The demands of leading a nation and a state don’t seem to be enough to occupy Trump and Braun.
Maybe that’s why they each have taken on the task of trying to run a university, too.
In Trump’s case, he’s decided that he should be able to tell Harvard University how it should handle itself in all matters. He’s threatened to cut off all federal funding to America’s oldest university unless the school’s president, board and faculty line up to kiss his ring.
Just what has provoked the U.S. president’s ire is not clear.
He says that he’s dropping the hammer on the university because of its devotion to policies of diversity, equity and inclusion and because it hasn’t done enough to protect Jewish students from expressions of anti-Semitism on campus.
There’s reason to doubt the latter explanation.
Trump, after all, reveres the memory of his father, Fred Trump, a man once arrested for marching as part of a Ku Klux Klan rally that turned violent. What’s more, the president himself included neo-Nazis among the “good people” at the Charlottesville, Virginia, riots in 2017.
One suspects his desire to defend the rights of America’s Jews—especially those who didn’t vote for him—is less than wholehearted.
His animus toward DEI—or at least his desire to stoke the animuses of his most fervent followers—is the more likely motivation. He knows that few things are more effective at stirring up the “good people” among the white nationalists and skinheads who support him than the notion that somehow, somewhere Black people, other minorities and women might be getting a fair shake.
One also wonders if some of the president’s anger isn’t personal.
He is a man who craves acceptance and approval. He has made clear—abundantly clear—his resentment over the Trump family’s exclusion from America’s more rarified social circles.
Perhaps no institution in the United States more completely embodies America’s privileged class than Harvard.
And no Trump ever has been admitted to Harvard.
It’s hard to imagine this president not taking that as a slight.
Now, that he’s in power again with little but revenge on his mind, it’s not surprising that he’s decided to make life difficult for Harvard, particularly now that the school has decided to devote some of its multibillion-dollar endowment to making it easier for bright and capable poor students to gain an education there.
Besides, indulging this grudge is less difficult than figuring out how to get himself and the United States out of the increasingly costly trade war he started for no good reason. It’s also easier to complain about Harvard than acknowledge that his own fecklessness regarding U.S. economic policy produced the first contraction in America’s gross national product since the Coronavirus pandemic.
Mike Braun hasn’t aimed his fire at an Ivy League institution.
No, he decided that Indiana University deserved his personal attention.
At the end of its just-concluded legislative session, the Indiana General Assembly approved changes that would prevent IU alumni from electing any members to the school’s board and that gave almost total control over the university to the governor.
The moves were made to protect embattled IU President Pamela Whitten.
Whitten’s tenure at IU has been troubled from the beginning. She won her job through a search process that, at best, circumvented certain search protocols, thus guaranteeing she would come to campus amid considerable skepticism and needing to alleviate concerns.
Once in her position, though, she seemed to take it as a personal mission to exacerbate those concerns. She adopted a confrontational posture with skeptics and persisted in an odd let-them-eat-cake practice of throwing hot dogs to spectators at the school’s sporting events.
IU’s faculty delivered a vote of no confidence regarding her leadership and angry alumni have organized to try to drive her out.
Enter the governor and the lawmakers, who have come to her rescue.
After all, it’s not as if they have other important matters to attend to.
The average household income for Indiana families is 16% below the national average, but Hoosiers doubtless would prefer that the state’s leaders focus on preserving a college president’s $900,000-a-year job instead of making their lives better.
But that’s Mike Braun and Donald Trump for you—always keeping their eyes on the prize.
