On July 29, “New York Times” reported that Harvard University agreed to meet Donald Trump's administration's request and pay around $500 million to make a deal with the White House. Thus, the university hopes to recover national funding, suspended as a consequence of accusations of insufficient anti-Semitism action.
In March 2025 the Presidential Administration accused Harvard authorities and staff of favoring anti-Semitism, pointing to pro-Palestinian student protests from 2023 to 2024. The White home demanded to limit the influence of “activists- lecturers”, to ban the admission of students “enemy to American values and institutions” and management reforms that would reduce university autonomy. Otherwise, Harvard was threatened by the full withdrawal of national funding.
Harvard refused, which in mid-April 2025 resulted in the freezing of grants worth a full of $2.2 billion and government contracts for another 60 million. Hit but not sunk – national grants represent up to 15% of the university's yearly budget.
When the financial blackmail failed, at the end of May the Department of Homeland safety expelled Harvard from the SEVP program, enabling American universities receiving abroad students. The sanction threatened not only recruitment for this year, but besides a legal stay in the US of about 6800 current abroad Harvard students with F-1 and J-1 visas. Although justice Allison Burroughs had already temporarily suspended the execution of the department's decision on the following day, the situation looked dissuasive for college candidates.
According to “NYT”, at the end of July Harvard agreed to pay, but refused to introduce an external reflection of the student and lecturer recruitment process. "Our proposal is simple and reasonable: do not let anti-Semitism and DEI to regulation your campus, obey the laws and defend the civilian liberties of all students," commented Harrison U. Fields of the White House. As he added, the administration believes that "Harvard will yet support the President's imagination and fair negotiations can lead to a good deal".
David of Society vs Goliath Trump
Until recently, Harvard was a symbol of opposition to Trump in the American academic community. He was referred to as an example of courage, especially in contrast with Columbia University, who, under the threat of losing 400 million national backing on July 24, agreed to pay 200 million fines, due to akin accusations of deficiency of protection for judaic students.
In addition to the fine and the 21 million Columbia committed to audit its recruitment committee, the university agreed to ban face blocking on campus, adopt a national definition of anti-Semitism in the investigation of cases of discrimination, restructure the mediate East, South Asia and Africa survey programmes, suspend DEI programmes and external oversight of the implementation of the agreement for the first six months.
Although Columbia has been left independent in recruiting and shaping the programme, the concessions adopted are not a compromise. It's a surrender.
I do not decide here who is right – Trump accusing universities of inactivity to anti-Semitism, or universities that defend their own principles and autonomy. I would like to draw attention to how rapidly these influential – symbolically, financially and intellectually – institutions have given way to the force of the state. Although there was a real chance that the national court would block the effort to subjugate the academy, universities did not hazard worsening their material status.
Trump sets Silicon Valley to vertical
Elon Musk has late learned that the state can poison even the richest and most influential. Earlier, the publically praising all decision by Trump billionaire, as early as the end of his word in DOGE began to irritate the President, and then he overwhelmed – criticizing the “Great Beautiful Act”, which Trump then tried to push through Congress.
In May 2025, Musk called the bill “disgusting disgusting” due to allegedly planned national spending and called on his fans to “kill that law” with an emphasis on congressmen. Trump reacted harshly – he expressed "deep disappointment" and threatened to cancel contracts and national subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk raised the stakes: he recalled that Trump owed him a triumph in the election and charged him with ties to pedophile Epstein. Trump then called Muska "crazy" and suggested "serious consequences". He didn't precisely mention Muska as an American citizen by birth, so... 1 regulation can reverse the other.
Although Musk is now playing 3rd organization creation and is inactive clowning on the net, at least for now the president has shown large capital who is in charge. In 2021 large Techy felt like planet kings, throwing Trump off social networks after the riots on January 6. Now, knowingly giving and taking state subsidies and undermining the legality of your stay in the US even for the owners of the largest companies, Trump yet sets Silicon Valley to vertical. Losing a digital megaphone hurts, but not like deporting or falling a business empire.
Fans Games about the throne They most likely remember the dialog of Queen Cersei with Littlefinger, who maliciously suggested that he knew about her incestuous affair with his brother and presented his credo: “Information is power”. erstwhile the castle defender almost kills him at the Queen's command, Cersei smiles and says, "Remember, power is power."
Protest in the USA – Unprofitable Risk?
However, attacks on the Ivy League or Muska are not the top injustice in the United States. ICE's actions – regular deportations of immigrants, including U.S. citizens' spouses or green card holders – are far more dangerous. However, the case of the academy and large business is interesting: they have the means to defend themselves – yet they choose submission.
American economist Albert Hirschman described 3 social responses to unacceptable changes: loyalty (patient waiting), separation (resignation, emigration) and criticism (in the first Voice, protest). Active criticism requires not only an emotional relation with an institution or state, but besides religion that you will not be alone, that change is possible, but escape – hard or impossible.
Trump showed universities and Musk that protest could cost a lot – literally. That material comfort, as they are accustomed to, can easy be lost. Yes, a lecturer may quit his academic career in the United States, but he does not gotta run distant like an Afghan or a Belarusian in panic. He can go to Europe without a visa, and there with the aid of a peculiar European Commission programme to find work. Without negating the individual discomfort of the researchers choosing this option – however, it is simply a privilege.
Use of the National defender against protesters against deportations of migrants in Los Angeles In June of that year, it showed: the administration reacts hard. In addition to material comfort, criticism is besides a hazard to physical security. Therefore, intellectual and business elites choose loyalty or separation. All the more reason Voice You can easy reduce to petitions, tweets and reps.
Yes, the US is inactive democracy. There will be elections. possibly protests. Everything can change. But the key question is: what if any changes are irreversible?
In Poland, we tend to treat Russia as a separate case, explaining changes in this country over the last 2 decades the unique imperial mentality of Russians. The past of Russia and Russian thought is not meaningless here, but the message is simply a universal mechanics for bringing democracy: the passive mediate class and the elite plus the helplessness of the opposition in conditions of preserving material welfare.
In Russia, in the early 21st century, the mediate class began to grow rapidly, and the higher class grew disgustingly rich with oil money. Government contracts and average and tiny businesses serving them have become a origin of wealth for hundreds of thousands of people, the most active part of society, surviving in large cities. It is not that during Putin's first and second word no 1 noticed government attacks on universities, opposition oligarchs or migrants, but that increasing comfort and consumption depoliticized and wrecked a society that was inactive not accustomed to joint action.
When was everything lost? At the end of the first decade, erstwhile the Russians had not noticed the attack on Georgia? Or in 2012, erstwhile the mediate class, terrified of single arrests and convictions for post-election protests, left the streets of Moscow alternatively of standing there longer? Or possibly after the assassination of German in 2015, erstwhile it became clear what awaited critics of the annexation of Crimea and Putin's corruption investigators?
Certainly not in 2022 – then the possible of force on the part of uniform or long-term prison sentences, with no chance of forcing change into power, paralyzed the society completely. The most active and dissatisfied they emigrated.
Of course, there are no duplicate similarities between Russia and the United States, either in terms of control and balance systems or in terms of the foundations of civilian society. Trump's force on opponents is political and financial, not totalitarian. But capitalism in both places dictates the same consumer logic: why hazard well-being and exposure yourself to severe effects on social position erstwhile this can be avoided, especially since the success of the protest is highly questionable?
The frog, which is slow cooked, has 1 chance – to jump at the very beginning. Otherwise, it becomes a dish to eat.
