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Speaking of which:

What’s going on at Columbia? What’s the state of the resistance there?

Columbia just •rescinded• degrees they’d granted. This wasn’t even just a politically motived expulsion, which would already be utterly horrifying. They ••revoked diplomas•• already granted.

That means if you get a degree from Columbia, you might suddenly, at the political whim of any random president, not have a degree anymore. All that money you paid, all that work you did? Poof! It can disappear overnight!

Can you imagine?! Can you imagine what that does to the expected value of a Columbia degree??

If I were a prospective student, I would really think twice about accepting an offer from Columbia now. Nope nope nope.

And if I were a current student, an alum, faculty…well, I’d be out for administrators’ heads on pikes (figuratively speaking), because everything I’ve invested in that place is going up in smoke.

An elite college degree is an investment with a payoff horizon of 20 or 40 or 60 years. It’s costly — not just in money, but in time, energy, years of life. People are only willing to invest in it because they believe the investment will endure.

If a Columbia degree is like a cheap roof that might just leak or collapse at any time, what’s their case? “Give us four years of your life, drain your savings, go into debt! Everything you worked for •might not• suddenly collapse!! Our degrees are just cheap paper anyway, right??”

Yes, strategies like this from @jhlibby:
https://newsie.social/@jhlibby/114179160299839205

You don’t even have to sue them out of existence. You just have to make the administration believe that they •could• face a devastating lawsuit.

Make them more afraid of complying with fascists than they are of fighting fascists. Make compliance existentially dangerous.

And look, in the unlikely event that anyone reading this actually thinks this was a reasonable thing for Columbia to do, if you think “oh, •those• students deserved it“…

…I want you to ask yourself, honestly, whether you can imagine the Trump administration ordering Columbia to rescind the degrees of — say — trans graduates. Because I can.

And I want you to ask yourself, honestly, whether you can imagine the current leadership of Columbia refusing that order. Because at this point, I sure can’t.