Note from Elie 5/30: Trump vs. Harvard: Asymmetric Warfare
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Right.

where they like to pull up these old, sometimes obscure, sometimes wartime laws and argue that everything happening now is an emergency. It's an invasion. It's a rebellion. It's a predatory incursion. And in the piece, I criticized the administration because I said doing this is,

is ridiculous. First of all, it's unjustified. And I also said it's counterproductive. They're going to continue losing in the courts when they try to use these extreme, unusual measures to get their way. The first example that we talked about in that piece was the tariffs, which Donald Trump justified by using this law called IEPA, the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.

Trump said, well, we have trade deficits, which, by the way, we've had for over 45 years continuously. But now suddenly it's an emergency and therefore I must impose these tariffs. Well, guess what happened this week? You all know the Court of International Trade struck down the tariffs. They said this is not an emergency. This is not what we meant. This is not what the law means.

by an emergency. So once again, the Trump administration has lost for the time being by crying wolf. This court of international trade is sort of interesting. It sort of sounds like one of those non-binding entities like the United Nations or something, but it's not. It is a fully legitimate organization

article three court created by the constitution and by statute basically this is a federal court that specializes in hearing disputes about imports and exports and yes indeed tariffs as we see in this case so they're part of the federal system that decision will be appealed up to what we call the federal circuit fun fact there's 13 federal circuits sometimes i say that on air and

And smart guys have to tell me I'm wrong. No, there's only 11 or there's only 11 plus D.C. That's 12. Nope, there's 13. I've dug into this. I had my fact checkers check this. There's the 11 numbered ones plus D.C. plus the federal circuit. And then, of course, anything from there can go up to the U.S. Supreme Court. So we've got a ways to go on this one. But for now, Trump's tariffs are off thanks to the administration's over reliance on these emergency statutes.

OK, off that soapbox and on to the next one. I'm back on the Harvard story. I think it's incredibly important. And as you'll see, this one struck a nerve with me. Hope you enjoy. As always, send me your thoughts, questions, comments to letters at cafe dot com. Harvard will keep on beating Donald Trump in the courts, but this is asymmetric warfare to Trump. The effort to subordinate Harvard to the government is just another amusement.

A sucker punch thrown at the snooty rich kid who's done nothing wrong but naturally evokes resentful snickers from bystanders. Harvard, for its part, has shown remarkable institutional fortitude, refusing to bow to the extortionist. But the university and worse, many of its students will ultimately suffer even for winning.

We're now deep into Trump's multi-front assault on Harvard. Disclosure, I went to Harvard Law School. It started in early April when the Trump administration demanded that the university hire an outside consultant to, quote, audit everybody at the school for, quote, viewpoint diversity.

End quote. Among other absurd demands aimed at government micromanagement of the speech and beliefs of tens of thousands of students and teachers at a private university. The government's move was more Orwell than Reagan, more thought control than hands off conservatism.

If Harvard failed to comply, the Trump administration warned the school would lose over two billion dollars in federal funding. Separately, Trump threatened to revoke Harvard's tax exempt status and to cut off its federal contracts. But Harvard unbowed, stood up for itself and sued in pointed contrast to its fellow Ivy Columbia, which capitulated to an executive branch shakedown to preserve its access to the federal dime.

In its lawsuit, Harvard pointed to the administration's flagrant First Amendment assault on the institution. Indeed, for the government to explicitly condition funding on the content of speech and belief is antithetical to the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court held just last year, quote, it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression, to unbias what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences alone.

End quote. Unless you think that came entirely from the three liberal justices, it did, but they were joined by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Barrett, and Justice Kavanaugh. As a fallback legal position, Harvard notes that the administration has not complied with procedural requirements that must accompany a move to strip funding. Now, that case will play out over the summer, and given the yawning absence of legal grounding for the administration's actions, you can safely expect Harvard to win eventually.

Reeling from the university's impudent slapback, the Trump administration began a new offensive targeted at Harvard's international students. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent a letter demanding that Harvard produce 10 categories of documentation on its 7,000 or so international students spread across 13 schools. Noem graciously afforded Harvard all of 10 business days.

to respond, noting darkly that failure to comply would be, quote, treated as a voluntary withdrawal from the international student visa program, not subject to appeal.

Noam's letter conveys to Harvard an incomprehensible, overbroad mishmash of requests for records reflecting, quote, dangerous activity, known threats, obstruction of the school's learning environment and deprivation of rights by visa holders. Notwithstanding the impossibly vague demands, Harvard produced thousands of documents to Noam, who swiftly declared that the response was unsatisfactory and kicked the university out of the international student visa program.

Harvard sued last week to block Noem's decree, and just hours later won temporary relief from a federal judge in Massachusetts, Alison Burroughs. Then at a hearing yesterday, the Trump administration, apparently seeking to slow play its inevitable courtroom loss, offered to grant Harvard a 30-day extension on its response to the aforementioned document requests and argued to Judge Burroughs that Harvard's legal challenge therefore had become moot.

The judge didn't buy it. Instead, she extended her prior order indefinitely, prohibiting the Trump administration from changing Harvard's participation in the international student visa program pending full resolution of the legal issues on the merits. Harvard and its international students can return to the status quo for now, at least, but with the future very much uncertain.

The Trump administration's stated rationales for its attacks on Harvard had varied wildly, and they betray the flimsiness of its underlying position. At times, it's all about combating anti-Semitism, though it's tough to see what stripping federal funding for cancer, ALS, and tuberculosis research has to do with protecting Jewish students on campus.

At other points, Trump has pointed resentfully at Harvard's wealth. Indeed, the university has a staggering $53 billion endowment, plus a cash balance of more than the annual budget of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It's unclear why there's anything wrong with a private university building its own riches. But hey, nobody likes the rich kid, although this administration typically purports to venerate Muskie and private wealth, not to resent it.

Most recently, Trump has sounded a note of plain old hometown protectionism. Why are so many foreign students taking up precious spots at Harvard that American kids want?

The Trump administration's targeting of international students is a dastardly cheap shot. If Harvard, the impregnable institution, were to lose federal funding, for example, it would hurt, but the university would survive. The school might have to move some money from column A to column B, maybe ramp up a fundraising effort or even dip into the endowment. The university's mission would carry on and the loss would be spread around with plenty of financial backstopping.

But Trump's attack on international students, that hits below the belt. It threatens lasting damage to young people at a crucial point in their lives. What are Harvard's 7,000 or so current foreign students, including dozens of Israelis, by the way, so much for the fight against anti-Semitism, what are they supposed to do?

Summer sessions start soon and the fall semester begins in a few weeks. While Harvard has won temporary relief in the courts, a single legal setback could leave international students without a school to attend and without legal status in the United States at all.

What about newly admitted Harvard International students? And how about students at other schools who might come into the president's crosshairs next? Do they show up on campus and hope for the best? Do they take the risk that some court will allow Trump's attacks to proceed, leaving them without a school and subject to deportation? Remember.

We're talking mostly about teenagers here, kids with bright futures, but uncertain present scenarios. Trump couldn't care less. Harvard is a useful foil, a convenient political enemy. The president is wrong legally, but he stands to lose nothing. If the courts continue to shoot down the administration's efforts to subjugate Harvard, so what?

From Trump's perspective, the status quo remains intact and he gets to wave the populist flag. And even if and when Harvard continues to win in the courts, the university will take its lumps, but it'll mostly be just fine. But its students will suffer irreversible costs. Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay safe and stay informed.