The attempt by Trump to require Harvard to only hire professors and teach a curriculum that Trump approves of reminded me of a story my late husband told. He was in medical school in his home university in Communist Yugoslavia, which was ruled by dictator Tito. In his final oral exams, he was asked by the committee of professors. His knowledge of medicine was not in question. Still, he was asked to explain the answer to a medical challenge in terms of the ideology: How does this fit into Marx's dialectical materialism? Mike was no dummy, and he passed, but it left him both angered and amused. Mike became a refugee in time and finished med school in Switzerland with both an MD and a Phd. Communist-controlled medical school degrees in the West were not honored and were considered no better than a pre-med undergraduate degree. He passed away a few years ago after our 52 year marriage and a highly successful life in the US, but often, he repeated the story of the absurdity of the oral exam question as an example of the absurdity of having any government demanding compliance to an ideology as a condition of getting degree from a univiserity and why he became a refugee. This letter to Harvard reminded me of the absurdity of Trump's actions, that was akin to what he experienced in a dictatorship. Bravo Harvard. It was a proud moment for Dr. Mike when he attended the ceremony when his son received his master's degree from Harvard. If there is a lesson to be learned, such actions by dictators lead to brain drain from their countries. It is already happening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf1z0ggh32A
Update 5/1/2025 Trump says he's revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status: 'It's what they deserve!'
Update 4/22/2025 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/read-the-full-letter-from-universities-opposing-government-intrusion
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