‘Galileo’s work was deemed heretical, his book banned, and he was forced to live under house arrest… 350 years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II admitted that the Church then had “mistakenly opposed” his ideas.’
LAST week, the Trump administration threatened to ban Harvard University from recruiting foreign students after the school rejected a proposed agreement that would, in effect, make it give up much of its academic freedom.
The White House also instructed the Internal Revenue Service to start the process of revoking the tax-exempt status of the world’s No. 3 school for the same reason. And much earlier, the federal government said it would hold more than $2 billion in grants and contracts after the university said it was “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
In an April 11 letter to Harvard, three federal officials claiming to represent the administration proposed a “thorough, binding settlement agreement” although it is now being claimed that that letter was sent by mistake.
Accusing the school of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” the letter presented Harvard with 10 areas for “critical reform.” These included reducing the power held by faculty and administrators “more committed to activism than scholarship,” and suspending all hiring and admissions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” of prospective personnel and students. They also demanded a campus-wide audit to ensure viewpoint diversity, as well as the discontinuance of DEI (discrimination, equality and inclusion) initiatives.
US conservatives have long opposed “affirmative action,” a policy introduced by the Johnson administration in the 1960s to improve employment or educational opportunities for minority groups, characterized by “race, disability, gender, ethnic origin, and age.” While seen as different from DEI, to some conservatives they are one and the same. On the other hand, viewpoint diversity can be seen as DEI in reverse, given that many campuses are dominated by liberals.
Harvard, which has produced seven US presidents and 161 Nobel laureates, is but one of recent attacks. The Associated Press also identifies Cornell, Northwestern, Brown, Columbia, Princeton and Pennsylvania as part of a campaign promise to cut the funding to schools that emphasize “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.”
The American historian Joan W. Scott says scholarship is a “dangerous pursuit of knowledge production — dangerous because it challenges established authority, whether of the sciences or the state.” The 17th-century scientist Galileo made many contributions to learning, but his support for Copernicus hurt his career, to say the least. Galileo’s work was deemed heretical, his book banned, and he was forced to live under house arrest. In 1992, 350 years after Galileo’s death, Pope John Paul II admitted that the Church then had “mistakenly opposed” his ideas.
During the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served in the White House Coronavirus Task Force, came under attack for advocating vaccines and for not endorsing Donald Trump’s suggestion to inject COVID patients with disinfectant or exposing them to ultraviolet light. For advocating a scientific response, Cornell-educated Fauci has had to deal with death threats.
The attacks on science and the academe neatly and nearly coincides with the release last month of the 2025 Academic Freedom Index. The project was a collaboration between the Friedrich-Alexander University of Sweden and the German Varieties of Democracy, and was funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
The latest data showed the Philippines with an index of 0.62 (out of 1.00) and the United States with (0.68).
The study defined academic freedom as a total of the freedom to research and teach, academic exchange and dissemination, institutional autonomy, campus integrity, and academic and cultural expression.
The apparent micromanagement being asserted by the Trump administration upon Harvard can be viewed in terms of their impact on at least three of these indicators, particularly institutional autonomy.
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Gary Mariano taught full time for 35 years at De La Salle University where he once chaired the Department of Communication. A former chair of the Philippine Press Council, he was also a member of the CHED Technical Committee for Journalism. In retirement, he helps promote local media-citizen councils, teaches part time, and serves at Our Lady of Beautiful Love parish.
