Trump wants Harvard to train workers to screw bolts in factories, so they can assemble iPhones. I've never felt so humiliated.
American Commerce Secretary Rutenberg revealed during an interview with CNBC that the Trump administration is in talks with Harvard University for a potential settlement agreement, one of whose conditions is reportedly requiring Harvard to invest $500 million to establish a "Harvard Vocational School."
This means that Trump hopes this top university in the United States will open a vocational school to train workers who tighten screws, providing skilled labor for American manufacturing.
This move is not a joke, but a serious one. Rutenberg once envisioned a scene of 1 million Americans tightening screws for iPhones, and now this task is assigned to Harvard by Trump.
But for Harvard, it's clearly a humiliating conscription.
In the past, Harvard symbolized the world's top minds, but now it has to supply fast hands for the iPhone supply chain.
This is not only Trump's retaliation against the liberal education system, but also a naked cultural war, attempting to rewrite who has the right to define value.
Why does Trump insist on making Harvard fund a vocational school?
On the surface, it's to address the real problem of the shortage of technical workers in American manufacturing; but more deeply, it's part of his consistent anti-elite political narrative — elite colleges focus only on theory, not practicality, spending taxpayers' money to produce left-wing people who look down on America.
So he simply turns Harvard into a tool.
The message is clear: let you scholars who consider yourselves superior stop pretending, always talking about progress, freedom, LGBTQ, I XXXX.
But the question is, can this really solve the issue of the labor structure? Are students trained by Harvard who can tighten screws really better than those from vocational schools?
This operation is a microcosm of Trump's style of power logic — he isn't really concerned about vocational education, but rather uses various performances to prove to American voters that: you have been betrayed by the elites, and I have come to settle the score for you.
In this script, Harvard is the arrogant figure who has looked down upon others, now must bow its head; and Trump is the "enforcer" of the people, even if this enforcement is brutal, anti-intellectual, or even ironic.
This time, it's not just the elite system that is challenged, but a complete reversal of American cultural identity.
Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1843131455193289/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.