The Trump administration has found itself in a dispute with Harvard University. It began when the President’s team sent several Ivy League universities a list of changes they expected the schools to make. The move is part of a new right-wing strategy which recognizes that we currently live under a vague, necessarily politicized system of civil rights law and aims to begin interpreting civil rights laws in ways more in line with the values and social aims of the right.

Harvard, however, refused to abide by the administration’s demands. As a result, Trump froze a little over $2 billion in federal funds going to the school last week and $1 billion earlier this week while threatening to withhold all $9 billion the Ivy League school receives from the federal government each year if they refuse to agree to the President’s demands.

"The showdown is largely being framed as either a battle to protect academic freedom from an authoritarian president or an overdue effort to rescue one of the nation’s oldest universities from the radical far-left administrators leading it off course."

Beyond being blatantly unjust, the federal money pouring into higher education is the main factor behind the exploding cost of college in recent decades.

"There is only one genuine and permanent solution to these problems. Halt all federal funding—direct and indirect—for these “private” colleges and universities."

As long as these schools rely on politicians to fund their operations, they will always be politicized. There is no escaping that. And, on the other side, even if Trump is totally victorious and gets Harvard to capitulate on everything, there is functionally nothing stopping the next Democrat to win the presidency from reversing everything Trump did.