Artificial Intelligence will make everything and everyone redundant, including universities.

Universities have been turned into industries, more interested in revenue and big pay for those running them: grasping taxpayer funds, demanding more and more fee paying foreign students who can barely speak English.

Would any other industry be “viewed so benevolently by the public and supported so extensively by politicians”? (Cian Hussey, ‘Education Nation’, 24/7/25)

The standards and benefits of tertiary education these days are questionable. A culture of “fetishisation” of higher education has been developed by a sector that has proven to be highly effective in projecting its self-interest as an altruistic “public good”.

All the power, ‘transformation of lives’, ‘lifting out of diversity’, and ‘bigger and better futures’ are bruited about, when many of the people conned into going into debt they will never pay off as baristas and waiters should never have been accepted into university in the first place.

All the disappointment felt by youngsters who thought they were going to have good, well paying jobs, just adds to the huge income of organisations that need a bulldozer, not a broom, put through them.

Lack of intelligence has already made some people redundant, without artificial Intelligence these bods wouldn't have any intelligence at all. The extreme always attack the educated, as they are the real threat to their power and control our the population. Keep em' ignorant, and keep em' in line, that's their motto! Trump attacking universities is nothing out of the ordinary, we have Trumpster's on this forum with the same attitude.

Since when does thought not have freedom ?

Harvard was just the first target. It’s now clear that was only the beginning of a much larger campaign to promote demonstrably false perspectives by forcing them to be taught as though they’re equally valid.

Not sure how universities are supposed to manage that, given there’s little-to-no evidence supporting most of what the MAGA goons believe.

The demand for “viewpoint diversity” might sound reasonable on the surface, but in practice, it often means insisting that scientifically unsupported or misleading views be treated as equal to evidence-based ones. Whether it’s climate denial, election misinformation, or revisionist history, these aren’t just alternative perspectives - they’re regularly at odds with well-established facts.

This isn’t about improving universities. It’s about pressuring them into compliance. The federal government is now using visa restrictions, funding freezes, and politically motivated “diversity” audits to steer institutions toward a particular ideological line. Over 60 universities have come under this kind of scrutiny so far, and the criteria being used are vague at best.

When political pressure starts dictating what can and can’t be taught or researched, it stops being about open debate and starts being about control.

G'day John,

Absolutely correct, for the political extreme, institutions of learning are targeted as being suspect breading grounds of "disloyalty". The idea of open debate and learning, which seeks to explores alternatives and at the same time analyze the existing, both for the good and the bad is considered too dangerous and subversive to entertain. For the extremist in power these things are not to be tolerated as they are counter productive to the good operation of the state that only their prevailing system offers, everything else is treasonous.

The problem with America is their system of democracy gives too much executive power to an individual, in this case its Trump the Orange Man. Its always been believed (untested) that the counter to that excessive executive power is robust institutions with powerful checks and balances and some authority to intervene, Congress, Courts and States, and ultimately the people themselves, all having untested powers to supposedly counter any excesses by the demigod on top. In this battle of democracy in America, I think the demigod is ahead on points at the moment. A big economic downturn, and total social division, will give Trump a knock out punch. Maybe for Trump "Mexicans", and throw in the Chinese, along with two million percent tariffs are just what he needs.

John, what's your view?

You’ve nailed the bigger picture, Paul!

For authoritarians, open debate isn’t something to be celebrated; it’s something to be controlled. Universities, with their tendency to challenge orthodoxy and encourage independent thinking, become prime targets. Once a space is capable of asking, “What if the official story isn’t right?” - even in good faith - that space becomes dangerous to any regime built on manufactured reality.

And yes, America’s system puts a huge amount of power in the hands of one person, based on the assumption that the rest of the system (courts, Congress, states, media, civil society) will hold that person in check. But we’re seeing how fragile those assumptions are when large parts of those institutions either fall in line, get co-opted, or are bullied and intimidated by the mob rule of MAGA.

The idea that “the people” will fix everything at the ballot box only holds if the machinery of democracy isn’t being tampered with in the meantime.

Clearly, it is.

What worries me most about the education side of this is how openly it’s now being done. Trump’s not asking universities to stop breaking laws; he’s demanding they stop contradicting the narrative. It’s not enough to allow MAGA-aligned perspectives in the room. The goal is to elevate them, even when they’re provably false, and to punish anyone who refuses to play along.

That’s not viewpoint diversity. That’s state-enforced confusion.

If that trend continues and enough institutions cave to the pressure, we’re not just talking about political division anymore. We’re talking about two parallel realities, with no shared framework for truth.

So yes, I agree - the demigod’s ahead on points. And with every university that backs down, the gap widens.

Thanks John for the reply, I couldn't agree more.

Democracy is a fragile luxury. Its through a fair and just society, underpinned by the reasonable distribution of mass wealth, which is the glue that binds a society like ours together, and keeps it stable. Institutions like parliament, the legal system etc, are not what creates democracy in society, but are mechanisms within that facilitate the good functioning of society. A radical decline in social wellbeing, real or imaginary, will quickly lead to the breakdown of institutions. A radical opportunists will exploit discontent, often creating it themselves for their own benefit. Trumps MAGA is a perfect example of a demigod manufacturing discontent within the American society, then exploiting that discontent to further his own political agenda.

Thanks, Paul. Beautifully put.

I especially agree with your point about institutions being downstream from broader social cohesion. A functioning parliament or judiciary doesn’t guarantee democracy if the public loses trust in them, or worse, is convinced they’re part of a rigged system.

That’s the real risk with people like Trump. They don’t just take shots at institutions, they try to undermine faith in them entirely, while claiming they’re the only ones who can fix things. It’s straight from the populist playbook: stir up a crisis, then play the saviour. Once supporters buy into that, breaking rules starts to feel not just acceptable, but necessary.

Hell, you can even be a sexual predator and a convicted felon - nothing matters.

It’s no coincidence that the rise of Trumpism coincides with growing inequality, economic anxiety, and cultural fragmentation. Discontent doesn’t have to be fully real to be politically useful - it just has to feel real.

And MAGA turned that into a branding exercise.

I used to naively assume the US was safe from dictatorship - that it couldn’t happen without military backing. What I didn’t consider was mob rule. The MAGA movement showed how bullying, intimidation, and even violence could frighten individuals - politicians, judges, election officials - into silence or complicity.

You don’t need tanks in the streets when you’ve got a mob willing to do the dirty work.