The email arrived in early February from the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, carrying a blunt message. It informed the organizers of a Danish lecture series — one I was soon scheduled to speak at — that the final portion of American funding would be released only after they signed a statement essentially saying they were in compliance with a U.S. executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion.
It was a head-spinning turn of events; under President Biden, attention to D.E.I. issues had been a requirement for receiving the grant. Unwittingly, Denmark seemed to have been swept into America’s culture wars.
Before the organizers at the University of Southern Denmark could respond, the U.S. State Department sent an even blunter message: The grant was “being terminated for the convenience of the U.S. Government.” It concluded by thanking the Danes “for your partnering with the Department of State and God Bless America.”
Some partnership!
The stakes here were relatively small. The lecture series was respected, but not overly prominent, and the savings amounted to a minuscule $10,000. Sometimes, though, a small story reveals a great deal — in this case about the priorities and obsessions of the Trump administration.
First, the two notices suggested there might have been no communication between the State Department and the embassy in Copenhagen — an apparent lack of coordination that we’re likely to see more of as the administration hollows out the government. A recent New York Times/Siena College survey noted that two-thirds of Americans thought the word “chaotic” “described President Trump’s second term in office well.
Second, the cutoff of funding was followed nearly two weeks later by another message to the university (I viewed copies of all the emails). It said that a recent court hearing prevented the State Department from holding up congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds and ordered it to make the financing available. It further ordered the department to “provide written notice of this order” to recipients of grants. Notifying the Danish university was as far as the administration went in complying with the court. The remaining funds haven’t been released yet, organizers say — typical of the Trump administration’s defiance of the courts.
Most importantly, the episode showed the Trump administration’s willingness — indeed its determination — to extend its control to the smallest of ventures, in this case the remaining $10,000 for a university lecture series funded by its own embassy.
Ultimately, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities stepped in to provide the necessary money and I will deliver my lecture on Wednesday. If the school hadn’t had the resources, I would have gone anyway.
Ironically, the subject of my talk is my recent book, “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society,” in which I explain my view of what freedom really means, why it’s so important and what must be done to achieve it. I also discuss ways in which freedom gets suppressed.
A core element of freedom is the ability of each person to live up to his or her potential. A liberal education is essential for this to happen, because it helps students develop their skills and capabilities to the utmost, frees them from shibboleths, and enables them to think critically. But this kind of approach is threatening to authoritarianism, which wants to impose particular views on a nation’s citizens.
In the case of the Danish lecture series, simply discussing diversity, equity and inclusion was apparently deemed threatening to the administration, which asserts that those qualities, by their very nature, are discriminatory against the majority of the population. But Mr. Trump’s “1984”-ish thought police have not stopped at D.E.I. Climate change and gender are other words that are being expunged.
Another core element of freedom — indeed something essential to its survival — is that power must be limited; there have to be checks and balances not just within government but within society. I have long warned that the concentration of wealth among a small percentage of the population would provide a fertile field for a demagogue, and that there was an ample supply of people who might play the part.
Universities, which protect academic freedom, are as important to this system of checks and balances as other civil rights protections like freedom of the press.
One of the main justifications for tenure is that it gives professors like me the freedom to speak out when we see the government doing something foolish, like imposing high tariffs on our allies, or something that might impair our freedom over the long run, such as what the Trump administration is doing in areas like immigration and national security.
Over time, as the partnership between government and universities in producing basic research grew, legislators recognized that a cutoff of federal funding would be disastrous, so they carefully inserted provisions to make sure there was due process if funds were canceled. Little did they imagine, I’m guessing, that the government would try to bypass these provisions.
The purpose of the lecture series in Denmark is to reinforce “that the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark share core democratic values.” The Trump administration’s actions have led many Danes to question whether that is, in fact, the case.
Denmark saw the termination of the lecture series money for what it was: an attack on the core foundations of freedom.
And, of course, the episode has taken place against the backdrop of Mr. Trump’s aggressive posture toward Greenland, the vast island overseen by Denmark. On March 4, Mr. Trump declared that the United States would gain control of Greenland “one way or the other.” The barely veiled threat was not received well, either by our close NATO ally Denmark or by Greenland itself.
When I was a graduate student, I was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of a Fulbright fellowship, which allowed me to study overseas, so I understand the importance of international knowledge sharing, as well as how it can help to enhance America’s soft power.
For decades, that soft power has been far more important in extending the country’s influence than our military power, as the political scientist Joseph Nye, who died last week, has pointed out.
This episode with the lecture series has been a lesson in civics and where America is today, and that’s perhaps why it’s received such attention in the Danish press and media. The Danes have had a front row view of the erosion of America’s democracy.
One of the longstanding aims of programs such as the speaker series at the University of Southern Denmark has been to enhance the understanding of America and what is going on in the country. Unintentionally, in this case, it may have been truly successful.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, is a 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize in economic science, chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute and the author of “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post My Brush With Trump’s Thought Police appeared first on New York Times.
