Fast Takes: Who’s really funding higher education, media minimizes leftist violence and more

Campus watch: Who’s Really Funding Higher Ed?

“The higher-education lobby is trying to block the release of major foreign-donor names,” warns Craig Singleton at The Walls Street Journal. “The administration shouldn’t give in.” Federally funded universities must report large foreign gifts and contracts, but often haven’t. Past disclosures revealed gifts and contracts worth billions, including $528 million from China in 2025 alone. Other transactions involve entities flagged as national-security threats, also mostly Chinese. “The Education Department promised to publish ‘the names of all foreign sources from prior reporting cycles.’ Yet it has repeatedly delayed” amid pressure from higher-ed groups. Universities receive “billions in taxpayer support”; publishing names will provide “essential context for assessing” their relationships. Team Trump mustn’t “let university lobbyists decide where transparency ends.”

Conservative: Media Minimizes Leftist Violence

The threat of “right-wing violence” as a “greater threat” than violent action from the left “rests on a dubious premise,” observes City Journal’s John Tierney, derived from “statistics compiled by advocacy groups” that severely minimize left-wing violence. “Mentally-disturbed lone wolves” can be found on both sides, but “organized violence in pursuit of political goals” is a “recurring strategy” from the left, because “if your main goal is social justice, the moral rules change.” Leftists “have long been willing to overlook or rationalize the mob violence, social upheaval, and ruthless leadership required to impose their vision of the common good.” And when it’s not celebrated, “leftist mob violence tends to be forgotten or blamed on the other side,” as the “Left’s professional activists will always need to find a new demon to rally the troops.”

EU beat: Iceland Rejects the Bullies

After “the Brexit vote in 2016,” conventional wisdom said non-member nations would “join to avoid the UK’s ‘mistake,’ ” but “Iceland’s referendum on EU accession on Saturday has now exploded that narrative,” cheers Spiked’s Fraser Myers, as 53% of Icelanders opted “not only to remain outside of the EU, but also against even holding talks on EU membership.” As with Brexit, this came “as a surprise to European elites.” But why should Icelanders believe “that EU membership would be the best guarantor of Iceland’s security”? These “voters deserve credit” for rejecting Brussels’ attempts to coerce them into “selling out their sovereignty.” Amid a fractious world order, “it has never been more important for nations to retain their independence.”

From the right: The Dems’ Radical Moderates

“One of the Democratic Party’s most influential ‘moderates’ ” has come out in favor of packing the Supreme Court, fumes National Review’s Noah Rothman: Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC). He played kingmaker for Joe Biden in 2020 and criticized the police-defunders — but now “the supposed sage of the Democratic Party’s moderate middle” has “surrendered to possibly the most revolutionary position in the Democratic Socialists’ portfolio of competing radicalisms”: packing the Supreme Court with four added lefty justices. While “Clyburn hasn’t gone as far as the DSA activists” when it comes to full “contempt for the Constitution,” he’s on that course, as packing the Court “would be functionally indistinguishable from rendering” the entire judicial branch moot.

Policy wonks: Landfills Beat Recycling

“Landfill,” derided as the “worst place our trash can end up,” may actually be “one of the cleanest, cheapest, and most environmentally sensible” places for our waste,” note Alex Chalmers and Rob Wiblin at Works in Progress. Once “we account for energy, labor, and other inputs” it turns out that single-use plastic used for garbage bags “uses almost no energy,” and “the same pattern shows up almost everywhere we have tried to replace disposable goods with durable ones.” Landfill, “envisaged as a rotting mound of waste,” causes “minimal environmental damage” and takes up almost no space. Instead of “paying more to recycle,” we would be better off spending money on “environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board