s Education Policies: “We Believe in Local Control”

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2026 //
4

A good way to start off April Fool’s Day is by listening to this song by a group of young people in Colorado. The lyrics were written by Kevin Welner and are posted at the website of the National Education Policy Center.

The Trump regime says clearly “We believe in local control.” Except when they don’t.

Trump has issued executive orders about what may or may not be taught. Trump’s executive order #14253, signed on March 27, 2025, was titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” What it meant in practice was to censor any teaching or displays that showed the shameful aspects of American history, and to focus instead on “patriotic history.”

Trump has launched a campaign to oust diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as gender studies, African-American studies, and studies of other groups.

Trump has tried to seize control of institutions of higher education institutions by falsely accusing them of anti-Semitism. He has sought to control the admission of students, the curriculum, and the hiring of faculty.

Trump has taken institutions of higher education hostage by withholding or cancelling billions of dollars for research into medicine and science unless they turned control over to the federal government.

But, as the song says, “We believe in local control!”

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, Higher Education, Lies, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

International Report: Democracy in the USA is in Jeopardy

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
2

The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden, publishes an annual report on the state of democracy around the world. In the recently published report, the authors made clear that democracy in the world is in retreat. Nowhere has it declined as dramatically as in the United States.

A special section of the report is focused on the United States. Under Trump, democracy in the USA is under attack. The President has centralized power in his office. The Republican-dominated Congress has ceded almost all of its Constitutional powers to Trump. The word “almost” may be an overstatement, as it’s difficult to remember an issue when Congress said no to a Presidential power grab.

The V-DEM report begins its special section about the “autocratization” of power in the United States:

*Under Trump’s presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.

Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far-reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.

*The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

*Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.

*Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.

*Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.

*Electoral components of democracy remain stable. Election-specific indicators are re-assessed only in electoral years, and the 2025 scores are based on the quality of the 2024 elections.

The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times. Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations. The level of democracy on the LDI is dwindling to 1965 level – the year that most regard as the start of a real, modern democracy in the USA.

Yet the deficiencies of American democracy today are fundamentally different from that of the Civil Rights era. As the V-Dem data and other evidence below show, the autocratization now is marked by executive overreach, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civilliberties, and dissenting voices.

The Most Dramatic Decline in American History

In 2023, the USA scored 0.79 on the LDI – shortly before the 2024 election year when first deteriorations were registered. The scores plummeted to 0.57 in 2025 (Figure 22). With such a sharp drop on the LDI, the level of democracy at the end of 2025 is back to the 1965 level. Symbolically, that is the year that most analysts consider the USA began its transition to a real democracy.

Democracy in the USA is now at its worst in 60 years. We are not alone in this assessment. Professor Steven Levitsky at Harvard University says the regime in the USA is now some type of authoritarianism. The Century Foundation argues that “American democracy is already collapsing…”

By magnitude of decline on the LDI, the 2025 plunge is the largest one-year drop in American history going back to 1789 – that is, in the entire period covered by V-Dem data. Only Trump 1.0 compares, when the LDI in the USA fell from 0.85 to 0.73 in four years, bringing the country back to its 1976 level and far below the regional average (Figure 22). American democracy survived Trump 1.0 but did not recover fully.

One notable shift is the transformation of the Republican Party to endorsing a far-right, nationalist, and anti-pluralist agenda. Nationalist, anti-liberal, far-right parties and leaders have largely driven the “third waveof autocratization.” Yet the USA stands out as the only case where such movement seized control over one party in a rigid two-party system.

Please open the link and read the report to review the sources and to understand how dramatically democracy has been undercut during the first year of Trump’s second term.

The Founding Fathers thought they had written a Constitution that would prevent the rise of tyranny. They were wrong.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Health, Privatization, Separation of church and state, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: How Fascists Gain Power

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
2

Heather Cox Richardson obtained a pamphlet written during World War II for our troops overseas. Its purpose was to explain the tactics of fascists: how they gain power, how they lie to distort reality, how they use hatred to divide and conquer.

The pamphlet is insightful, incisive, and remarkably relevant to the world we live in now.

What we are learning is that “It can happen here.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge to preserve our democracy.

She writes:

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History

Harvard President Blames Faculty Activism for Repression of Free Speech

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
12

Harvard University’s President Alan Garber said in a recent discussion that faculty activism in their classes chilled students’ free speech and created a repressive climate on campus.

An article in The Harvard Crimson reported on President Garber’s comments.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.

In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.

“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.

The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom…

Though Garber has carved some exceptions to the policy — notably when he, in his personal capacity, condemned a Palestine Solidarity Committee post marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack — he has increasingly emphasized restraint, particularly in the classroom.

“I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom,” he said….

In his responses, Garber echoed the sentiment of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences reportreleased last January, which affirmed professors’ right to “extramural speech” but warned that instructors must proactively encourage disagreement in the classroom to avoid alienating students…

Instead of relying primarily on punishment, Garber touted changes to University orientations — including the addition of a module on discussing controversial topics — alongside the expansive reports produced by Harvard’s twin task forces on combating bias toward Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates.

“It’s about learning how to listen and how to speak in an empathetic way,” he said.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech

Three More Universities Reject Trump’s “Compact”

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2025 //
8

It seems that universities have a stronger spine than large law firms or media conglomerates.

Trump offered nine prestigious universities a deal: Adopt the Trumpian rightwing policies and you won’t have any difficulty getting federal funds in the future.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was first to say no. In the past few days, three more universities told Linda McMahon, wrestling entrepreneur, that they would not sign the “Compact.”

Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California said no. No way. Our academic freedom and independence from federal control are not for sale.

Good for them!

Categories Academic Freedom, Higher Education, Trump

MIT’s President Rejects Trump “Compact” to Abandon Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2025 //
9

The U.S. Department of Education invited 9 eminent universities to join a “compact” in which they would adopt Trump priorities in exchange for assurances of future federal funding. Trump priorities include abolishing any efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; assuring that rightwing views are accorded equal time; and agreeing that students would be admitted solely by merit (i.e. test scores). This “compact” means intrusion of the federal government into the internal decision-making of the university.

The first institution to respond was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its president Dr. Sally Kornbluth, a cell biologist, wrote this letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, a wrestling entrepreneur:

Regarding the Compact

October 10, 2025

Sally Kornbluth, President

Dear members of the MIT community, 

The U.S. Department of Education recently sent MIT and eight other institutions a proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” along with a letter asking that MIT review the document.

From the messages I’ve received, I know this is on the minds of many of you and that you care deeply about the Institute’s mission, its values and each other. I do too. 

After considerable thought and consultation with leaders from across MIT, today I sent the following reply to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. 

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

Dear Madam Secretary,

I write in response to your letter of October 1, inviting MIT to review a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” I acknowledge the vital importance of these matters.

I appreciated the chance to meet with you earlier this year to discuss the priorities we share for American higher education.

As we discussed, the Institute’s mission of service to the nation directs us to advance knowledge, educate students and bring knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. We do that in line with a clear set of values, with excellence above all. Some practical examples:

These values and other MIT practices meet or exceed many standards outlined in the document you sent. We freely choose these values because they’re right, and we live by them because they support our mission – work of immense value to the prosperity, competitiveness, health and security of the United States. And of course, MIT abides by the law.

The document also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution. And fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone.

In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence. In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.

As you know, MIT’s record of service to the nation is long and enduring. Eight decades ago, MIT leaders helped invent a scientific partnership between America’s research universities and the U.S. government that has delivered extraordinary benefits for the American people. We continue to believe in the power of this partnership to serve the nation.

Sincerely,
Sally Kornbluth

cc
Ms. May Mailman
Mr. Vincent Haley

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Ethics, Higher Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

M.I.T. Rejects Trump “Compact” That Offers Federal Money for Academic Freedom

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2025 //
13

The Trump administration used a threat to try to cow leading universities to abandon their independence. The administration called their offer a “Compact,” but in reality it was an offer of protection money. The old way of the Mafia: “Pay us and we will make sure no one breaks your windows or vandalizes your store.”

Vimal Patel of The New York Times reported:

M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump administration’s higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.

The proposal, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine universities and would require colleges to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would “belittle” conservative ideas.

In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other requirements it demands, including those that would restrict free expression.

“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement that “any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”

“The best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” she added. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and common sense policies.”

The White House has said it wants responses from the universities by Oct. 20. The other eight colleges are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

The compacts have been deeply unpopular among faculty members, who view them as yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to force top universities to adopt its agenda.

Categories Academic Freedom, Corruption, Higher Education, Trump
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