The Daily Signal - VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Trump’s Campus Crackdown is Long Overdue

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Victor Davis Hanson explores the growing backlash—and the serious financial and legal levers the government could use to hold these schools accountable—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”   “ [Universities] predicated their budgets on federal monies. But the Trump administration says, 'You're not obeying the First or the Fourth or Fifth or Sixth Amendments. You're not guaranteeing the Bill of Rights to your own students. You're allowing antisemitism in the year 2025 as if it's the 19th century or something. What are you doing?' And the universities seem to ignore it."   0:00 Introduction: Trump Administration's Stance on Universities 0:59 Antisemitic Protests and University Responses 2:44 Public Perception and Political Leanings of Universities 4:18 Financial Dependencies and Foreign Influence 5:09 Government Actions and Potential Consequences 6:42 Conclusion   👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1…   👉If you can’t get enough of Victor Davis Hanson from The Daily Signal, subscribe to his official YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/victordavishanson7273…   👉He’s also the host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show,” available wherever you prefer to watch or listen. Links to the show and exclusive content are available on his website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. When the Trump administration came into power, they said, my gosh, these universities are bastions supposedly of civil discourse, civil rights, but they're abusing these privileges. And we're not going to fund $400 million unless they concede to certain protections of their own students. What am I getting at? The Trump administration wants to call them to account. And they have a lot of leverage that the universities apparently don't seem to take seriously.

They're dependent on millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money. I don't know because they have multi-billion dollar endowments. But nonetheless, you're not obeying the first or the fourth or fifth or six amendments. You're not guaranteeing the Bill of Rights to your own student. You're allowing anti-Semitism in the year 2025, as if it's the 19th century or something. What are you doing? Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. I'd like to talk a little bit today about.

the universities in general and specifically the anti-Semitic protests that have been transpiring and continuing and the Trump reaction to them. The larger landscape was that when the Trump administration came into power, they said, my gosh, these universities are bastions supposedly of civil discourse, civil rights, but they're abusing these privileges. And we're not going to fund a Columbia University to take one example with $400 million unless they concede to certain protections of their own students. And some of them extended to recommendations or rules not to wear mask or not disrupt lectures, et cetera, et cetera. This week, you've seen student protesters still wearing masks. So those were apparently not enforced. The interim president at Columbia resigned because

she was saying one thing to the faculty and another thing to the Trump officials. But at Princeton University this week, the former Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Bennett, was speaking, and they throng of Princeton students, maybe 90% of them apparently were students outside the hall tried to shout him down. And some disrupted the lecture inside the hall. And Jewish students reported they were subject to anti-Semitic, anti-Jewy. slurs and taunts. And the university knew that the speech was scheduled and apparently did not make any extra efforts to ensure the integrity of the lecture, which all brings up my point. And that is,

I don't think the American universities understand where they are right now. If you look at polls of the American people who used to have a poll surveys 60, 70 percent in favor to the idea of higher education, the juggernaut of the American economy. That's gone. It's been gone the last half century. These are hotbeds, especially the elite campuses of indoctrination, and they're polling about 35% of the approval rate of the American people with 90 to 95% of their law or their humanities faculty openly democratic and left wing. There is no diversity. They have separate graduations predicated on race, separate spaces, but separate dormitories. What am I getting at? The Trump administration,

wants to call them to account. And they have a lot of levers at the universities, apparently like Princeton or Columbia, don't seem to take seriously. They're dependent on millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money. Why I don't know, because they have multi-billion dollar endowments. But nonetheless, they're predicated their budgets on federal monies. But the Trump administration says, you're not obeying the first or the fourth or fifth or six amendments. You're not guaranteeing the Bill of Rights to your own student. You're allowing anti-Semitism in the year 2025, as if it's the 19th century or something. What are you doing? And the universities seem to ignore it. Well, we'll stop people wearing masks. They don't. We'll

stop anti-Semitism. They don't. Why? They seem, first of all, to be indebted to foreign students. We have about 300,000 Chinese students and maybe a quarter million from the Middle East that pay full tuition. And they're a powerful block on campus. In addition, we have billions of dollars from mid-east sikhdoms like gutter, but also China that endow professorships. And you give a billion dollars, you can get 100 or more, 150 fully endowed professors for a Middle East student department that can be very influential training this country's next generation of diplomats and civil servants and politicians. But the university should be very careful. They have a lot of exposure. Already, the National Institute of Health says, we know what you're doing.

You're on individual grants from the government. You're charging 50, 60%. That's not going to happen. 15% tops. That's going to cut hundreds of millions of dollars out of their budget. Now the Congress is saying, we know what you're doing. You're not nonpartisan. You're not non-ideological. You're going to pay a tax, an income tax on your huge endowment income. That could be $100, $150 million in some cases. Now the administration says, you're not defenders of civil rights, you're offenders. And we are going to cut back grants to you because you don't follow the Bill of Rights. You do not guarantee freedom of speech.

You do not follow civil rights statutes and make grace and gender. gender and sexual orientation, incidental rather than essential to these students' personas. And you give them preferences based on their superficial appearance. In other words, what I'm getting at is they are violating the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. They think they're too big to fail. They think they're immune. They think they'll be a liberal administration back.

But they should be very careful because they're in violation of a number of statutes. and the administration has a number of levers to pull, whether it's taxing the endowment, getting out of the student loan business and letting the universities use their own endowment to guarantee their loans, cutting back the surcharges on individual grants, and suing them in federal courts to open up their admissions policies

in a transparent and meritocratic fashion. So my advice to Columbia University and especially to the president of Princeton, either protect the civil rights of Jewish students and students in general or expect a backlash from the federal government, the magnitude of which you really have not recognized and you should fear.

Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at Victorhanssen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.