As the academic year concludes at Harvard, festivities are juxtaposed with a disquieting atmosphere shaped by government actions impacting higher education. Students face fear as international visa statuses fluctuate, and medical funding is jeopardized. Despite the usual rhythm of university life, the article highlights a more insidious threat from government actions that challenge individual rights and freedom. The ongoing situation reflects a broader national trend, where authoritarian tactics emerge gradually, disrupting the perceived stability in academia and society.
This discordance is of course especially powerful at Harvard, the current epicenter of a ferocious and lawless attack on higher education that might make Viktor Orbán blush.
Classes continue, clubs meet and Frisbees are being tossed even as the government sows fear and confusion by revoking, then restoring, then warning that it might again revoke the visa statuses of more than 1,800 international students.
We get in our cars or on our bicycles and go off to work while the government is pressing before the courts an argument that would allow it to send anyone, citizen or noncitizen, to a foreign prison without cause or legal recourse.
When many of us think about authoritarian takeovers, we imagine military coups and declarations of martial law. But the truth is that this can occur in gradual, almost unnoticed ways.
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