特朗普称大学被“马克思主义狂热分子”控制。他有一个“夺回”它们的计划
【中美创新时报2024 年 10 月 28 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）在整个总统竞选期间，唐纳德·特朗普及其盟友一直抨击大学是“觉醒”灌输工厂，它们激化年轻人反对美国，并以高昂的学费欺骗学生。《波士顿环球报》记者Mike Damiano 和 Hilary Burns对此作了下述报道。
特朗普表示，如果当选，他将从目前控制大学的“马克思主义疯子和疯子”手中“夺回”大学。他的竞选搭档 JD Vance 曾鼓励支持者“攻击大学”，他称赞匈牙利独裁领导人夺取了该国高等教育机构的控制权。
这样的言论可能会被视为特朗普的夸夸其谈。但《环球报》回顾了一年的竞选视频、政策声明和高层最近的言论共和党人则暗示了另一件事：在他煽动性的言论背后，隐藏着一系列具体的政策，特朗普第二届政府可以采取这些政策对美国大学施加广泛的影响。
“有很多手段和工具会在第一天引起他们的注意，”众议院第二高级别共和党人史蒂夫·斯卡利塞 (Steve Scalise) 本月初在与一个游说团体的会议上讨论了如何惩罚涉嫌侵犯民权的大学时表示。
特朗普及其盟友表示，特朗普第二届政府将用新的机构取代大学现有的监督机构——这些机构对资金和公平做法拥有影响力——以捍卫“美国传统和西方文明”。特朗普表示，他将加强对反犹太主义和种族歧视的民权调查，保守派已经将这两个术语从熟悉的用法颠倒过来，用来指平权行动和校园多元化计划。而且，至关重要的是，他将切断对被视为违反联邦规则的大学的联邦资助。
高等教育专家表示，这些计划虽然激进，但切实可行，因为它们要求使用总统控制下的现有联邦权力。如果特朗普赢得大选，即使共和党不控制国会，他也可以通过监管和行政行动来落实这些和其他提案。
“作为总统，你对所有这些不同的[行政部门]机构拥有很大的管辖权，”斯卡利斯在美国以色列公共事务委员会举行的华盛顿会议上表示。《卫报》首先发布了他讲话的视频。
对他的竞选团队及其支持者来说，特朗普承诺打击高等教育，代表着对那些在他们看来过于左倾、偏离了创始使命的机构的迟来的清算。
“大学是这个国家社会契约的一部分。它们教育我们的孩子。它们创造重要的知识产权，”万斯在 5 月接受哥伦比亚广播公司采访时表示。“但如果它们没有很好地教育我们的孩子……那么它们就没有履行自己的承诺。”特朗普竞选团队没有回应置评请求。
但一些批评人士认为，特朗普关于高等教育的言论是一个沉迷于行政权力、想要打击政治敌人、压制异议的人的言论。
“这就是独裁者所为，”研究民主和威权主义的哈佛大学政府学教授史蒂文·列维茨基说。“左翼、中间派、右翼的独裁者都瞄准大学。”
特朗普本人曾称赞中国、俄罗斯和匈牙利的独裁领导人。万斯在接受哥伦比亚广播公司采访时谈到维克托·欧尔班接管该国大学一事，他说匈牙利总统“做出了一些明智的决定，我们可以借鉴。”
从某种程度上讲，特朗普的联邦高等教育政策计划是共和党思想的延伸，这些思想已经在一些州得到实施。近年来，共和党州长和州立法机构禁止设立多元化和包容性办公室，用意识形态盟友取代公立大学领导，并削减被视为具有自由主义倾向的课程。
到目前为止，这些努力大多局限于红州，但高等教育业内人士担心特朗普可能会在全国范围内实施类似的政策。“我们已经看到州政府将高等教育政治化的方式，如果在联邦层面这样做，将带来毁灭性的后果，”塔夫茨大学社会学教授娜塔莎·瓦里库 (Natasha Warikoo) 表示。
特朗普高等教育计划的各个部分已在特朗普的演讲、政策声明和特朗普认可的共和党全国委员会纲领中描述。类似的提议也包含在 2025 计划中，这是特朗普第二届政府的一项全面计划，由特朗普的盟友制定，但特朗普已否认。
该计划的主要目标是联邦资金——以学生经济援助和研究补助金的形式——大多数学院和大学都依赖这些资金来维持运营。总计每年高达数百亿美元。要获得这笔关键资金，机构必须遵守联邦规则，包括民权法。要想从学生经济援助中受益，他们必须获得联邦政府认可的认证机构的批准。
这种安排为特朗普创造了几个可以利用的筹码。
“我们的秘密武器，”他在去年的竞选视频中说道，“将是大学认证系统。”
这个鲜为人知的系统很少出现在总统竞选中，但它是美国大学系统运作的核心。认证机构，如监管哈佛大学、麻省理工学院等大学的新英格兰高等教育委员会，为学院和大学的学术质量、财务健康和治理制定了标准。学校需要获得认证，才能让学生有资格获得联邦财政援助，大多数学生依靠这笔援助来支付学费。
“换句话说，几乎每一所学院和大学的继续存在都需要认证，”波士顿大学前校长办公室主任彼得·伍德说。
虽然认证机构是私人非营利组织，但它们只有在获得联邦政府批准的情况下才能认证学校。由总统任命并向其汇报的教育部长可以随时撤销该批准。
这赋予总统对认证机构的广泛权力——这是特朗普计划的一个关键因素。
“当我回到白宫时，”特朗普在去年的竞选视频中说，“我将解雇那些让我们的大学被马克思主义狂热分子和疯子控制的激进左翼认证机构。然后，我们将接受新认证机构的申请，他们将再次一劳永逸地对大学实施真正的标准。”他在 9 月的一次竞选活动中重申了这一誓言。
斯卡利塞在本月的华盛顿会议上说：“我们正在取消你的认证。你想引起他们的注意吗？派对结束了。”
高等教育专家指出，联邦政府本身不能撤销学校的认证。但它可以对认证机构产生重大影响，并撤销其官方认可——用特朗普的话来说，就是“解雇”他们。
大学与学院理事会协会的高等教育财务和治理专家拉里·拉德对特朗普能否通过行政行动无缝实施其计划表示怀疑。他指出，拜登总统在实现一些高等教育优先事项方面遇到了困难，例如学生贷款减免，但因法律挑战而受阻。“仅仅因为他拥有名义上的权力并不意味着它会成为现实，”拉德谈到特朗普的计划时说道。
特朗普及其盟友表示，他们计划使用的另一个杠杆是联邦民权法。
特朗普在竞选视频中表示：“我将指示司法部对继续进行种族歧视的学校和以公平为幌子持续进行明显非法歧视的学校提起联邦民权诉讼。”
联邦政府有权调查高校是否存在歧视行为，或是否为受保护群体（如种族、性别或国籍群体）营造了敌对环境。如果政府调查人员发现违规行为，联邦官员可以取消学校获得联邦资助的资格。
“这是针对民权侵犯的[官方]补救措施”，无党派个人权利和表达基金会的律师兼校园言论自由倡导者泰勒·考沃德 (Tyler Coward) 说。实际上，更典型的结果是与联邦政府达成协议，大学承诺改变其行为或政策。
除了动用司法部，特朗普政府还可以通过教育部调查涉嫌侵犯公民权利的行为。去年，教育部已经收到数十起正式投诉，指控大学允许反犹太主义、仇视伊斯兰教和其他形式的仇恨滋生，从而违反了民权法。共和党国会领导人已将大学校长召集到华盛顿，就校园反犹太主义举行听证会，这导致三名常春藤盟校校长辞职，其中包括哈佛大学的克劳迪娜·盖伊。
“我们已经举行了听证会。我们已经准备好了，”斯卡利斯在美国以色列公共事务委员会举行的会议上说。他说，如果特朗普获胜，联邦政府可能会扣留数十亿美元的联邦资金，用于那些联邦政府认为侵犯学生公民权利的学校。
言论自由倡导者考沃德表示，誓言执行民权法本身并没有什么值得担心的。他说，在过去一年里，自以色列-哈马斯战争爆发以来，犹太学生遭到袭击，抗议者阻止学生进入部分校园，这可能构成侵犯公民权利的行为。
但他也警告说，民权执法可能会走得太远，危及言论自由。他说，即使在拜登政府执政期间，教育部也敦促大学打击受第一修正案保护的亲巴勒斯坦言论。他说，特朗普及其盟友提出的一些政策可能会进一步增加大学的压力，并导致更多的言论压制。
考沃德说：“当这些机构在学生的第一修正案权利和失去联邦资金之间做出选择时，几乎所有机构都会选择审查而不是失去联邦资金。”
伍德曾任波士顿大学行政人员，现任右翼全国学者协会主席，他说特朗普的一些计划让他觉得很合理，包括认证改革的前景。
他和其他保守的高等教育批评人士表示，认证机构已经偏离了他们最初的使命，即确保学校财务健全并提供足够的教育。伍德说，现在他们公然参与政治，推动 DEI 优先事项。
但特朗普计划的批评者认为，权力的争夺可能会破坏大学的独立性。
“无论你是通过彻底取消某所机构的资格、对其捐赠征税，还是通过其他预算拨款来争夺联邦研究经费，你都在利用财政权力来制定治理政策，而到目前为止，这在很大程度上是政府作用和高等教育作用之间一道相当明确的防火墙，以产生知识，”哈佛大学肯尼迪学院历史、种族和公共政策教授 Khalil Gibran Muhammad 说。
Muhammad 还表示，特朗普提出的政策可能会对有色人种、女性和性别不合规范的人产生不成比例的影响。 2025 项目政策文件呼吁国会削减“区域研究”的资金，例如性别研究或非裔美国人研究，这些领域的教师队伍中白人和男性人数都少于其他领域。
穆罕默德说，如果特朗普兑现承诺，“我们可能会看到高等教育领域大规模清洗有色人种教师”。
一些批评特朗普的人说，他发誓要影响大学，这与他们眼中特朗普日益独裁的政治相一致。
哈佛大学政治学家列维茨基认为特朗普是独裁者，他说大学是主要目标，因为“它们对精英有很大的影响力，拥有很多文化资本，通常拥有相当多的资源，而且，无论政府或政权是什么颜色，大学几乎总是异议和反对的堡垒。”
特朗普的盟友说，这种清算早就该进行了。
在接受哥伦比亚广播公司采访时，万斯说：“我认为说需要政治解决方案是完全合理的。”
题图：唐纳德·特朗普誓言要从“马克思主义疯子和疯子”手中“夺回”大学。Alex Brandon/美联社
附原英文报道：
Trump says universities are controlled by ‘Marxist maniacs.’ He has a plan to ‘reclaim’ them.
By Mike Damiano and Hilary Burns Globe Staff,Updated October 27, 2024
Donald Trump has vowed to “reclaim” universities from “Marxist maniacs and lunatics.”Alex Brandon/Associated Press
Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump and his allies have lambasted universities as “woke” indoctrination mills that radicalize youths against America and rip off students with inflated tuition.
Trump has said that, if elected, he will “reclaim” universities from the “Marxist maniacs and lunatics” who currently control them. His running mate, JD Vance, who once exhorted supporters to “attack the universities,” has praised the authoritarian leader of Hungary for seizing control of that country’s institutions of higher education.
Such remarks could be dismissed as Trumpian bombast. But a Globe review of a year’s worth of campaign videos, policy statements, and recent remarks by top Republicans suggests something else: that behind his incendiary words lies a set of specific policies that a second Trump administration could pursue to exert wide-ranging influence over American universities.
“There’s a lot of levers and tools that will get their attention day one,” Steve Scalise, the second-highest-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, said at a meeting with a lobbying group early this month while discussing ways to punish universities for alleged civil rights violations.
Trump and his allies have said a second Trump administration would replace universities’ existing oversight agencies — which wield clout over funding and fair practices — with new ones that would defend “the American tradition and Western civilization.” Trump says he would ramp up civil rights investigations into antisemitism and racial discrimination, a term conservatives have inverted from familiar usage to refer to affirmative action and campus diversity initiatives. And, crucially, he would cut off federal funding to universities deemed to be in violation of federal rules.
The plans are aggressive but feasible, higher education experts said, because they call for using existing federal powers that are under the control of the president. If Trump wins the election, he could follow through on these and other proposals through regulation and executive actions even if the Republican Party does not control Congress.
“You have a lot of jurisdiction as president with all of these different [executive branch] agencies,” Scalise said at the Washington meeting held by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The Guardian first published video of the remarks.
To his campaign and its supporters, Trump’s promise to crack down on higher education represents an overdue reckoning for institutions that have become, in their view, excessively left-leaning and have strayed from their founding missions.
“Universities are part of a social contract in this country. They educate our children. They produce important intellectual property,” Vance said in a CBS interview in May. “But if they’re not educating our children well … then they’re not meeting their end of the bargain.” The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
But some critics hear Trump’s pronouncements about higher education as the rhetoric of a man who revels in executive power and wants to move against his political enemies and quash dissent.
“This is what authoritarians do,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor who studies democracy and authoritarianism. “Authoritarians of the left, of the center, of the right go after universities.”
Trump himself has praised the authoritarian leaders of China, Russia, and Hungary. Vance said in a CBS interview reflecting on Viktor Orbán’s takeover of his country’s universities that the Hungarian president “has made some smart decisions there that we could learn from.”
In some ways, the Trump plans for federal higher education policy are an extension of Republican ideas that have already been implemented in some states. In recent years, Republican governors and state legislatures have banned diversity and inclusion offices, replaced public university leaders with ideological allies, and cut back on courses viewed as having a liberal slant.
So far, those efforts have mostly been confined to red states, but higher education insiders fear that Trump could implement similar policies nationally. “We already see the way that state governments have been politicizing higher education, and to do that at a federal level would be devastating,” said Natasha Warikoo, a Tufts University sociology professor.
The pieces of the Trump plan for higher education have been described in Trump speeches, policy statements, and the Trump-endorsed platform of the Republican National Committee. Similar proposals are also included in Project 2025, a sweeping playbook for a second Trump administration that was created by Trump allies and which Trump has disavowed.
The plan’s primary target is the federal funding — in the form of student financial aid and research grants — that most colleges and universities depend on to stay in business. In total, it amounts to tens of billions of dollars a year. To receive that crucial funding, institutions must be in compliance with federal rules, including civil rights laws. And to benefit from student financial aid they must have the stamp of approval of an accrediting agency recognized by the federal government.
That arrangement creates several points of leverage that Trump could exploit.
“Our secret weapon,” he said in a campaign video last year, “will be the college accreditation system.”
That obscure system, which has rarely if ever featured in a presidential campaign, is at the core of how the American university system operates. Accrediting agencies, such as the New England Commission of Higher Education, which oversees Harvard, MIT, and others, set the standards for academic quality, financial health, and governance of colleges and universities. Schools need their accreditation to make their students eligible for federal financial aid, which most students rely on to cover tuition.
“In other words, accreditation is needed for the continued existence of almost every college and university,” said Peter Wood, a former chief of staff to the president of Boston University.
Although the accrediting agencies are private nonprofits, they can only accredit schools if they are approved by the federal government. And the secretary of education, who is appointed by and reports to the president, can withdraw that approval at any time.
That gives the president sweeping authority over accreditors — which is a key factor in Trump’s plans.
“When I return to the White House,” Trump said in the campaign video last year, “I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors, who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.” He reiterated a version of that vow at a campaign event in September.
Scalise, at the Washington meeting this month, said: “We’re taking away your accreditation. You want to get their attention? Party’s over.”
Higher education experts have noted that the federal government itself cannot revoke a school’s accreditation. But it can wield significant influence over the accreditors and revoke their official recognition — that is, “fire” them, in Trump’s parlance.
Larry Ladd, a higher education finance and governance expert with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, expressed some skepticism that Trump would be able to seamlessly carry out his plans through executive action. He pointed to President Biden’s struggles to achieve some of his higher education priorities, such as student loan forgiveness, which was held up by legal challenges. “Just because he has the nominal power doesn’t mean it will become a reality,” Ladd said of Trump’s plans.
Another lever Trump and allies say they plan to use is federal civil rights law.
“I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination and schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity,” Trump said in the campaign video.
The federal government has the power to investigate colleges and universities for discrimination or for creating a hostile environment for protected classes, such as race, sex, or national origin groups. If government investigators find violations, federal officials can revoke a school’s eligibility for federal funding.
“That is the [official] remedy” for civil rights violations, said Tyler Coward, a lawyer and campus free speech advocate with the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In practice, the more typical outcome has been an agreement with the federal government in which the university promises to change its behavior or policies.
In addition to using the Justice Department, a second Trump administration could investigate alleged civil rights violations through the Department of Education. In the last year, the department has fielded dozens of official complaints alleging that universities are violating civil rights laws by allowing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hate to fester. Republican congressional leaders have summoned university presidents to Washington for hearings on campus antisemitism, which contributed to the resignations of three Ivy League presidents, including Harvard’s Claudine Gay.
“We’ve had the hearings. We’ve got it teed up,” Scalise said at the meeting held by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If Trump wins, it may be possible to withhold billions of dollars of federal funding from schools that the federal government decides are violating students’ civil rights, he said.
Coward, the free speech advocate, said there was nothing inherently concerning about vows to enforce civil rights laws. In the past year, since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, there have been assaults on Jewish students and instances of protesters blocking students from accessing parts of college campuses, which could amount to civil rights violations, he said.
But he also warned that civil rights enforcement can go too far, imperiling free expression. Even under the Biden administration, he said, the Department of Education has urged universities to clamp down on pro-Palestinian speech protected by the First Amendment. Some of the policies proposed by Trump and his allies could further increase the pressure on universities and lead to more suppression of speech, he said.
“When the institutions are choosing between their students’ First Amendment rights or losing their federal funding, almost all of them are going to choose censorship over loss of federal funding,” Coward said.
Wood, the former Boston University administrator who is now the president of the right-leaning National Association of Scholars, said some of Trump’s plans struck him as reasonable, including the prospect of accreditation reform.
He and other conservative critics of higher education say the accreditors have strayed from their original mission of merely ensuring that schools are financially sound and providing an adequate education. Now, Wood says, they are overtly political and push DEI priorities.
But critics of Trump’s plans see a power grab that could undermine universities’ independence.
“Whether you are going after federal research dollars by either outright disqualifying an institution from being able to receive them, taxing their endowment, or through some other budgetary allotment, you are using the power of the purse to shape policies of governance, that until now has largely been a pretty clear firewall between the role of government and role of higher education to produce knowledge,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.
Muhammad also said Trump’s proposed policies could disproportionately impact scholars of color, women, and gender non-conforming people. The Project 2025 policy document calls for Congress to cut funding for “area studies” such as gender studies or African American studies, where the ranks of faculty members are less white and less male than in other fields.
“We would potentially see a mass purging faculty of color across higher education” if Trump follows through on his promises, Muhammad said.
Some of Trump’s critics say his vows to influence universities are consistent with what they see as his increasingly authoritarian politics.
Levitsky, the Harvard political scientist who sees Trump as authoritarian, said universities are a prime target because “they have a lot of influence over the elite, they have a lot of cultural capital, they often have a fair amount of resources, and, almost invariably, no matter the color of the government or the regime, universities are bastions of dissent and opposition.”
Trump’s allies say such a reckoning is overdue.
In his CBS interview, Vance said, “I think it’s totally reasonable to say there needs to be a political solution.”
