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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Safe Spaces Are Coming Back to Brown University—All Thanks to Trump
Brown University has settled with the Trump administration, which is currently waging war on elite institutions of higher education. Under the guise of combating antisemitism on campuses—an important problem, though not one the federal government is well-suited to address—President Donald Trump's Education Department has gone after Columbia University, Harvard University, and also Brown. Brown's deal with the federal government has been described as more favorable to the university than Columbia's; Harvard has yet to reach an agreement at all, but is reportedly willing to spend up to $500 million to settle the matter. Large sums of money are at stake for all three universities, as the federal government is responsible for doling out billions of dollars in research grants. Brown is the recipient of $510 million in public funding. So it's not surprising that Brown wanted to make a deal. It's unfortunate, of course, that the Trump administration is using the threat of a funding reduction to dictate terms to what is ultimately a private institution. This is obviously a version of jawboning, in which political figures use non-legislative means to achieve some sort of policy end. When the Biden administration threatened social media companies and browbeat them into making different moderation decisions, it was swiftly recognized as a free speech issue by many conservatives, libertarians, and even some on the left. It's similarly vexing when the Trump administration—which has pledged to restore free speech and end federally driven censorship—does this. It's true that institutions of higher education are not entitled to federal funding, which, after all, is paid by taxpayers. The Trump administration, or any administration, could decide, in a moment of unusual frugality, that the U.S. is too indebted to continue sending billions of dollars to wealthy private organizations that have their own massive endowments. But the government shouldn't use the threat of a funding cut as a form of coercion. That's no different from how the Obama administration handled Title IX enforcement: Obama's Education Department instructed campuses to adopt policies that were hostile to free speech and due process, and they implied that federal research dollars would evaporate in the event of noncompliance. Indeed, the extent to which the Obama higher ed coercion blueprint has been adopted by Trump is under-acknowledged. All that said, the details of the Brown settlement are disturbing in their own right. It's true that Brown avoided some of the harsher penalties that Columbia got stuck with, and it's good that the settlement recognizes that the government has no "authority to dictate Brown's curriculum or the content of academic speech." Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine, complains that the settlement includes "no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring," but the only thing it really says about hiring is that it must be race neutral. The Supreme Court has already held that race-based hiring and admissions policies are almost always impermissible, so this is hardly some unreasonable, out-of-nowhere demand. But Dubal is also concerned about a provision of the settlement that permits the feds to collect and read Brown faculty course evaluations, and that's legitimately concerning. In fact, it speaks to the most troubling aspect of the settlement: It lends itself toward the creation of a campus antisemitism police that will be laser-focused on identifying, cataloguing, and eliminating uncomfortable and offensive speech that is nevertheless clearly protected by the First Amendment. In other words, the Trump administration is directly encouraging the formation of campus safe spaces. The settlement instructs Brown to survey students on their feelings of emotional safety. The survey questions are really something, and include: "whether they feel welcome at Brown; whether they feel safe reporting anti-Semitism at Brown; whether they have experienced harassment on social media." These are vague questions that will prompt subjective answers. Social media harassment is a particularly fraught topic; what constitutes harassment? If one student is being unkind to another student on Instagram or TikTok, is it really the university's job to intervene? Brown should act to counter identity-based harassment in cases where it's egregious, criminal, or abjectly violates the code of conduct. If students are drawing swastikas on Jewish people's doors, the university should certainly intervene. But the language in the settlement is too non-specific, and almost requires university administrators to overreach. No one should be naive about this, because it's obvious what's going to happen: An anti-Israel student will go after a pro-Israel student on social media, the pro-Israel student will say they are being harassed, and Brown will feel obligated to respond. No student should be made actually unsafe—i.e., be a victim of violence—because they are Jewish, or for any other reason. But it should be self-apparent to everyone who criticized the liberal safe space trend of the 2010s that re-orienting the campus speech police around the protection of Jewish students' subjective feelings of discomfort is not a positive development. This will produce the same sort of histrionics that existed when campus authorities were dedicated to policing speech that was perceived to be anti-black, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-trans, etc. There will be an uptick in bias incident reports as students discover that they can weaponize the process against perceived enemies, as students absorb the idea that the administration is responsible for making them feel emotionally well at all times. I really thought the idea was to undermine the ideological foundations of the safe space mentality, not expand its identity-based reach. The Trump administration is erecting an edifice that would have been much to the liking of all those Play-Doh-loving, coloring-book-needing, puppy-hugging, safe-space liberals circa 2015. I'm joined by Amber Duke to discuss South Park's jokes about Trump, the latest Epstein Files news, Sydney Sweeney, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D–Texas), and more. It has begun: My Nintendo Switch 2 arrived last night. I bought the system, one extra set of Joy-Cons, the Pro Controller, and three games: Donkey Kong Bananza, Mario Kart World, and Super Mario Party Jamboree. (The grand total was in the $800 range.) I spent most of the night transferring my data from the old Switch to the new one, and I've only had time to play about 20 minutes of Donkey Kong, so the full report will have to wait until next week. The post Safe Spaces Are Coming Back to Brown University—All Thanks to Trump appeared first on
New York Post
19 minutes ago
- New York Post
Google loses appeal in suit filed by 'Fortnite' maker Epic Games as app store verdict upheld
Alphabet's Google on Thursday failed to persuade a US appeals panel to overturn a jury verdict and federal court order requiring the technology giant to revamp its app store Play. The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected claims from Google that the trial judge made legal errors in the antitrust case that unfairly benefited 'Fortnite' maker Epic Games, which filed the lawsuit in 2020. Epic accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and pay for transactions within apps. Advertisement 'Fortnite' maker Epic Games accused Google of monopolizing how consumers access apps on Android devices and pay for transactions within apps. AFP via Getty Images The Cary, North Carolina-based company convinced a San Francisco jury in 2023 that Google illegally stifled competition. US District Judge James Donato in San Francisco ordered Google in October to restore competition by allowing users to download rival app stores within its Play store and by making Play's app catalog available to those competitors, among other reforms. Donato's order was on hold pending the outcome of the 9th Circuit appeal. Advertisement The court's decision can be appealed to the US Supreme Court. Google told the appeals court that the tech company's Play store competes with Apple's App Store, and that Donato unfairly barred Google from making that point to contest Epic's antitrust claims. The tech giant also argued that a jury should never have heard Epic's lawsuit because it sought to enjoin Google's conduct — a request normally decided by a judge — and not collect damages. Advertisement Epic has defended the verdict and court injunction, telling the 9th Circuit judges that the Android app market has been 'suffering under anti-competitive behavior for the better part of a decade.' Google told the appeals court that the tech company's Play store competes with Apple's App Store, and that the judge unfairly barred Google from making that point to contest Epic's antitrust claims. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images In the trial court and in the appeal, Epic disputed arguments by Google that changes to its app business ordered by the court would harm user privacy and security. Microsoft filed a brief backing Epic, as did the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission. Advertisement Epic separately is battling Apple over a US judge's order requiring the iPhone maker to give developers greater freedom to steer consumers to make purchases outside its App Store. Apple has appealed a ruling that said it violated a prior injunction in a lawsuit that Epic filed in 2020.
The Hill
19 minutes ago
- The Hill
Thune: Recess appointments on table as Senate faces backlog of nominees
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says that putting the Senate into an extended recess to allow President Trump to make recess appointments to clear the backlog of his pending nominees is an option that's 'on the table.' Thune pushed back on the idea of putting the Senate into an extended recess at the start of the year to allow Trump to fill his Cabinet without having to go through the time-consuming confirmation process. Now, Thune isn't ruling out the idea of opening the way for recess appointments as the Senate faces a huge backlog of 161 nominees, mostly lower-level positions that in past years would have been filled by voice votes or unanimous consent agreements on the floor. 'I think everything is on the table,' Thune told reporters, who said that other options such as rules reform 'make more sense.' 'Fixing the rules, not just for now, but for the long term would be a better solution for it. But at this point right now, I wouldn't say we're taking any options off the table,' he said. Some Republicans are making the argument within the GOP conference that putting the Senate into an extended recess, which would allow Trump to swiftly fill open positions with recess appointments, is the best path forward. Proponents of going the route of recess appointments argue that there are so many nominees currently pending that it would take too long to reach consensus on a rules change to speed up confirmations, and that the rules reform would likely be too modest to have much of an immediate impact on the backlog. 'Whatever it takes,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said of adjourning the Senate for several weeks to allow Trump to make recess appointments. 'This is so completely broken, so out of control,' he said of the backlog of nominees. There are several obstacles to putting the Senate into an extended recess. The first is that Thune would need to get at least 50 Republicans to vote for the recess, and already two GOP senators have raised concerns about doing that — Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Thune could afford no more than three defections from his conference on recess appointments. The second obstacle is that the House would also have to agree to a longer-term adjournment resolution to opt out of pro forma sessions that block the president from making recess appointments. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) hasn't given any indication that he plans to call his members back to Washington to approve an adjournment resolution, but that could change if the Senate decides to set the stage for Trump to make recess appointments.
