Thank you Professor Richardson.

In the Powell Memorandum of August, 1971, Powell said that public colleges and universities were largely funded by taxpayers, and articulated that high-income business executives and corporations were were among the most significant taxpayers and therefore, funders of higher education (at least pre-Reagan, when the wealthy actually paid taxes -except for Trump). Powell argued that oddly, highly-educated professors were liberal or leaned liberal -thus he called for more conservative influence on campuses around the United States.

Students today (just as they did during the Vietnam era) want to feel empowered and relevant. The news from Gaza is a steady stream of the very worst of humanity. Just as protests eventually led to the American withdrawal from Vietnam, protests led to the demise of South African apartheid, students have every right to peacefully protest war crimes committed by Hamas in the terrorism, killing and kidnapping of innocent people, and Netanyahu's criminally terrorist acts in his continuing indiscriminate bombing and destruction of Gaza.

The GOP are always among the first to yell "don't politicize this mass shooting" at Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Columbine, Las Vegas, or the Tree of Life Synagogue. Yet, the hypocrisy that flows freely through GOP/MAGA/Putin veins ensures they politicize everything from climate action, to diplomacy, and of course -any place else they see an opportunity to manipulate voters. So it should not come as a surprise they are pressuring institutions of higher education. Just as Trump only wanted to direct disaster relief to "Red" States, or Jared Kushner was fine allowing the contagious, deadly pre-vaccine COVID to spread through "Blue" States, watch for MAGA Elise Stefanik and others, if Trump is elevated to the Presidency, to restrict Federal funding to any colleges or universities with programs related to race, gender, environmental conservation, ESG, or economics (in which the writings of John Kenneth Galbraith are preferred over Milton Friedman).