TRUMP VERSUS KNOWLEDGE

“IPSA SCIENTIA POTENTIA EST” (“KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS POWER”) wrote English philosopher Sir Francis Bacon in Meditationes Sacrea, (Sacred Meditations), 1597. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes as a young man was a secretary to Bacon. Hobbes shortened this phrase to “Knowledge is Power” in his treatise Leviathan, 1668.

Thomas Jefferson Concurred. Some 150 years later, “Thomas Jefferson used the phrase in his correspondence on at least four occasions, each time in connection with the establishment of a state university in Virginia. In an 1817 letter to George Ticknor, Jefferson equated knowledge with power, safety, and happiness.” This, from monticello.org. 

Jefferson wrote, with his centuries’ orthography: “[T]his last establishment [a state university] will probably be within a mile of Charlottesville, and four from Monticello, if the system should be adopted at all by our legislature who meet within a week from this time. my hopes however are kept in check by the ordinary character of our state legislatures, the members of which do not generally possess information enough to percieve the important truths, that knolege is power, that knolege is safety, and that knolege is happiness.”

How provocative a comment. Today the “ordinary character” of the Trump administration does not “generally possess information enough to percieve truths….” But the Queens felon certainly lusts for power.

The Atlantic’s Viewpoint. Franklin Foer writes in The Atlantic, April 13, 2025, that the Trump administration intends “to crush the power and authority of whole professions, to severely weaken, if not purge, a social class. The target of the administration’s campaign is a stratum of society that’s sometimes called the professional managerial class, or the PMC, although there’s not one universal moniker that MAGA applies to the group it is now crushing. That group includes society’s knowledge workers, its cognitive elite, the winners of the tournament that is the American meritocracy.”

Symbolic Analysts. Foer continues, “It covers not only lawyers, university administrators, and professors, but also consultants, investment bankers, scientists, journalists, and other white-collar workers who have prospered in the information age. Back in the 1990s, as the group began to emerge in its current form, the liberal economics commentator Robert Reich hailed its members as ‘symbolic analysts’—people who identify and solve problems by thinking through ideas rather than via physical labor.”

Academically Trained. “A decade later,” Foer recounts, “the urbanist Richard Florida put forth an even more triumphalist term: the ‘creative class.’ That is, its members had the academic training to master the complexities of a globalized economy, the intellectual skills to conquer the digital world.”

“Veritas,” “Truth.” A concept rare to the Queens felon.

Alas, These Are Trump’s Targets. And just as he has applied mobster retribution on legal firms whose members have represented his adversaries, Trump is also attacking academic institutions on the pretext of fighting D.E.I. and anti-Semitism, with the latter identified as anything even vaguely resembling Palestinian support.

“Harvard’s decision to push back on the Trump administration’s demands,” The New York Times writes, “marked a turning point in confrontations between schools and the government.” This and following image by Sophie Park for The New York Times.   

Protection Racket Successes—Except for Harvard. Alan Blinder, Anemona Hartollis, Vimal Patel, and Stephanie Saul report in “Why Harvard Decided to Fight Trump,” The New York Times, April 16, 2025, “Late last week, officials at Harvard University were trying to decipher what the Trump administration wanted the school to do to combat antisemitism….  Then, late on Friday night, the federal government sent Harvard a five-page fusillade of new demands that would reshape the school’s operations, admissions, hiring, faculty and student life.”

The Times reporters recount, “It took less than 72 hours for Harvard to say no. The decision is the most overt defiance by a university since President Trump began pressuring higher education to conform to his political priorities.”

Harvard president Dr. Alan M. Garber. 

Dr. Garber affirms, “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

The Times continues, “ ‘This is what Joe McCarthy was trying to do, magnified ten- or 100-fold,’ said Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, adding that ‘it runs directly against the university’s role in a free society.’ ”

A Personal View: Of course, Dr. Garber’s arguments are definitive of academic freedom. The Queens felon’s comments remind me of mobster action in a 1930s flick. His goal is simple: acquiring power—not by knowledge but by intimidation. 

Let’s hope that ultimately knowledge is power, in which case Harvard and the knowledgeable among us may prevail.

Image by Sam Whitney/The New York Times.

Add End. Not long after my scheduling this for today, The Editorial Board of The New York Times published “What Harvard Has Set the Stage For,” April 16, 2025. It echoes many of the points I came upon in my research.

The Editorial Board concludes, “Fear is a formidable tool, and it is the principal weapon the administration has used to bully immigrants, law firms and centrist Republicans into submission. But universities, which have for generations taught their students the principles of American democracy and the long, dark history of authoritarian rule around the world, are supposed to know better. If they follow Harvard’s example and refuse to be intimidated by unjust abuses of power, they may inspire other fundamental national institutions to do the same.” 

As Daughter Suz observed after her April 5 participation, we’re not alone. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025