The Trump administration has delivered an extraordinary ultimatum to Columbia University, threatening to permanently end federal funding to the school unless it cedes control of an international studies department and implements sweeping changes to other policies.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26861143

The Trump administration brushed aside decades of precedent when it ordered Columbia University to oust the leadership of an academic department, a demand seen as a direct attack on academic freedom and a warning of what’s to come for other colleges facing federal scrutiny.

  • Zombiepirate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    4 hours ago

    From They Thought They Were Free, the Germans 1933 - 1945

    […] "I gave them French and English literature, more so than before, although to do so was one of those vague betrayals of the ‘new spirit’; still, it had not been specifically forbidden. Of course, I always said, to protect myself (but I said it in such a way that I hoped the students would see through it), that the foreign works we read were only a reflection of German literature. So, you see, Herr Professor, a man could show some—some independence, even, so to say, secretly.” “I understand,” I said.

    “Many of the students—the best of them—understood what was going on in all this. It was a sort of dumb-show game that we were all playing, I with them. The worst effect, I think, was that it made them cynical, the best ones. But, then, it made the teachers cynical, too. I think the classroom in those years was one of the causes of the cynicism you see in the best young men and women in Germany today.”

    […]

    "Tell me, Herr Hildebrandt, what about [Shakespeare’s]Julius Caesar?”

    He smiled very, very wryly. “Julius Caesar? No … no.”

    “Was it forbidden?”

    “Not that I remember. But that is not the way it was. Everything was not regulated specifically, ever. It was not like that at all. Choices were left to the teacher’s discretion, within the ‘German spirit.’ That was all that was necessary; the teacher had only to be discreet. If he himself wondered at all whether anyone would object to a given book, he would be wise not to use it. This was a much more powerful form of intimidation, you see, than any fixed list of acceptable or unacceptable writings. The way it was done was, from the point of view of the regime, remarkably clever and effective. The teacher had to make the choices and risk the consequences; this made him all the more cautious.”

    • thanks AV@lemmy.world
      3·
      4 hours ago

      These books should have been required reading for the last 80 years. The fact you can graduate high school without being able to articulate how the Nazis controlled Germany is an act of evil against every citizen who enters the world.

      It was not some ubiquitous evil spirit that usurped the free will of Germans, it was a choice and a set of instructions in which disobeying would lead to death.

      Like the passage you quoted - it is a self perpetuating social structure requiring obedience while demanding that “you know what you’re doing is wrong in the moral eye of the government” i/e “we don’t have to say it’s illegal to teach kids to think, we just have to make sure that the moment a kid starts thinking they know to report you for subversion”

      Education around nazi germany starts and ends with “they were ontologically evil” and were leading a unified Germany. This is stated as fact without any context of how the election in which they gained control of the government was won with 30% of the vote. We aren’t taught that the liberal politicians voted alongside nazis to implement these laws that dissolved the German constitution and gave Hitler full control. We aren’t told that they did this “to avoid the disaster of a failed government” and to not be targeted for retribution after the laws passed.

      Instead we are given a Disney movie story of Hitler unilaterally usurping supreme control over every German, only being stopped by the heroes of the allied powers once we learned how terrible it was.

      No record of the NYT platforming nazis, the German American bund, the resistance to joining ww2, the business plot, chamberlain, Henry Ford NONE of that history is taught.

      And now we see why.