[Linganth] A Courageous Kind of Elite

[ALEXANDER THOMSON]

“The problem for the universities now is not that the administrators are
too weak in response to whatever the fad of the moment is. It's that the
Trump administration is trying to break those universities over its knee
and heavily politicize them and heavily police their speech. And now you
have this situation where you need this thing that you haven't had there,
which is a ᴄᴏᴜʀᴀɢᴇᴏᴜꜱ ᴋɪɴᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴇʟɪᴛᴇ—not just a courageous kind of elite on
behalf of left-wing causes, but on behalf of the revitalization and
protection of the university itself, which has to balance at the same time
that the university needs to be a ᴘʟᴜʀᴀʟɪꜱᴛɪᴄ ɪɴꜱᴛɪᴛᴜᴛɪᴏɴ and also that it
cannot in fact give into the Trump administration's demands, and it can't
turn on its students, and it does have to protect the right to protest, and
all these things that are part of academic freedom and part of a healthy
culture of inquiry…" (Ezra Klein, The Last 2 Months –and the Next 2 Years–
of U.S. Politics
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-ama.html>)

Also see: Greg Weiner's excellent opinion piece, “Colleges have to be much
more honest with themselves” (link
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/opinion/college-universities-trump-policies.html>
).
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