Trump makes Ivy League pay for its progressive hypocrisy

If you’ve endured a university humanities class in the past decade, you’ve probably encountered something closer to a revival for secular dogma than a center of learning. The professors preach cultural Marxism in cap and gown. Saints include Che Guevara. Sinners: white, heteronormative males. Sacred rites: pronoun rituals and land acknowledgments.

At the heart of this faith lies one central mantra: “The rich must pay their fair share.” The chant rings through classrooms and protests alike, uttered with all the subtlety of a Gregorian monk — though with far less harmony and far more self-righteousness.

Let the endowment taxes roll. Let the lawsuits fly. And may the gates of our so-called higher learning institutions be broken open to the higher truths they’ve long tried to suppress.

Let’s be fair. If everyone pays the same tax rate, the rich still pay more in absolute dollars. But that kind of equality doesn’t satisfy the high priests of redistribution. They demand “equity,” which in this context means punishing the successful with steeper percentages. Anything less is deemed injustice. Anything less is oppression. Anything less confirms you didn’t graduate with a gender studies degree and an enduring grudge.

I don’t bring this up just to trigger memories of a feminist philosophy professor scolding you for your privilege. I mention it because, at long last, I agree with them. Yes, the rich should pay a higher rate. And I know exactly where to start: with the universities themselves.

Here’s the irony — a brand of justice so rich even a tenured literature professor could see it. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act delivers on the universities’ own demands. The new graduated endowment tax will slap elite schools like Harvard and Yale with a levy of up to 8% on their investment income.

That’s not chump change. That’s enough to make a development officer cry into his ethically sourced, carbon-neutral latte.

These institutions — which idolize Alfred Kinsey, stack 95% of their faculties with leftists, and teach students to hate America — are finally getting a taste of the redistributionist medicine they’ve long prescribed to others. After decades of turning our culture into a grievance-riddled mess, they’re now paying the price. Literally.

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Call it poetic justice. Better yet, call it providential irony. Let these institutions finance the repair of the very foundations they’ve spent years undermining.

But don’t stop there.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon should give students a clear legal path to demand refunds for failed educations. If a business promises a product and fails to deliver, customers deserve their money back. Why not apply the same principle to overpriced degrees in grievance studies?

And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should open the floodgates to lawsuits against professors who, without any medical training, diagnosed gender dysphoria and pushed irreversible surgeries as cures for teenage angst. These people couldn’t diagnose a flat tire, but they felt confident calling your daughter a boy and your son a pansexual moon sprite.

Only when faced with real consequences — financial and legal — might these institutions begin to take their responsibilities seriously again. Only then might they stop operating as what John Calvin once called “idol factories” — churning out false gods and vain imaginations at record speed.

Let the endowment taxes roll. Let the lawsuits fly. And may the gates of our so-called higher learning institutions be broken open to the higher truths they’ve long tried to suppress.