And it pains me to say that. From an interview about Harvard’s chances of holding off the Trump administration onslaught (boldface mine):
[Question]: Is there anything happening behind the scenes to de-escalate this?
[Reply]: Harvard’s board, as far as we know, won’t let the university go back to the table. The board members don’t trust that you can negotiate with Trump. And the things that Trump keeps hitting Harvard with are so destructive. How could you go back to the table?
You can’t negotiate with someone like Trump or the people in the Trump administration because they are not people of their word. All of the lying does have consequences. Trump’s demands are existential, and if they don’t believe he’ll stop here–and why would he, once he knows he can roll you–there’s no reason to negotiate.
Never thought I would root for fucking Harvard though. Welcome, comrades?
mikethemadbiologist
To help you feel less bad about rooting for Harvard, did you know it had an Extension school? In the 70’s (I’m now in mine) I started taking extension classes, racking up credits good for earning a Harvard degree even for a working slob like me … b4 finishing, tho, I moved to San Fran , so when I saw UC Berkeley offered extension classes on its S.F. campus, I took some. None of those credits were good anywhere else, nor were they even good for UC Berkeley! So Harvard may indeed be elitist, etc, but at least it gives real opportunity to the hoi polling (32 years after I took my first course, I finally got that BA from Harvard for which they gave me the Tortoise award … see? … they even have a sense of humor).
Harvard just caught on more quickly. You can’t negotiate with Trump. He has no integrity. Every deal is just until he decides he wants a better deal. He did this for years in real estate and got away with it. So much of that world is private and there are so many suckers/players. Now, Trump is working out in the open, and everyone can see that he’s as good as his word.