The threatening letter that three Trump officials sent Columbia University on March 13, laying out the way they expect Columbia to police campus protests and organize academic programs, is repugnant to the spirit of the First Amendment. And it harkens back to the dark days of—
This is the point where people generally mention Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare of the early 1950s. But the fact is, the tools this administration is using to bully Columbia have been used by every presidential administration since Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964—very much including that of Joe Biden, which ended less than two months ago.
Granted, the Trump team is moving with its signature mix of diagnostic subtlety and prescriptive crudity. The shock of the new administration has not been that it has moved against Woke on campus—that is something Trump promised every day of his campaign. The shock, rather, is that, having spent years deploring a system by which the government crushes oppositional speech and even the mood of opposition, Trump has chosen not to dismantle that system but to wield it—not to throw out the juggernaut of repression but to throw it into reverse.