Bhattacharya latest addition to Trump’s efforts to scourge education

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump’s team are reportedly considering withholding research grants to “woke” schools, according to the Wall Street Journal and the Independent.

In what is the latest attempt to change education in the United States, Trump’s pick to head the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, wants to cut funding to certain universities. Sources told the Journal that Bhattacharya wants to base funding on a, yet to be established, measure of “academic freedom.”

In 2020, Bhattacharya co-authored an open letter which advocated against lockdowns in favour of a response that sought to establish herd immunity. Bhattacharya and others believed that “focused protection” would be a better, more balanced approach, by protecting those at higher risk of death, while allowing those with minimal risk to return to normal living. However, the letter, dubbed the “Great Barrington Declaration,” was met with widespread criticism.

“Scientifically, no evidence from our current understanding of this virus and how we respond to it in any way suggests that herd immunity would be achievable, even if a high proportion of the population were to become infected.”

– Dr Stephen Griffin, Associate Professor in the School of Medicine, University of Leeds

Critics highlighted that stopping transmissions to vulnerable populations would not be as simple a task as the declaration made it seem. They also expressed that there would be difficulty in identifying vulnerable populations, and that the letter misunderstood herd immunity.

“Despite the huge advances in our understand of the coronavirus and resulting infection, we don’t know that herd immunity is even possible.  Natural, lasting, protective immunity to the disease would be needed and we don’t know how effective or long-lasting people’s post-infection immunity will be.”

– Dr Simon Clarke, Associate Professor of Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading

The criticism led Bhattacharya to feel that conservative perspectives were being blotted out in academic discussion. Thus, he is now looking at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s college free speech rankings of universities, to decide which institutions should and should not receive federal research grants.

However, Bhattacharya’s desire to cut funding to certain schools are rather tame compared to some of Trump’s previously announced plans.

DISMANTLING “WOKE” EDUCATION

The president-elect has stated that he wants to dismantle the education department as he believes that federal money is being used to promote “inappropriate” content.

While dismantling the department may just be a sensational claim, Trump can use civil rights cases to cut federal funding to institutions through the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights. The office can be used as a tool to target schools with civil rights inquiries, making an example of a few so that the rest fall in line. But what exactly constitutes the aforementioned “inappropriate” content?

CRITICAL RACE THEORY

Critical race theory (CRT) was one example Trump used of such content. CRT explains that race is a social construct and that subtle forms of racism exist within legal systems, which perpetuate marginalisation. Instead of attributing racism as simply a thing of the past, CRT teaches the history of the construction of race and how the resulting hierarchies are still prevalent today.

In an Op-Ed published on Real Clear Politics, Trump wrote that CRT is a “curriculum designed to brainwash [students]” and that it is “antithetical to everything that normal Americans of any colour would wish to teach their children.”

“Instead of helping young people discover that America is the greatest, most tolerant, and most generous nation in history, it teaches them that America is systemically evil and that the hearts of our people are full of hatred and malice.”

– President-elect Donald Trump

Trump attempts to delude, by conflating CRT’s efforts in revealing structural racism, to the twisted notion that the theory “preaches that judging people by the colour of their skin is actually a good idea.”

GENDER

At the Madison Square Garden rally that took place near the end of his campaign, the president elect stated that he would get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports.”

Trump has pledged to roll back Biden’s expanded Title IX regulations, which extended the law’s prohibition of sex-based discrimination in any education program that receives federal funding to include discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The Associated Press reported that following Trump’s election win, crisis hotlines were inundated with panicking transgender youth.

Trump’s plans are extremely threatening for a marginalised population that already struggles to feel safe in educational institutions. A collaborate study between eh Point Foundation and the Williams Institute at UCLA found that 39 per cent of transgender people experienced bullying, harassment or assault in higher education, while 32 percent reported unfair treatment.

PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS

Trump has also previously stated that colleges would “lose accreditation and federal support,” if they do not end their “antisemitic propaganda.” To Trump, antisemitic propaganda is equivalent to pro-Palestinian protests.

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump allegedly told a room full of campaign donors according to the Washington Post.

Many campuses across the United States saw student come together to protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza, beginning with an encampment at Columbia University. Administrators accused students of creating an unsafe environment and using anti-Semitic language, claims that the students rejected.

SCOURGE

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is a scourge on education that will target the most vulnerable populations on the basis of race and gender, by creating school environments that refuse to acknowledge the structural discrimination that exists within them. All in an effort to save America face.

Ironically, Bhattacharya’s desire for freedom of speech in education contradicts Trump’s own plans to curtail certain topics such as CRT. With Trump returning to office, the US may see a return to what the president-elect has dubbed “patriotic education”. He has vowed to reinstate the commission he created in 2021 which promoted a more flattering view of America’s history.