She kind of gives the game away, doesn’t she?
Columbia University has agreed to allow the Trump administration to basically run it. I can’t imagine anything more daft, but that’s where they are. A professor at the university makes an excellent point in the NYT today. Even if you think that this “deal” is acceptable, you have to know that he will never abide by it if he doesn’t want to:
In 1672, Charles II unilaterally suspended repayment of 1.2 million pounds to London’s private bankers. Having run up this debt, and unable to finance a flotilla of ships to fight the Dutch, Charles became neither the first nor the last absolute monarch to break his word. James II, his sibling successor, went further, claiming royal prerogative to bypass laws and purge Protestant judges, generals and functionaries. The solemn oaths he made at his coronation, to respect Parliament and the Church of England, wound up being worth not very much.
James ruled for less than four years, deserting after the Glorious Revolution began the era of parliamentary supremacy. Parliament would approve only those loans it would be willing to pay back with taxes, enabling deals with creditors now willing to lend. By restraining the monarch’s power, it enabled the crown to make deals it couldn’t otherwise get.
In economic history, we teach the 1688 creation of parliamentary supremacy as a solution to what economists call “commitment problems.” In the absence of a third party sufficiently strong to make sure all sides stick to their promises, the powerful can renege on the powerless. The powerless, seeing this, wisely choose to not contract with the powerful. Absolutist rulers are victims of their own lack of restraints; a sovereign who is too powerful cannot get inexpensive credit, because nothing stops the ruler from defaulting on any bond. President Trump, by smashing checks on his authority, has wound up undermining his own ability to make credible deals, including the one just reached with Columbia University, where I teach.
The entities that have been striking deals with Mr. Trump, my own employer included, have not learned the lessons of the Glorious Revolution. Trade negotiators from longtime partner countries, government contractors, law firms, federal employees, permanent residents, the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, even the Transportation Security Administration labor union are all experiencing contractual vertigo, finding out that the administration will not honor previous agreements.
He has never abided by any contract and he admits it. If he “doesn’t like” the job they did he refuses to pay, tells them to sue and then agrees to pay pennies on the dollar. He cannot be counted on to abide by any of these agreements either. He’s already torn up a bnch of treaties. His tariff scheme is full of broken promises. If anything he’ll make an example of Columbia (and the EU or Japan etc.) by reneging just to show he can.
There is no margin in appeasing this monster but it appears they’re going to do it anyway. The system is completely breaking down — scientific research is being throttled at his whim and as the brain damaged Education Secretary inappropriately blurted out, Republicans are achieving their real goals: the destruction of liberalism in higher education. In the process they are destroying higher education itself.