> "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."

So... did the dean make a public Nazi salute or something? The double standard (if we can even call it a "standard") is getting rather tiring.

> "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students"

Of course suspending grants is probably the wrong way to go about it anyway, but since you brought this up... do you imply that it's false? I'm not in the US but I heard pretty interesting things about what was happening in universities following Oct 7.

Preventing Jews from entering the campus and threatening them are not protected by the 1st Amendment — that’s why UCLA settled the lawsuit for millions, because they had a duty to stop those acts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/29/ucla-lawsuit...

It’s more akin to the civil rights movement/counter movement when some universities ignored various assaults on black students (saying it wasn’t their job to police behavior).

The protesters were fine to criticize Israel, but then turning the rage to the actual American Jews on campus crossed the line.

Which isn't even true, UCLA came down hard on protesters and they did violate the students 1st amendment rights.

They do. The law is literally that you must equally protect all groups

They do to my knowledge, the quote is the specific violation of the civil rights act.

Thw law is very obviously being abused here by Trump and his administration to punish unfavored speech and unfavored groups. They dont care about equal protection one bit. They want to punish academics and universities so that Trump et al can controll their speech.

Was it really the Zionists that did this? Or a Trump administration that enjoys disrupting academia and experts in general.

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But government funding was set up in a way meant to counteract fickleness. Government actions are supposed to be proposed publicly, accept and consider public comments, and then allow legal arguments about the process and motivations. And funding is assigned by Congress, two legislative bodies with hundreds of members that follow extensive rules and procedures to do anything.

The current "fickleness" is from a single individual. The other branches of government are refusing to check out even criticize his actions. This is what would happen with any funding from individuals. The lesson we should be taking from this situation is either (1) controls on the government need to have more teeth and not rely solely on politicians, or (2) the US accepts authoritarianism right now and no Constitution would stop that.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems.

Funding from private sources who are usually more short-sighted and less transparent can't be the alternative. An alternative I can think of are international entities that have some semblance of independence from constituent nations. I think that for a democratic government, public funding is alright, as long as the government is, well, healthy. In this light the issue with funding is simply a symptom of a government that does not serve its citizens well, which is the root cause that must be cured.

> US government provides funding, US government tries to use that leverage to decide how the show will be run.

Pray tell where are the examples from previous administrations of how billions of dollars in funding was yanked or suspended from multiple colleges until they paid "settlement fees" just to make it go away and get their funding restored, without even any due process.

Yes, the gov have always exercised some pressure on institutions or shifting funding towards their priorities. But no one but Trump has engaged in blatant mafia-style extortion.

> Government funding is not an answer to long term problems

It has been said that government funding is the worst form of funding except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

He has only won two elections. In the first one, he lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote. In the second one, he did win the popular vote by 1.5%, which is hardly a convincing margin.

You're right, Trump is not a weird aberration; he's a natural progression of the Republican Party since at least Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s. I never thought I would live to see the John Birch Society go from radical crazies to mainstream

>> won his 3rd election

Really - I think that more or less confirms your bias.