Category: Trump

  • Alumni urge Harvard not to “give in” amid settlement rumours

    Alumni urge Harvard not to “give in” amid settlement rumours

    “This is a critical juncture – and it’s essential you live the values Harvard teaches and not make a deal with the Trump administration that cedes the university’s autonomy in unconstitutional or unlawful ways,” states the August 1 letter.  

    Signed by 15,068 alumni, faculty, researchers, staff and other supporters, the letter criticises settlements made by Columbia and Brown, which signatories warn “represent a dangerous capitulation that risks eroding the foundation of American higher education”.  

    “As Harvard rightly argued in court in its lawsuit, the unconstitutional demands being made by this administration represent a blatant encroachment on academic freedom and university autonomy,” it continues.  

    Last month, Columbia became the first institution to settle with Trump over allegations of antisemitism on campus, paying the administration $221m in return for settling various civil rights and employment claims and restoring $400m in terminated funding.  

    Soon after, Brown University followed suit, reaching its own deal with the administration over similar disputes about DEI admissions practices and access to student data.   

    Harvard, having the largest endowment of any global university, has been the only one to challenge the White House in the courts, though recent rumours have suggested a $500m deal between Harvard and the government could be in the making. 

    The letter’s message is clear: “Do not give in.” 

    It calls on university leadership to uphold Harvard’s independence and reject political interference and punitive action, ensuring that admissions hiring, employment and disciplinary processes do not treat student and staff differently based on their political views. 

    The signatories recommend the establishment of a structure for the university to directly engage with the Harvard community about policy changes impacting them, urging Harvard to use its financial resources to “protect and honour” their livelihoods and education.  

    “Protect students, faculty, researchers and staff, especially those with international status, from any intrusions of privacy, unwarranted immigration action, and attacks on their constitutionally protected rights and freedoms,” it continues. 

    At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale

    Harvard alumni

    The letter warns of the “chilling effect” that a settlement would have on the Harvard community and beyond.

    Holding the line is critical for campuses across the US, for those that benefit from the research and scholarship of the university, and for the “foundational role that independent higher education plays in our democracy,” it argues.  

    “At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale.” 

    Since mid-April, the Trump administration has launched multiple attacks on Harvard for allegedly failing to root out antisemitism on campus and failing to hand over international students’ records, among other accusations.   

    The university is fighting the government on multiple fronts in the courts, including defending its right to enrol international students, which the administration has repeatedly tried to revoke.  

    The university has publicly stood by its 7,000 international students, who make up over 27% of Harvard’s student body and come from nearly 150 different countries.  

    Amid broader attacks on higher education and severe visa challenges, colleges across the country are bracing for a major decline in international students this fall, with “conservative” estimates of a potential 30-40% decline.  

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  • Alaska’s Colleges at the Meltdown’s Edge—Just as the Arctic Heats Up

    Alaska’s Colleges at the Meltdown’s Edge—Just as the Arctic Heats Up

    Alaska’s higher-ed story is a preview of the national “College Meltdown,” only starker. The University of Alaska (UA) system—Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Southeast—has endured a decade of enrollment erosion and austerity politics, punctuated by a 2019 budget crisis that forced regents to declare financial exigency and consider consolidations. The immediate trigger was a proposed $130+ million state cut, later converted into a three-year reduction compact; the long tail is a weakened public research engine in the very state where climate change is moving fastest.

    In 2025 the vise tightened again from Washington. UA’s president told regents that more than $50 million in grants had been frozen or canceled under the Trump administration, warning of staff cuts and program impacts if funds failed to materialize. Those freezes were part of a broader chill: federal agencies stepping back from research that even references climate change, just as the Arctic’s transformation accelerates.

    This is not an abstract loss. Alaska is the frontline laboratory of global warming: thawing permafrost, vanishing sea ice, collapsing coastal bluffs. UA’s scientists have documented these trends in successive “Alaska’s Changing Environment” assessments; the 2024 update underscores rapid, measurable shifts across temperature, sea ice, wildfire, hydrology, and ecosystems. When the main public research institution loses people and projects, the United States loses the data and know-how it needs to respond.

    Climate denial collides with national security

    The contradiction at the heart of federal policy is glaring. On one hand, the Trump administration has proposed opening vast swaths of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to drilling and reversing environmental protections—signaling a bet on fossil expansion in a region already warming at double the global rate. On the other hand, the same administration is curtailing climate and Arctic science, even as military planners warn that the Arctic is becoming a contested theater. You can’t secure what you refuse to measure.

    The security stakes are real. Russia has spent the past decade refurbishing Soviet-era bases, deploying ice-capable vessels, and leveraging energy projects along the Northern Sea Route (NSR). China has declared itself a “near-Arctic” power and partnered with Moscow on patrols and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains short on icebreakers and Arctic domain awareness—even as traffic through high-latitude passages grows more plausible in low-ice summers. Analysts project that a meaningful share of global shipping could shift north by mid-century, and recent reporting shows the region is already a strategic flashpoint.

    That makes UA’s expertise more than a local asset; it’s a pillar of U.S. national security. The University of Alaska Fairbanks hosts the Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (CASR) and degree pathways that fuse climate, emergency management, and security studies—exactly the interdisciplinary skill set defense, Coast Guard, and civil authorities will need as sea lanes open and storms, fires, and thaw-related failures multiply. Undercut these programs, and you undercut America’s ability to see, interpret, and act in the Arctic.

    The costs of disinvestment

    The 2019 state-level cuts did immediate damage—hiring freezes, program reviews, and fears of accreditation changes—but their larger effect was to signal instability to students, faculty, and funders. Austerity invites a spiral: as programs and personnel disappear, grant competitiveness slips; as labs lose continuity, agencies look elsewhere; as uncertainty grows, students choose out-of-state options. UA leadership has tried to reverse course—prioritizing enrollment, retention, and workforce alignment in recent budgets—but it’s difficult to rebuild a research reputation once the pipeline of projects and people is disrupted.

    The 2025 federal freezes amplify that spiral by hitting precisely the projects that matter most: those with “climate” in the title. Researchers report program cancellations and re-scoped solicitations across agencies. That kind of ideological filter doesn’t just reduce funding—it distorts the evidence base that communities, tribal governments, and emergency planners depend on for everything from permafrost-safe housing to coastal relocation plans. It also weakens U.S. credibility in Arctic diplomacy at a time when the Arctic Council is strained and cooperation with Russia is largely stalled.

    Why this matters beyond Alaska

    Think of UA as America’s northern early-warning system. Its glaciologists, sea-ice modelers, fire scientists, and social scientists collect the longitudinal datasets that turn anecdotes into policy-relevant knowledge. Lose continuity, and you lose the ability to detect regime shifts—abrupt ecosystem changes, cascading infrastructure failures from thaw, new navigation windows that alter shipping economics and risk. Those changes feed directly into maritime safety, domain awareness, and the rules-of-the-road that will govern the NSR and other passages.

    Meanwhile, federal moves to expand Arctic drilling create additional operational burdens for emergency response and environmental monitoring—burdens that fall on the same universities being told to do more with less. Opening the door to long-lived oil projects while throttling climate and environmental research is a recipe for higher spill risk, poorer oversight, and costlier disasters.

    A pragmatic way forward

    Three steps could stabilize UA and, by extension, America’s Arctic posture:

    1. Firewall climate science from political interference. Agencies should fund Arctic research on merit, not language policing. Reinstating paused grants and re-issuing climate-related solicitations would immediately restore capacity in labs and field stations.

    2. Treat UA as critical national infrastructure. Just as the U.S. is racing to modernize radar and add icebreakers, it should invest in Arctic science and workforce pipelines at UA—scholarships tied to Coast Guard and NOAA service, ship time for sea-ice and fisheries research, and support for Indigenous knowledge partnerships that improve on-the-ground resilience.

    3. Align energy decisions with security reality. Every new Arctic extraction project increases environmental and emergency-response exposure in a region where capacity is thin. If policymakers proceed, they owe UA and Alaska communities the monitoring, baseline studies, and response investments that only a healthy public research university can sustain.

    The paradox of the College Meltdown is that it hits hardest where public knowledge is most needed. In the Lower 48, that might mean fewer nurses or teachers. In Alaska, it means flying blind in a rapidly changing theater where Russia and China are already maneuvering and where coastlines, sea ice, and permafrost are literally moving under our feet. The University of Alaska is not a nice-to-have. It is how the United States knows what is happening in the Arctic—and how it prepares for what’s next. Weakening it in the name of budget discipline or culture-war messaging is not just shortsighted. It’s a security risk.

    Sources

    • University of Alaska Office of the President, FY2020 budget overview (state veto and reductions).

    • University of Alaska Public Affairs timeline (2019 exigency and consolidation actions).

    • Alaska Department of Administration, Dunleavy–UA three-year compact (2019).

    • Anchorage Daily News, “$50M in grants frozen under Trump administration” (May 28, 2025).

    • The Guardian, “Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’” (Feb. 21, 2025).

    • UA/ACCAP, Alaska’s Changing Environment 2.0 (2024 update).

    • UAF Center for Arctic Security and Resilience (programs and mission).

    • Empower Alaska: UA Arctic expertise overview.

    • Wall Street Journal, Russia/China Arctic power projection and U.S. capability gaps (Feb. 2025).

    • The Arctic Institute, shipping projections for the Northern Sea Route.

    • Arctic Review on Law and Politics, vulnerabilities and governance challenges on the NSR.

    • The Guardian, rollback of protections in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (Aug. 2025).

    • Alaska Public Media, uneven cuts to Arctic research under Trump (Apr. 2025).

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  • Are treaties worth the paper they are signed on?

    Are treaties worth the paper they are signed on?

    If you agree to something and put it in writing, shouldn’t you abide by that agreement? Until now, that seemed to be a pretty basic idea. 

    Agreements at the international level come in the form of treaties. When countries sign treaties they voluntarily agree to follow a given set of rules. The agreements tend to be broad and carefully negotiated. Once signed and ratified, treaties commit countries to obligations. 

    In June, the countries of Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania announced that they will withdraw from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Treaty. Signed by 165 international states, the treaty forbids the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines, which are devices buried in the ground that explode when someone steps on them. 

    This month, Ukraine announced it would also withdraw. 

    Russia’s 2002 invasion of Ukraine radically changed the geopolitical context that existed when the Mine Ban Treaty was signed. But since landmines are only used in times of war, it seems like the potential circumstance of war would have been considered when the countries agreed to ban them. 

    But Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, never signed the treaty. So has the war in Ukraine really changed everything?

    Disarming the power of treaties

    All five countries that announced their withdrawal from the treaty border either Russia or Russia-friendly Belarus. The use of anti-personnel landmines can be easily seen as a defensive military action against Russia. Norway, however, which has a 121 mile land border with Russia, remains committed to its anti-mine obligations. 

    The withdrawals represent a serious weakening of disarmament treaties that have humanitarian objectives as well as respect for international law. The five-country withdrawals could be setting a precedent that could see countries withdraw from other treaties such as those banning biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as withdrawals from international institutions.

    The withdrawals are a considerable reversal for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a loose coalition of non-governmental organizations that was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize along with its founding coordinator Jody Williams. 

    The campaign was an unusual movement that garnered the support of many high profile people, including Princess Diana, Paul McCartney and James Bond actor Daniel Craig.

    While treaties are formally signed by states, it is unique that the initiative behind the ICBL came from non-state organizations. 

    Banning a conventional weapon

    Back in 1999, Williams wrote that widespread support for a landmine ban came as a surprise. “Few imagined that the grassroots movement would capture the public imagination and build political pressure to such a degree that, within five years, the international community would come together to negotiate a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines,” she wrote. She noted that it was the first time in history that a conventional weapon in widespread use had been comprehensively prohibited.

    That this is no longer the case has shocked land mine opponents.

    “We are furious with these countries,” said Thomas Gabelnick, the current director of the ICBL. “They know full well that this will do nothing to help them against Russia.”

    The signing of the 1997 Ottawa Convention and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize were hailed as crucial steps in disarmament – getting governments to reduce their stockpiles of destructive weapons. 

    The treaty was the first disarmament agreement where governments and civil society worked closely together, representing a new form of international diplomacy. Unlike previous disarmament treaties, it banned weapons actually in use instead of striving to prevent or ban weapons designed as deterrents, such as nuclear weapons – weapons so destructive that the mere fear of their use would stop one country from attacking another.

    The treaty ratification process

    Historically, the treaty was signed during the euphoric period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the 11 September attacks that took down the World Trade Center in 2001. During this period global tensions seemed to be easing. Following the end of the Cold War many believed that more disarmament treaties would follow.

    The landmines treaty came into force in 1999 when it was ratified by a sufficient number of states. But some of the most largest and most powerful countries declined to sign. Besides Russia, other countries that stayed out include China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Israel and the United States.

    The treaty has successfully led to the destruction of tens of millions of stockpiled landmines. Hundreds of thousands of square miles have been de-mined (13,000 in Ukraine alone) and well the number of civilians maimed or killed by mines has been drastically reduced.

    The withdrawal by the five countries could be an unfortunate example for withdrawals from other disarmament treaties or multilateral organizations. 

    Mary Wareham, the deputy director of the crisis, conflict and arms division at Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times that the withdrawals set a terrible precedent. “Once an idea gets going it picks up steam,” she said. “Where does it stop?” 

    A treaty set to expire

    The last arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, for example, is scheduled to expire in January 2026. Will that treaty — the New Start Treaty — which eliminated important nuclear and conventional missiles, be renewed?

    The legitimate reason for leaving a treaty is force majeure, an unforeseen circumstance. As a Finnish Parliamentarian said justifying her country’s leaving the Treaty, the war in Ukraine “changed everything.” 

    Norway doesn’t agree.

    Writing for the European Leadership Network, Wareham and Laura Lodenius, the executive director at Peace Union of Finland, warned that the humanitarian impact will far outweigh any marginal military advantages. “The deterrent factor of re-embracing anti-personnel mines isn’t worth the civilian risk, humanitarian liabilities and reputational damage, all of which extend far beyond their borders,” they wrote.

    As for the United States, it has recently withdrawn from bilateral treaties — those between two nations — and several multilateral accords in which multiple parties sign on.

    A treaty that ended the Cold War

    In a historic ceremony in Iceland back in 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), which was largely seen as an end to the Cold War that had lasted since the end of World War II.

    Under the first Trump Administration in 2019, the U.S. withdrew from that treaty. 

    Trump has twice withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Accord and, in addition, withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows for the use of surveillance planes or drones for intelligence capturing purposes. 

    The United States has also withdrawn from institutions like the World Health Organization and is threatening to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. It has already left the U.N. Human Rights Council. 

    In an ominous move for multilateralism, Trump has set in motion a review of U.S. participation in intergovernmental organizations, including those that are part of the United Nations, with the intention of withdrawing from or seeking to reform them. 

    Breaking a treaty by executive order

    Trump’s executive order of 4 February 2025, started by saying: “The United States helped found the United Nations (UN) after World War II to prevent future global conflicts and promote international peace and security. But some of the UN’s agencies and bodies have drifted from this mission and instead act contrary to the interests of the United States while attacking our allies and propagating anti-Semitism.” 

    That’s his subjective interpretation of recent events. There is no justification in the mandate for the review for any change based on force majeure, certainly not that the United Nations and some of its agencies “drifted from this mission and instead act contrary to the interests of the United States.”

    Withdrawing from treaties or organizations has consequences for global stability. The announcement by the five countries that they are withdrawing from the Mine Ban Treaty is a worrisome addition to Trump’s general assault on multilateralism. Pacta sunt servanda, the underlying principle of contracts and law, translates to “agreements must be kept.” It is the foundation of international law and cooperation. 

    The withdrawals are a bad omen. They lessen the value of conventions and treaties. States should not respect their obligations only when they are in their favor. 

    Confidence that states will respect their obligations is the primary support for an international system. 

    The Ukraine war has not changed that. Without that confidence, the system collapses. 

    Can we agree on that?

    A version of this story has been published previously in the publication Counterpunch. 

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is a treaty?

    2. Why would a country decide to not ratify a treaty that bans landmines?

    3. When was the last time you agreed to do something. Was it difficult to keep that agreement?

     

     

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  • Stanford’s student newspaper sues President Trump

    Stanford’s student newspaper sues President Trump

    The Stanford Daily has filed a federal lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, marking a bold legal move from one of the country’s most prominent student newspapers. Editors at the Daily argue that Trump-era immigration policies targeting international students for political speech violated constitutional protections and created a climate of fear on campus.

    This legal action arrives during a moment of institutional turmoil at Stanford. Just days before the lawsuit was filed, university officials announced layoffs of more than 360 staff members, following $140 million in budget cuts. Administrators cited federal funding reductions and a steep endowment tax—legacies of Trump’s policies—as major factors behind the financial strain.

    Student journalists now find themselves confronting the same administration that reshaped higher education financing, gutted transparency, and targeted dissent. Their lawsuit challenges the chilling effect of visa threats against noncitizen students, particularly those who criticize U.S. or Israeli policy. Two international students joined the case anonymously, citing fear of deportation for expressing political views.

    Stanford holds one of the largest university endowments in the world, valued between $37 and $40 billion. Despite this immense wealth, hundreds of staff—including research support, technical workers, and student service roles—face termination. The disconnect between administrative austerity and executive influence speaks to a larger crisis in higher education governance.

    The Daily’s lawsuit cuts to the core of that crisis. Student reporters are asking not only for legal accountability, but also for transparency around how universities respond to political pressure—and who gets silenced in the process.

    HEI’s Commitment to Student-Led Accountability

    The Higher Education Inquirer is elevating this story as part of an ongoing effort to highlight courageous journalism from student-run newsrooms. Editorial boards like The Stanford Daily’s are producing investigative work that professional media often overlook. These journalists aren’t waiting for permission. They’re filing FOIA requests, confronting billion-dollar institutions, and—when necessary—taking their cases to court.

    HEI will continue amplifying these efforts. Student reporters are already reshaping the media conversation around academic freedom, labor justice, and the political economy of higher education. Their work deserves broader attention and support.

    Sources:

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  • Col. Larry Wilkerson: Defeated Once, Israel Faces a Collapse It May Not Survive (Dialogue Works)

    Col. Larry Wilkerson: Defeated Once, Israel Faces a Collapse It May Not Survive (Dialogue Works)

    Dedicated to dialogue and peace, “Dialogue Works” is hosted by Nima Rostami Alkhorshid.

    At Dialogue works, we believe there’s nothing more unstoppable than when people come together. This group’s mission is to create a global community of diverse individuals who will support, challenge, and inspire one another by providing a platform for Dialogue. We encourage you to share your knowledge, ask questions, participate in discussions, and become an integral part of this little community. Together we can become a better community and provide our members with a much better experience.

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  • Policy and funding in the USA

    Policy and funding in the USA

    by Rob Cuthbert

    SRHE News is published quarterly as one of the benefits of SRHE membership. The 40-page July 2025 issue included this summary of some recent developments in US HE. To join SRHE go to https://srhe.ac.uk/individual-membership-benefits/.

    Abolishing the Education Department may be illegal

    It seems that many Education Department functions are codified in federal law, so may need Congressional approval or new legislation before they can be abolished, as Jessica Blake reported for insidehighered.com on 31 March 2025.

    The ignorance of Linda McMahon

    Shaun Harper reported for insidehighered.com on 9 June 2025 on the way US Education Secretary Linda McMahon had been unprepared and unbriefed on so many questions in a US Senate subcommittee hearing in the previous week, probably because of the massive staff cuts she had made in her department.

    Trump promised ‘gold standard science’; Make America Healthy Again uses fake citations

    Shaun Harper (Southern California) blogged for insidehighered.com on 2 June 2025 in disgust and despair about the US Department of Health and Human Services Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) report. And then they did it again with a report on chronic diseases in child health, as Kathryn Palmer reported for insidehighered.com on 2 June 2025. This was the climate change-denying, anti-DEI Executive Order, 23 May 2025.

    Will Columbia get its $400million back?

    Columbia University folded under Trump’s objections to its alleged anti-semitism, and acceded to multiple demands in the face of cuts to $400million of public funding. Discussions started about how to restore the cuts, but in internal discussions interim President Katrina Armstrong seemed to deny that some of the demands would ever be implemented. Now Armstrong has stepped down, replaced by a new interim President, Claire Shipman, the co-chair of Columbia’s board of trustees. Johanna Alonso reported for insidehighered.com on 29 March 2025.

    Steven Mintz (Texas at Austin), a former Columbia academic, blogged for insidehighered.com on 31 March 2025 arguing that the roots of current campus disputes go right to the heart of the university’s mission and purpose: “The Gaza-Israel conflict became a flashpoint not simply because of its geopolitics, but because it sits at the crossroads of the deepest fissures in campus life: between liberalism and radicalism, identity and ideology, tradition and transformation.” The story of Columbia University in New York and its alleged failure to resist then depredations of the Trump administration was told by Andrew Gumbel for The Observer on 28 April 2025 in his article “Destroying higher education with the veneer of going after antisemitism”. Max Matza reported for the BBC on 4 June 2025 that: “The Trump administration is looking to strip Columbia University of its accreditation over claims it violated the rights of its Jewish students.” A letter from Linda McMahon, US Education Secretary, told accreditor the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that “Columbia “no longer appears to meet the Commission’s accreditation standards” by its alleged violation of anti-discrimination laws.

    The appeasement strategy didn’t work, then.

    Trump goes after Harvard

    Brock Read reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education on 31 March 2025 that the Trump administration would review $255million of current federal contracts and $8.7billion of multi-year contracts as part of its move “to reprove colleges it portrays as hotbeds of antisemitism.” A Trump official said the 18 April letter making extensive demands of Harvard about hiring, admissions and curriculum had been sent by mistake, according to Michael S Schmidt and Michael C Bender in their report for the New York Times on 18 April 2025. Jessica Blake reported for insidehighered.com on 18 April 2025 that “… Trump has made it clear that he’ll use billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, primarily for research, as a lever to force colleges and universities to bow to his agenda and increase the representation of conservative ideology on their campuses.”

    US Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a badly-written Trump-style threatening letter to Harvard, purporting to freeze all future federal grants, as Gram Slattery and Jarrett Renshaw reported for Reuters on 6 May 2025. Nathan M Greenfield wrote for University World News on 9 May 2025: “In a robust statement in response, Harvard University accused the United States government of making “new threats to illegally withhold funding for lifesaving research and innovation in retaliation against Harvard for filing its lawsuit on April 21”.”

    The next round of bullying of Harvard in an effort to make it do what Donald Trump decrees came in the move by the Department of Homeland Security under the notorious Kristi Noem to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, as Karin Fischer reported for the Chronicle of Higher Education on 22 May 2025.

    Then Trump interfered in Fulbright scholar selection, by vetoing about 20% of Fulbright nominations for 2025-2026 on “clearly political” grounds, ruling out applicants with proposals on diversity or climate change, as Liam Knox reported for insidehighered.com on 29 May 2025. Liam Knox reported for insidehighered.com on 11 June 2025 that 11 of 12 members of the Fulbright Scholarship Board resigned on 11 June 2025 “… in protest of the Trump administration’s intervention in the selection process, which they say was politically motivated and illegal.”

    The Harvard experience: could it happen here? by GR Evans

    On 1 May 2025 The Guardian headline read: ‘Trump administration exploits landmark civil rights act to fight universities’ diversity initiatives‘. What prevents a British King or Prime Minister from attempting to impose sanctions on universities?

    US higher education is exposed both to presidential and to state interference. Government powers to intervene in US HE reside in presidential control of federal funding, which may come with conditions. Trump cannot simply shut down the Department of Education by executive order but it seems he can direct that the Department’s grant- and loan-giving functions are taken on by another government department. … read the full blog here.

    Politicians rule in Florida

    Two weeks after the Florida Board of Governors rejected Santa Ono they approved three new presidents, none having led a university before. On 18 June 2025 they confirmed Jeanette Nuñez as president of Florida International University, Marva Johnson at Florida A&M University, and Manny Diaz Jr at the University of West Florida. Nuñez had been interim President after leaving her job as state lieutenant governor; Diaz is currently Florida commissioner of education; Johnson is a lobbyist whom State Governor Ron DeSantis appointed to the Florida State Board of Education. Josh Moody reported for insidehighered.com on 23 June 2025.

    Indiana wants to take over HE

    JD Vance said in 2021 that “universities are the enemy” and Iris Sentner for Politico said that in March 2025 ” “… the White House declared war against them”. Ryan Quinn reported for insidehighered.com on 30 April 2025 that Indiana’s state budget bill would “… require faculty at public colleges and universities to post their syllabi online and undergo “productivity” reviews … prohibit faculty emeriti from voting in faculty governance organizations, place low-enrolled degree programs at risk of elimination by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and end alumni elections for three Indiana University Board of Trustees seats by filling them with gubernatorial appointees. In addition, it has a provision that would let [State Governor] Braun remove the currently elected board members before their terms expire. “I think overreach doesn’t begin to describe the actions of the Legislature,” said Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus of education at IU Bloomington. “This is really a sweeping takeover of higher education in Indiana.”

    Why aren’t students protesting against Trump’s university attacks?

    Patrick Jack posed the question for Times Higher Education on 1 May 2025. Why indeed?

    Endowment tax will penalise rich US universities

    A bill which passed the House of Representatives in late May proposes to increase the tax on endowments from 1.4% to 21% for private colleges with an endowment of $2 million or more per student, as Patrick Jack reported for Times Higher Education on 2 June 2025. It would affect only the 35 or so richest institutions in the USA.

    Is college worth it?

    Yes, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (the NY Fed), as reported by Phil Hill of OnEdTech on 3 June 2025.

    A graph showing the return to college remains significant AI-generated content may be incorrect.

    But not for everyone: Jaison R Abel and Richard Deitz blogged for the NY Fed’s Liberty Street Economics on 16 April 2025: “In our last post, we showed that the economic benefits of a college degree still far outweigh the costs for the typical graduate, with a healthy and consistent return of 12 to 13 percent over the past few decades. But there are many circumstances under which college graduates do not earn such a high return. Some colleges are much more expensive than average, and financial aid is not guaranteed no matter which college a student attends. In addition, the potentially high cost of living on campus was not factored into our estimates. Some students also may take five or six years to finish their degrees, which can significantly increase costs. Further, our calculations were based on median wages over a working life, but half of college graduates earn less than the median. Indeed, even when paying average costs, we find that a college degree does not appear to have paid off for at least a quarter of college graduates in recent decades.”

    Santa Ono not for Florida

    After the embarrassment of Ben Sasse, the not-very-well-known Republican politician with little HE experience but with a large spending habit, the University of Florida seemed to be playing safe by naming Santa Ono as the only preferred candidate to replace Sasse. Ono was President at Michigan and previously headed the universities of British Columbia and Cincinnatti. He might have become the highest paid university leader in the US, as Chris Havergal reported for Times Higher Education on 6 May 2025. One of his current colleagues, Silke-Maria Weineck, thought after his controversial Michigan tenure he might be better suited to red-state (Republican) politics, in her opinion piece on 5 May 2025 for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ono’s salary would have been $3million a year: he was unanimously approved by the University of Florida Board, but on 3 June 2025 in an anti-DEI move the State University System of Florida Board of Governors voted not to approve his appointment, as David Jesse reported for the Chronicle of Higher Education. There was more detail from Josh Moody of insidehighered.com on 3 June 2025: “That process included a no vote from Paul Renner, a former Republican lawmaker in the state who had previously angled for the UF presidency …”. Patrick Jack reported for Times Higher Education on 9 June 2025 that after the Santa Ono brouhaha many commentators had said the only people willing to lead Florida institutions would be right wing ideologues.

    Rob Cuthbert is editor of SRHE News and the SRHE Blog, Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Management, University of the West of England and Joint Managing Partner, Practical Academics. Email [email protected]. Twitter/X @RobCuthbert. Bluesky @robcuthbert22.bsky.social.

    Author: SRHE News Blog

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  • Trump Administration Freezes Education Funds to 23 States, Legal Challenges Follow

    Trump Administration Freezes Education Funds to 23 States, Legal Challenges Follow

    In a move that has sparked legal action from nearly half the country, the Trump administration has frozen more than $6 billion in education funds to 23 states and the District of Columbia. The decision, issued by the U.S. Department of Education in late June 2025, follows a broader pattern of halted federal support for state and local programs, many of which were previously protected by court rulings.

    The funding pause is linked to the Trump administration’s January 2025 memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Memo M-25-13), which directed federal agencies to withhold disbursements from thousands of grant and aid programs. The stated purpose was to align spending with the administration’s priorities, though the policy has been challenged as lacking legal authority. The memo was later rescinded, but its effects have continued through new administrative directives.

    In this latest instance, the Department of Education cited a need to review Title II and Title IV programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), including programs for teacher development, after-school enrichment, and English language learners. 

    The decision disproportionately affected Democratic-led states, with California alone facing the loss of $939 million. 

    States impacted include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

    On June 30, attorneys general from those jurisdictions filed suit in Rhode Island, arguing that the Education Department lacks the authority to unilaterally withhold funds that Congress has already appropriated. They assert that the freeze violates both statutory obligations and constitutional principles, including the separation of powers. The lawsuit follows earlier court rulings from January and February in which judges issued temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions to stop the administration from freezing other categories of grants. Those cases were largely brought by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization that has played a leading role in contesting the OMB memo.

    Although the administration has defended the funding freeze as a necessary review of federal spending, courts have questioned the legality of such actions. In March, a federal court criticized the lack of statutory basis for the freezes, and Democracy Forward issued a detailed brief outlining the harm to nonprofit programs, environmental projects, and public services. That brief emphasized the breadth of affected programs and the legal overreach involved.

    The broader legal battle continues. While some funding has been restored through court action, the Education Department’s freeze represents a new front in ongoing disputes between the Trump administration and state governments. Plaintiffs argue that withholding these funds sets a precedent that undermines established appropriations and legislative intent. More lawsuits are expected.

    The Trump administration’s freeze on education funding to 23 states opens several legal and political paths, each with different implications depending on how courts and federal agencies proceed. Below are the most likely possibilities based on current legal precedent, federal authority, and political conditions:

    Courts Overturn the Freeze, Funding Restored

    The most immediate and probable outcome is that courts will order the Education Department to restore the frozen funds, as they did earlier this year with other parts of the federal grant freeze. Courts have already found that the administration lacked statutory authority to suspend programs that Congress explicitly funded. If this logic holds, the education freeze will likely be ruled unlawful and states will receive the funds—possibly with retroactive reimbursement for missed payments.

    Partial Restoration, Continued Legal Conflict

    The administration may attempt to restore only some of the funding—especially those programs that have garnered the most public or bipartisan support—while continuing to block others. In this scenario, the courts could issue narrow rulings or temporary injunctions that apply to specific funding streams. This would prolong litigation and administrative uncertainty, potentially pushing the issue into 2026 or the next presidential term.

    Supreme Court Intervention

    If the lower courts issue conflicting rulings or the Trump administration loses significant cases, the Justice Department may seek Supreme Court review. The Court could use this as an opportunity to clarify executive authority over grant disbursement. Depending on the composition of the Court and its interpretation of separation of powers, this could either curtail future executive control over federal spending—or affirm broader authority to “review” or condition funding.

    Legislative Response

    Congress, particularly if Democrats control at least one chamber in 2025-2026, could pass legislation to prohibit similar funding freezes in the future or require automatic disbursement of appropriated funds. However, any such legislation would likely face veto threats or require a veto-proof majority, making this a longer-term fix rather than a short-term remedy.

    Further Administrative Retaliation or Expansion

    If courts delay action or issue narrow rulings, the Trump administration could expand the use of funding freezes to other agencies or sectors, testing the limits of executive control. The precedent set by OMB Memo M-25-13 could be repurposed in other contexts—such as public health, housing, or infrastructure—creating broader instability in federal-state relations.

    Political Mobilization and Fallout

    States may respond by increasing pressure on Congress and federal courts while using the issue as a rallying point in the 2026 midterm elections. Public schools, educators, and parents may amplify the issue if it leads to job losses, school closures, or reduced services. The freeze could become a political liability for the Trump administration, especially in battleground states that rely heavily on federal education support.

    In sum, the most likely near-term result is court-mandated restoration of the withheld funds. But depending on how aggressively the administration continues to test the boundaries of federal authority, the dispute could escalate into a broader constitutional and political conflict over the power to allocate and control federal funds.

    Sources

    Democracy Forward, “Initial Policy Memo on Federal Grant Freezes,” March 12, 2025.

    CBS News, “Democratic states sue Trump administration over halted education funds,” July 1, 2025.

    Reuters, “Trump asks US court to end judicial overreach, allow funding freezes,” February 11, 2025.

    Wikipedia, “2025 United States federal government grant pause.”

    The Daily Beast, “GOP Lawmakers Blast Trump Chief Russell Vought for Freezing Education Money,” July 2025.

    The Guardian, “Nothing like this in American history: the crisis of Trump’s assault on the rule of law,” March 9, 2025.

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  • Decoder Replay: Is truth self-evident?

    Decoder Replay: Is truth self-evident?

    Fake news is dangerous. But it’s hardly new.

    More than 3,000 years ago, the largest chariot battle ever pitted the forces of one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt — Ramesses the Great — against the Hittite Empire in Kadesh, near the modern-day border between Lebanon and Syria.

    The battle ended in stalemate.

    But once back in Egypt, Ramesses spread lies portraying the battle as a major victory for the Egyptians. He had scenes of himself killing his enemies put up on the walls of nearly all his temples.

    It was propaganda. “It is all too clear that he was a stupid and culpably inefficient general and that he failed to gain his objectives at Kadesh,” Egyptologist John A. Wilson wrote.

    Disinformation in ancient Rome

    The Roman general Mark Antony killed himself with his sword after his defeat in the Battle of Actium upon hearing false rumors — fake news — propagated by his lover Cleopatra claiming that she had committed suicide.

    American patriots, including the esteemed U.S. statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin, and their British enemies swapped spurious allegations during the American Revolution that murderous Native Americans were working in league with their adversaries, scalping allies.

    How about the 1938 radio drama, “The War of the Worlds”? Adopted from a novel by H.G. Wells, the radio broadcast fooled some listeners into believing that Martians had landed in America. Newspapers of the day said the broadcast sparked panic.

    But historians today say the panic was exaggerated. So it was fake news about fake news!

    There is no shortage of modern-day instances of fake news. In Myanmar in 2018, the military spearheaded a campaign of fake news, mainly on Facebook, claiming the Rohingya minority had murdered and raped members of the Buddhist majority. The Rohingya were described as dogs, maggots and rapists. The fake news helped trigger violence against the Rohingya that forced 700,000 people to flee their homes.

    The irony is that many in Myanmar had turned to Facebook for information because the military had alienated many citizens with its control of the media. But the same military took advantage of the false reports to crack down on the Muslim minority.

    Election falsehoods

    Similarly, fake news has been used in the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to influence the outcome of elections, hide corruption and stir up religious animosity.

    One of the ironies of fake news is it can embolden authoritarian governments to turn the tables and use made-up news as an excuse to crack down on the media. That can enable the regime to control the media message. In other words, fake news to the rescue of autocrats.

    But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that fake news can be cured merely through technological solutions, that it’s a product of our times, that it’s mainly political and that it’s peddled only by our opponents. It’s not the property of any one political party or interest.

    Fake news takes root in the gray area between truth and fiction, an area we can be quite comfortable in. There is something very enticing about fake news, especially if it aligns with our pre-conceived notions. Yet we are apt to think that fake news is the exception, a new aberration.

    We can easily fall victim to fake news in part because we are not always disgusted by lies. We are taught at a very early age that deceit – deception, dishonesty, disinformation – is all around us. And that not all lies are as harmful as others. Our parents read us fairy tales from the earliest of ages, and many tales involve lies.

    The telling of fairy tales

    Take the ancient fable of “The Cock and the Fox,” included in the medieval collection of Middle Eastern folk tales, “One Thousand and One Nights.”

    A hungry fox tries to coax a rooster out of a tree by telling him a tall tale — that there is universal friendship now among hunters and the hunted. The cock has nothing to fear, the wily fox says. It’s a lie, of course.

    So, the equally wily cock resorts to his own lie: he tells the fox that he sees greyhounds running towards them, surely with a message from the King of Beasts. The fox, outwitted, runs away in fear. So here we have two lies in a single story. The moral? “The best liars are often caught in their own lies.”

    Children and their parents are quite comfortable surrounded by lies. Is Santa Claus a malicious or harmless lie?

    Do you know the story of the Wizard of Oz? That classic U.S. movie about a young girl lost in a fantasy world, pursued by witches, struggling to go home? The entire plot relies on a deceit – a supposedly powerful wizard who is nothing more than a bumbling, ordinary conman, who uses magic tricks to make himself seem great and powerful.

    Deceit at the service of entertainment.

    Advertisements are often innocent exaggerations, fiction if you will in the service of business and profit-making. But sometimes ads can veer into falsehoods.

    So fake news is not new. And we’re no strangers to lies. What does that mean for those of us interested in making the world a better place? Should we simply give up because the task is too great?

    Hardly. The lesson is that truth is not black and white, but grey, and it’s a moving target.

    Take, for example, colonialism. From the 15th century on, white Europeans conquered huge swathes of the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. They subjugated millions of people, using brutal violence in many places to subdue indigenous populations. They brought diseases that wiped out millions.

    They exploited natural resources, using native labor and pocketing most of the profit from sales into a global trading network that they established. By 1914, Europeans had gained control of 84% of the globe.

    We know all of that now because colonized peoples have revolted against their colonial rulers and won independence. The wars of independence have been won, yet so many countries around the world are still grappling with the shameful effects of colonialism and racism.

    The ambiguity of truth

    But would everyone have agreed on that depiction of Europeans as rapacious colonialists before the wars of independence?

    Certainly not most of the Europeans, who believed they were exporting a superior civilization to backward natives. Missionaries who led many colonial ventures believed they were doing God’s will by converting native populations to Christianity. And not a few natives turned a blind eye to atrocities and benefited financially.

    For a glaring example of the ambiguity of truth, take the United States. Its Declaration of Independence, borrowing from the French enlightenment, states that “all men are created equal,” with “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It put notions of freedom and equality at the heart of the American experiment. Yet it was written by a slave owner, Thomas Jefferson, and represented 13 colonies that all, to one degree or another, allowed slavery.

    Convinced of their superiority and driven by an almost unquenchable appetite for wealth, white settlers drove Native Indians from their homes. The U.S. government authorized more than 1,500 attacks and raids on Indians. By the end of the 19th century, fewer than 238,000 indigenous people remained, down from some 5-15 million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.

    What is more, settlers in the South imported slaves from Africa, forcing them to work on vast plantations and denying them the very rights to life and liberty spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.

    Rights and repercussions

    Both Native Indians and African Americans are struggling to this day to come to terms with the treatment they suffered at the hands of the white colonials.

    Would a white settler have seen himself or herself as a murderer? Hardly. In their minds, they were doing God’s work.

     Mind you, the desire to colonize is not peculiar to Europeans. Imperial Japan and imperialist China both established overseas empires. The Empire of Japan seized most of China and Manchuria. To this day, Chinese nationals and South Koreans harbor ill feelings towards the Japanese. Chinese dynasties won control over parts of Vietnam and Korea.

    There’s an expression in newsrooms around the world: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Put another way, the same individual might seem a terrorist to some, a hero to others.

    Take Yagan, a 19th century indigenous Australian warrior from the Noongar people. He played a key role in early resistance to British colonial rule in an area that is now Perth. His execution by a young settler figures in Australian history as a symbol of the unjust treatment of indigenous peoples by colonial settlers.

    A hero to his people, he was a murderer in the eyes of the British.

    Different perspectives on history

    Or take the Incan emperor, Atahualpa, who resisted the explorer and conquistador Francisco Pizarro, to this day a Spanish hero. Pizarro forced Atahualpa to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him, hastening the end of one of the greatest imperial states in human history.

    How you view Pizarro may depend on where you are sitting and when you lived.

    There are countless modern examples of radically different perspectives on events. Such discrepancies may be inevitable. Dogged journalists can shed light on events and protagonists, and help shape history – for better or for worse.

    Joseph McCarthy was a U.S. senator who in the early years of the Cold War spearheaded a smear campaign against alleged Communist and Soviet spies. Only courageous reporting by a small group of journalists who dared question McCarthy’s tactics and risked being tarred as Communist sympathizers themselves led to McCarthy’s downfall.

    Joseph McCarthy (L) with his attorney Roy Cohn, who later mentored Donald Trump (Wikimedia Commons)

    The New York Times and Washington Post went out on a legal limb when in 1971 they published the Pentagon Papers, a U.S. government history of the Vietnam War that laid bare official lies that drove American policy for more than a decade in Southeast Asia.

    The government called the man who leaked the government documents a criminal and sought to prevent the newspapers from publishing the damning revelations.

    The newspapers won their case before the Supreme Court, and their reporting increased public pressure on the government to withdraw from Vietnam.

    Watergate upended a presidency.

    You’ve perhaps heard of Watergate? Literally speaking, it’s a hotel in Washington, DC. But it has come to stand for the dogged and courageous news reporting by two journalists with the Washington Post who exposed crimes by President Richard Nixon and helped lead to his resignation in 1974.

    Courageous investigative journalism is hardly confined to the United States. A non-profit news outfit called AmaBhungane — in Zulu, “dung beetle,” an animal that digs through shit – has reported on corrupt business deals at the highest levels of South Africa’s government.

    In the Arab world, investigative journalists in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Palestine, Mauritania, Algeria, Kuwait and Sudan have uncovered tax evasion, money laundering, drug smuggling, torture and slavery. They have unmasked doctors who have removed the wombs of mentally disabled girls with the consent of parents.

    But it’s not all easy sailing. According to Freedom House, in 2017 there were only 175 investigative journalists in all of China, down 58% since 2011.

    What does this mean for you, a young activist who wants to help change the world?

    Truth is murky.

    The lesson is that the truth may not lie squarely on one side or the other, but rather in a murky, grey area. It can take courage to shine a light in the shadows, teeming with lies. And you may have to hear viewpoints that differ radically from your own. It pays to listen.

    Progress against racism, inequality and injustice depends on an informed public.

    The best journalists recognize their responsibility to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which state that: all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights; and everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

    As the third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson said: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

    So stick up for your rights, including the right to free expression. Be fair. And remember that one man’s terrorist may be another man’s freedom fighter. You don’t have a lock on the truth.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why is it important to understand that fake news is nothing new?

    2. Do you think there is any way to stamp out fake news?

    3. What does it mean to say, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”?

     

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  • Trump’s Department of Education Continues to Drag Feet on Borrower Defense

    Trump’s Department of Education Continues to Drag Feet on Borrower Defense

    On June 26th, the US Department of Education was brought to the Ninth District Court (and Judge Alsup) to show how many the Borrower Defense to Repayment cases that have been resolved per court order.  While we wait for a transcript of the latest episode of Sweet v McMahon, what we can tell you is that the Trump government continues to drag its feet in paying back debtors who have been defrauded.  

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  • Designed in California but made … all over the world

    Designed in California but made … all over the world

    Most of us spend a good part of our lives glued to our iPhone or other similar devices. It seems as if we cannot survive without being connected to cyberspace.

    It turns out that Apple, a U.S.-based company which makes the iPhone and depends on its sale, cannot survive without being connected to China, which is a key partner in the production of most every iPhone that people use. And that puts the iPhone at the center of the great power struggle underway between the United States and China.

    One of the earliest insights into iPhone production came along in 2010 thanks to research by economists Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert. They lifted the veil off the mystery behind the iPhone label “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China”.

    The iPhone model 3G was indeed designed in Cupertino, California, by Apple. But the vast majority of components were sourced from Japan, South Korea, Germany and elsewhere in the United States.  All iPhone components were then shipped for assembly to Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer based in Shenzhen, China.

    Less than 4% of the iPhone manufacturing value came from the assembly in China.

    Manufacturing capability

    The iPhone was only first launched in 2007, and iPhones were not sold in China until late 2009. At the time, there was no production of Chinese smartphones. Since those days, the iPhone and other smartphones have become ubiquitous in modern life. Apple now sells 230 million iPhones annually, each one of which has one thousand components and about 90% of them are produced in China.

    Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, in his recent book “Apple in China“, explained how Apple began assembling iPhones in China for its cheap labour costs but that came with a different cost: China’s labour was not of high quality.

    In contrast to the general impression, China does not have great vocational training systems. So Apple became China’s vocational school.

    Although Apple did not own any factories, it assumed close control over the factories of Foxconn and other companies to ensure its traditional perfectionist quality control. This included sending over planeloads of high-level engineers from the United States to train Chinese workers and investing in machinery for production lines.

    Further, while components from foreign companies are still used in Apple products, these companies are now increasingly based in China. Over time Chinese companies have played a growing role in the production of the iPhone and other devices. Workers from all these companies have also been trained by Apple engineers.

    Over the past decade, Apple invested some $55 billion a year for staff training and machinery. Since 2008, 28 million Chinese have received training from Apple — a figure larger than the workforce of California.

    Human capital

    But there is more to China’s human capital than training offered by Apple. A key element has been China’s investment in human capital more generally, notably education and health.

    Chinese students participating in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment — from Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, collectively home to nearly 200 million people — have outperformed the majority of students from other education systems, including the United States.

    China has also made extraordinary progress in lifting its life expectancy, which is now the same as that of the United States at 78 years, even though the gross domestic product per capita in the United States  — a key measure of the economic health of a country — at $83,000, is more than six times that of China. For the first time, China has overtaken the United States in healthy life expectancy at birth,  according to World Health Organization data.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that there is a popular conception that companies come to China because of low labour cost. Cook argues that the truth is China stopped being a low labor cost country many years ago.

    He insists that Apple is motivated by the quantity and type of skill that China offers. For example, while it requires really advanced tooling engineers, Cook is not sure the United States could fill a room with such engineers, while in China you could fill multiple football fields. Such vocational expertise is now very, very deep in China.

    India and the United States

    U.S. President Donald Trump insists that Apple must “reshore” its production to the United States. This is not realistic. The United States does not have the capacity to produce Apple’s products at scale and at competitive cost. It most certainly does not have the same competitive cost, well-trained engineering workforce as China, which has some three million people working in Apple’s supply chain.

    Under Trump 1.0, Apple made a commitment to build “three big, beautiful factories” (in Trump’s words) in the United States. But that was just hot air, as none were built. Now, Trump has threatened to impose a 25% tariff on iPhones if they are not made in the United States.

    In response, Apple said that phones sold there would be labelled “Made in India” (although this is unacceptable for Trump), and has pledged to invest $500 billion in the United States. What this pledge means in reality is still unclear. Apple may ultimately need to build a token factory or two, with limited production functions, to pander to Trump.

    Many commentators are suggesting India as an alternative production base for Apple. And some assembly functions are indeed being shifted to India. But these are just the very final assembly phase of production, which are sufficient to justify attaching an “Assembled in India” label.

    All the pre-assembly activities remain in China. At this stage, India is not a viable option for replacing China because of deficiencies in human capital, infrastructure and logistics systems.

    A close partnership

    In many ways, modern China and Apple have made each other.

    Technology and knowledge transfer have underpinned China’s growing contribution to the iPhone and other Apple products — as well as the Chinese smartphone brands like Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo, which now dominate world markets. Moreover, Chinese engineers are capable of building all sorts of electronic products, some of which could be used in military conflicts.

    In sum, Apple has made a major contribution to the rise of China as a technological powerhouse. China has been a key factor in the rise of Apple as one of the world’s most successful companies. Apple has a Chinese system for producing the iPhone and other products that works like a song.

    No other country has the human capital, and production and logistics systems for producing Apple products at scale and at a competitive cost. Thus, Apple is in a way now trapped in China, which makes it vulnerable to coercion from China’s authoritarian government.

    It should try to make greater efforts to de-risk itself from China, although that is not easy and might provoke the ire of the Chinese authorities.

    Apple now finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place — meaning President Xi and President Trump.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Where is the iPhone made?

    2. What would make a device that is made outside the United States more expensive to buy in the United States?

    3. Should people be able to buy anything from anywhere without any extra costs from governments? Why?

     

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