Re - The Battle between Trump and Higher Education

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Cornelius Hamelberg

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May 29, 2025, 12:32:50 PM5/29/25
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Briefly: 


In his latest blog piece Harvard

Professor Porter suggests philistinism

as the lining undergirding Trump’s soft 

underbelly

 

underlining his anti-

intellectual actions, undermining as he 

does, one of the most essential - the

quintessential of prerequisites when it 

comes to fulfilling his MAGA dreams 

of making America great, as never before .


It should be safe to conclude that his hostile actions towards

America’s greatest citadels of Higher Education such as Harvard 

and at the moment, his desire to restrict Harvard's intake of foreign 

students, ridiculous enough as it is, most recently with China / Chinese students

as his main target, now border on xenophobic philistinism 


Back in the day, our English teacher A. T. Von S. Bradshaw used to kick off his English lessons by scrawling this Chinese proverb on what was then known as the blackboard :

”The House of learning is one house” (under the universal canopy of our flag, the sky 


Understandably, Trump is afraid that Chinese students could use knowledge obtained in the United States to make China much greater than America, and as you know, Trump the patriot and nationalist ( I almost wrote “supremacist") wouldn’t like any other nation on God’s piece of earth to ever be as great or even greater than Trump’s one and only United States of America Akbar 


Takes me back to these lines from Bob Dylan’s  It’s Alright Ma ( I'm only bleeding :


“While preachers preach of evil fates

Teachers teach that knowledge waits

Can lead to hundred-dollar plates

Goodness hides behind its gates

But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have to stand naked”


Perchance you do recall that Mitt Romney wasn’t exactly talking about the Ivy League when he had this to say about Trump and Trump University


His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University,”


Some of the erudite Pan Africanists are familiar with W. E. B. Du Bois‘ The Souls of Black Folk 

 

It’s certainly a matter of great concern to The Defiant Lawyers who have been weighing in on the Trump effect on the souls of Black folks and from yours truly, it’s devoutly to be wished that we also take into serious consideration 


Dr. John Henrik Clarke: Education – The Highest Form of Struggle Lecture




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