This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Trump's assault on universities has now merged with his attack on immigrants.

In an extraordinary escalation of his fury at Harvard, the Department of Homeland Security has just put Harvard on notice that the administration will stop it from receiving foreign students if the university

doesn't provide information on students to the government. It's deeply sick stuff. Meanwhile,

on another front, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski openly admitted that the current climate is chilling speech by creating a widespread terror of retaliation.

She said, we are all afraid.

Taken together, these developments make it clear that the success or failure of Trump's authoritarian takeover will turn in no small part on

whether people and institutions crumble in the face of the climate of rage and fear Trump

and his movement are trying to create. Today we're talking to Jeffrey Sachs from Acadia University,

who's one of the best commentators out there on the intersection of authoritarianism and threats to free speech.

Jeffrey, really good to talk to you.

Pleasure to be here.

So Trump had already gone to war with Harvard, and the university has stated categorically that it will not buckle to Trump's insane efforts to exert extraordinary control over its teaching. That got the tin pot tyrant very angry.

Now the New York Times reports that the administration is threatening to stop Harvard from enrolling foreign students unless it turns over extensive information about students at the school.

Jeffrey, what do you make of this? Has the U.S. government done

anything like this ever before? No, this is honestly without precedent. The way that the Trump

administration has gone after Harvard and higher ed in general doesn't really have any kind of

precedent in U.S. history that I know about, it's the energy, the focus, and the,

frankly, the resourcefulness with which the administration is targeting these institutions

is deeply alarming. Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting way to frame it. They're actually

pulling out all the stops. They're putting everybody in the government to work, that's a very interesting way to frame it. They're actually pulling out all the

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