One of the most important ideas in public policy is understanding that most laws are based on a counterpart (indicated or not declared).
Take, for example, the debate of several months on the program of application of the immigration of President Trump. Think about Arrest and initiation of procedures for referring against Mahmoud KhalilThe Pro-Palestinian green organizer of the green map of Columbia University. Critics said Khalil had never committed a real crime of black letters – and perhaps he did not do so. But the The government argued that it supported the Hamas foreign terrorist organization And contributed to a hostile campus environment for Jewish students besieged from Columbia. This could abuse the terms of his non -citizen legal permanent residence and allow his right to be here.
We could see him in this way: if Khalil violated his implicit “quid”, he lost his corresponding “quo”.
Many similar examples abound throughout our legal fabric. Also Section 230The technological law of the era of the 1990s: in exchange for aid to “offer a forum for a real diversity of political discourse”, as the status aims to do, a given social media platform will not be treated as a “publisher” in the end of the law of defamation. But Big Tech has repeatedly violated the “counterpart” (delete the prospects For political reasons), and now a Go to the statutory “quo” is appropriate.
This same prism can explain the in progressAnd rapid degenerationStandoff between the administration of Trump and the University of Harvard – and the ambitious Trump program to slow down excess tax and cultural from US higher elite education, more generally.
For decades, American higher education establishments have benefited from an extraordinary generosity of taxpayers. The federal government's subsidies and other forms of direct grants for universities' taxpayers are legion, not to mention the income from the tuition fees of student loans supported by the federal government. The capital gains of the main university endowments are also taxed at the tiny rate of 1.4% – a fraction of the tax rate to which the allocations would be submitted if they operated as any other type of activity or investment funds.
This favorable government treatment of higher education is the “quo” back-end. But political decision -makers predicted this “quo”, a long time ago, on the corresponding “counterpart”: American universities, in the education of young Americans and instill in them a love of their religious traditions, their nation and God, will lead to the common good and deserve direct public support.
The basic problem with this argument, in 2025, is that – quite simply – it is indescribedly and ridiculously disconnected from reality.
American higher education, considered as a whole, no longer leads to the common good. Indeed, it has not done it for a very long time now. William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review, published “God and the man to Yale”, an eminent cry of heart against the liberal educational establishment, seven and a half ago. The rise of the Frankfurt School and the indoctrination of the crawling cultural Marxist followed quickly. The problem of higher education establishments that do not project pious patriots but decadent ungrateful has been with us for a very long time. But for too long, the “quo” of higher education in the processing of extra-general taxpayers has remained constant despite the collapse of the “counterpart”.
Trump, seeking to condition the federal subsidies of taxpayers to elite universities such as Columbia and Harvard on the bare compliance of universities in the civil rights of the country, makes the smallest possible step to recalibrate the quid pro quo discombobule which defined the taxpayer relationship during the decades. American universities retain the complete rights of the 1st amendment to speak, educate and promulgate, but they would like it – but they cannot do it on the penny of taxpayers when they engage in a flagrant racial, ethnic or religious discrimination against candidates and students in violation of the law on civil rights of 1964. There is also the “Hillsdale College option– Like Hillsdale, based in Michigan, any other school can simply withdraw from federal funding. Maybe they should!
Many notable democrats, such as former Obama President, have lined up to defend Harvard – the most recent and excessive funding objective of the Trump administration. Really, it's remarkable. The ONETIME of the working class – “LUNCH BUCKET JOE”, as the former president Biden was formerly known – was transmogrified in the main supporter of a status quo in which the men and women of the working class do not necessarily subsidize the local technical training school, but the distant Ivy League tower. Democrats may not regain the rust belt so early, but they can at least have a bank on the salons of the Faculty of Harvard and Yale. And maybe they agree with that. I know I am.
Josh Hammer's latest book is “Israel and civilization: the fate of the Jewish nation and the destiny of the West. “” This article was produced in collaboration with the union creators. @josh_hammer
