David Brooks:
Yes, people call Trump a transactional politician, but he’s an extortionist. That’s actually a difference. There’s — a transaction is, we do a deal. Extortion is, I bully you until you give me what I want.
And so that’s what we’re seeing here. Now, I put myself in the shoes of, say, the president of Columbia, the head of Paul Weiss. And I think, well, if I compromise with Trump, I’m hurting my institution. But if I lose $400 million, I’m also hurting my institution. These are real choices that people have to make. And I understand that.
In the case of Columbia, I personally think the Trump requests or demands, whatever it is, are kind of reasonable, and Columbia should have done all this stuff five or 10 years ago. They really did get ideologically out of control. And if they were publicly funded, partially publicly funded, then you have got a problem. And they created this problem.
So I understand why, I got to save my university. I got to save $400 million.
On the other hand, caving into an extortionist rarely pays off, because he will say, oh, I take that. Here’s my next demand. Here’s my next demand. And if you look at the history of Zelenskyy, Macron, people — all the people who’ve tried to cozy up to the extortionists, they will all end up losing in the end.
And so I think it’s time for the universities as a body — and we saw this with the Princeton president — to say, no more deals. We are standing up, because there will be a time — and, again, I don’t think this is quite the time to sort of beat down the Trump administration. There will be a time where everybody has to hold together and stand up and say, no, no more deals.
