Trump is absolutely right in revoking the visas of hundreds of Indian students for indulging in pro-Palestinian activism, and threatening Harvard University with revocation of its tax-exempt status for promoting “political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired sickness”. His action against the global Left-Liberal-Islamic Fundamentalist ecosystem is a poignant pointer for India.
At least 1,024 international students at US colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since late March, mainly for involvement in pro-Palestinian activism. More than half of them are reportedly Indians. Trump has also launched a frontal assault on Harvard University, suggesting it must lose its tax-exempt status for promoting “political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired sickness” and must be taxed as a political entity. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In spite of being a Trump critic on many issues, I support him wholeheartedly on this issue because he is right. Universities are established with the primary objective of imparting education and carrying out research that would serve the nation and humanity. Those who have to do politicking on campus by demonstrations in support of Palestine or whatever must be made to leave the university. A substantial part of the funding of the universities comes from the federal or state governments. Public universities receive 30–40% of their revenue from state and federal funds, and private universities benefit from tax-exempt status and federal grants. That is taxpayers’ money. The taxpayers have not paid for some foreign students or for that matter, even local students to indulge in activism. Activism does not amount to delivering public good.
The clash escalated after Harvard rebuffed demands from Trump’s multi-agency task force. Harvard characterised the move as a direct threat to university autonomy. Federal authorities froze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contract funding, accusing Harvard of neglecting its civil rights responsibilities. “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mind-set that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges,” a federal agency said.
Why the Universities are wrong?
I am aware of the freedom of expression line of argument. The students are very much free to exercise their right to freedom of speech and have a political opinion. BUT, they must not do it within the confines of the university to the detriment of other students who might hold a different view. Simple! If they have to demonstrate, they must go to a public place where public protests are normally held and do it there. A university campus is generally insulated, though not necessarily, from the police. Activists have been abusing this privilege. In any case, the First Amendment (vide Brandenburg v. Ohio, 1969) does not protect material disruption to university functions; incitement to violence; or harassment, etc.
If they want to exercise their right to protest, they must do it like any other citizen, not as a privileged citizen. The governments pay for their subsidized education and boarding out of taxpayers’ money for a lofty objective—so that they may become responsible citizens and contribute to nation building. The nation does not pay for their political activism of a motivated kind or anti-Semitism. Liberalism is fine, but at your expense and at your risk—you have no right to do it on a campus and to the detriment of other students. Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and universities cannot use it to shield ojectionable activism. If Harvard’s policies are found to enable illegal activity (e.g., violence, discrimination, etc.), the IRS is entitled to investigate.
There is another fundamental issue. Suppose N numbers of students want to hold a demonstration in support of Cause A. At the same time, M numbers of students want to hold a demonstration against Cause A. Now, if the university administration permits demonstrations, it is bound to permit both and allow them the use of university campus. The university cannot openly profess a soft corner for liberals and a strict view of the ‘nationalists’. What happens when the two groups come face to face or worse, confront each other? After all, the Cause A has a very strong emotive content and tempers are running high. It is very much possible that there could be a fight or even shooting between the two groups. Now who will be responsible for the consequences?
Campus protests have turned violent earlier also. The 1970 Kent State shootings, where National Guardsmen killed four students during Vietnam War protests, remain a stark example of how escalation could lead to tragedy. In 2024, pro-Palestine and counter-protests at UCLA led to physical altercations, with police intervening after objects were thrown. No fatalities occurred, but injuries were reported. If a university fails to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm (e.g., not providing security for known rival protests), it could face lawsuits from injured students or families. For example, after 2017’s violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the University of Virginia faced scrutiny for inadequate planning. The Charlottesville campus became a focal point of national tragedy following the death of Heather Heyer and multiple injuries.
Hotbeds of Global Left-Liberal-Islamic Fundamentalist Ecosystem
American universities have long been overt sites of political engagement and now covert sites of nurturing global Left-Liberal-Islamic Fundamentalist ecosystem. It started with the anti-war protests, driven by opposition to the Vietnam War (1955–1975). Groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized rallies, sit-ins, and draft-card burnings. By 1970, over 4 million students protested after the Kent State shootings, where four students were killed by the National Guard. Keep in mind that these protests were not just anti-war, they ‘liberally’ mixed issues Civil Rights, feminism, and counterculture movements, all challenging traditional authority and seeking to subvert it. In 1969, the legendary Director of FBI, J. Edgar Hoover testified to Congress that “New Left” campus radicals aimed to “destroy our traditional values” and were backed by foreign powers. Many protests indeed had radical elements. The Weather Underground, a splinter of SDS, carried out bombings. Declassified files show limited Soviet funding for US communist groups. Foreign influence exists very much even now. China funds Confucius Institutes at US universities. Many pro-Palestine groups receive funding from opaque sources.
The 2024 pro-Palestine protests at Columbia, Harvard, and UCLA disrupted campuses and sparked debates about free speech and anti-Semitism. Surveys show that humanities and social science professors lean left—78% of college faculty identified as liberal or very liberal in a 2016 HERI Faculty Survey (Higher Education Research Institute). Academic hiring in such places is known to favour candidates aligning with departmental ideologies. A 2021 HERI study found that 60% of humanities faculty in top universities identified as liberal, with only 12% conservative.
Academia’s peer-review and tenure systems have come to prioritize ideological alignment, marginalizing empirical or contrarian scholars. Tenured professors are able to push agendas without rigorous scrutiny, especially in fields with subjective metrics. This fosters the echo chambers, where radical ideas face less scrutiny. According to a Nature (2022) study, publication bias rewards novel, critical perspectives over incremental or conservative research. According to a report in Atlantic (2021), professors were disciplined for views different from the prevailing paradigm at Yale, proving the global Left-Liberal-Islamic Fundamentalist ecosystem’s intolerance for dissent. Dis-invitations of speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos, a British far-right political commentator, at UC Berkeley in 2017 and professors’ suspensions (e.g., Amy Wax at Penn, 2023) are classic examples. At Berkeley, anti-fascist and right-wing groups had actually clashed resulting in violence, property destruction, and cancellation of multiple events.
Harvard faced lawsuits in 2024 for failing to address anti-Semitic incidents during pro-Palestine protests. Congressional hearings criticized Ivy League presidents for inconsistent responses to hate speech. That these institutions foster radical left-wing thought is supported by their academic programs and protest culture. The South Africa-Israel genocide case discussion aligns with pro-Palestine campus activism, sought to be disguised as human rights advocacy.
How Farces like JS Knight Fellowship are used to promote the Sponsors’ Hidden Agenda
American universities have been employing various other tactics also to further the cause of the global Left-Liberal-Islamic Fundamentalist cabal. This includes institution of several Fellowships, for example. Those selected for the farce of these residential programs are generally hand-picked from the cabal. This is the Deep State in action at its deepest.
The idea is to accord those selected people a measure of respectability so that their fulminations against their governments back home acquire some credibility. Organizations like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and National Endowment for Democracy etc. have been doing the same the world over. Key leaders in foreign countries are ‘trained’ in campaigning, organizing through new media tools and monitoring elections, besides organizing protests. Stephen McInerney, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy has himself candidly admitted it.
The Knight Foundation’s funding comes from an endowment established by John S. and James L. Knight, former newspaper publishers whose wealth was derived from their media business. The foundation is independently governed and is known for supporting anti-government stances in various countries in the name of supporting press freedom and strengthening democracy.
The JSK Fellowship’s stated focus on “impact,” “resilience,” and “passion” is obviously vague and purposefully kept so. What does it mean anyway? Without transparent scoring metrics, selections are absolutely arbitrary. Unlike Rhodes, Fulbright, Nieman or even Reuters Institute Scholarships that rely on objective markers of excellence, JSK has all along refused to publicly quantify achievement levels (neither academic nor professional), which means you cannot correlate a Fellow’s pre-Fellowship resume or standing with the program’s elite status.
Since they invest about $125,000+ per Fellow, the questions arises, for what and on what grounds? This is goddamn Rs. 1.07 crore! Why the hell they must spend this much on somebody who does not have any proven academic credentials by way of research and publications? In simple words, what do they have in them that Stanford thinks that investing so much in them will do wonders for humanity?
In comparison, Stanford Graduate Fellowship in physics, for example, is awarded to “outstanding students” pursuing doctoral program who would go on to make some path-breaking contribution to science, is just $58,200. The selection is based on objective criteria like evidence of contributions to projects (e.g., first-author papers, conference talks, etc.) and clear potential for ground-breaking research work. Such a heavy expenditure as in JSK Fellowship must demand clear, pre-existing excellence—not just ‘imagined potential’. The program’s emphasis on “diversity” and “global voices” is an outright farce and strongly reeks of an underlying agenda.
Stanford’s private status doesn’t preclude strategic agendas. They do attract donations from entities with specific political agenda. Promoting dissent against governments in Third World countries or countries opposed to the US, dovetails with sponsors’ objectives.
Stanford’s selection of journalists whose only mission in life is to rabidly criticize their governments reflects a deliberate effort to amplify voices against the governments. That explains why they select Fellows from countries like India, Russia, China, Turkey, Philippines, and Venezuela etc. (that is, countries of obvious political interest to the Deep State), with a couple of others (including Pulitzer Prize winners) from USA and Canada etc. thrown in as red herrings to cover up their real intent. They have included journalists without any academic excellence but associated with platforms known for making heavily biased YouTube programs rabidly attacking Hindus or Jews and their governments for everything done by them.
The great amount they spend on Fellows; opaque selection criteria, and a clear pattern of selecting certain type of critics’ leaves no doubt about the sponsors’ underlying motives. The absence of transparent, objective benchmarks makes it clear that the ‘selections’ are based for furthering the sponsors’ political agenda.
A detailed analysis of JSK Fellows from the past decade, focusing on their pre-Fellowship achievements, post-Fellowship careers, and, of course, their attempts to undermine their governments, reveals that not one of them has been able to make any transformative impact on his/her country. Would Stanford be foolish enough to spend Rs.1.07 crore just to enable someone with dubious academic credentials to run some digital portal in his country or work in one? Bullshit! The JSK Fellowship is nothing but Stanford’s promotion of the sponsors’ hidden political agenda in clever disguise.
