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I’m not the most likely defender at Cornell. For the past 20 years, first as a student activist and then as mayor of New York City for a decade, I have been one of Cornell’s biggest critics.
As a former local official, I firmly believe that universities should pay property taxes. When I was mayor, I often brought Cornell’s leadership to Woodshed, involving the university’s responsibility to support infrastructure and urban services and its students rely on – the university does this through part of a negotiated agreement.
What President Trump does to his attacks on Cornell and other universities has nothing to do with tax policies or budgets. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. This is just fascist bullying.
The Trump administration’s active efforts to punish and almost complete control of institutions like Columbia and Harvard are authoritarian and should be completely shocking in this country. People who once warned us of the “big government” are now trying to decide to recruit, police classroom teaching, and force students to express their ideas against official ideology.
The fact that such moves are no longer surprising is that there are cruel comments on how dictator motivation is being made in the first three months of the 2025 program’s presidency.
Some good news is that over 200 universities and universities, including Cornell, signed a letter blasting the political invasion of our higher education system. The civil rights community also shows that we will need in civil society as the Trump administration expands its repressive impact.
To sum up, the Trump administration’s attack on universities and its freedoms could overthrow one of the last pillars of our excellence—people in every country on Earth dream of sending their children into our schools. That would be a huge self-destructive move.
Speaking of self-harm, it’s hard to say that the threat reduction and stop-work orders received by Cornell are good for our country. According to Ithaca Voice, in the paused move, in projects that use real-time sensor data to prevent air collisions between aircraft and spacecraft, address vulnerabilities in the U.S. semiconductor supply chain and develop cancer treatments that cut the edge.
In addition, the Trump administration’s unilateral and illegal refusal to pay overhead costs for negotiation and contracts to undermine the infrastructure and personnel that make the university operate. Cornell and other universities have sued cuts to negotiate costs.
Scientists and researchers are not the only ones who have demolished the work. We all will benefit from the research they are doing.
Perhaps it is obvious that Trump’s move undermines colleges and universities will hurt the people he claims to represent.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance pretend they are attacking American universities because they fight some kind of populist battle against elitists on behalf of the “forgotten people” rather than trying to silence and suppress potential voices against their dictatorial ambitions.
In fact, universities are often the main economic drivers of their communities and regions – blue, purple or red. Cornell employs more employees in Tompkins County than others in the top ten employers combined. It has had a significant economic impact in the five counties that voted around the Republican Party.
It’s not just the thousands of people that universities directly hire. It’s about small businesses that rely on students and visitors to spend. It’s about people working in startups that are nurtured by incubators and accelerators. Cornell supports more than 31,000 regional work in 2022 and 2023.
In response to Trump’s attacks and other threats, Cornell recruited a freeze in February. Who could be hurt by the action, professors and executives Trump and Vance like to demonize, or support their families in terms of transportation, catering services, safety, security, office support, and more through non-academic campus work?
Blue-collar Cornell employees who live in 60-40 Trump counties and vote for the president may soon find themselves wondering if they have made the right choice for themselves and their families and for the country and the country.
Svante Myrick is the People’s President of the American Road.