Maxwell School News and Commentary

“This is one of the most unsettling, tragic pieces of news yet,” says Sean O’Keefe, University Professor and member of the presidential management program’s inaugural class. “This is a firing of convenience. They are looking for a headcount reduction; there is nothing qualitative about this.”

 “You have to have social promotion. You have no choice. And the only place I would be in favor of making them repeat is if they can't read,” says Bill Coplin, professor of policy studies.

Scientific expertise itself is now being billed as a political liability, which opens the door to “a populist approach to what counts as valid scientific knowledge,” says University Professor Amy Fairchild.

“Syracuse University professor Brian Taylor, author of ‘Russian Politics: A Very Short Introduction,’ packs a wealth of analysis and interesting facts into a compact book,” writes Stuart Anderson, senior contributor at Forbes.

Ryan Monarch, assistant professor of economics, says that it is “clear” tariffs on products like steel and aluminum will increase the cost of building housing and developments and, therefore, drive up the prices of housing in the U.S.

“What Mr. Trump is doing with tariffs is a result of a lost consensus about how the United States should interact with other countries in the global economy. He is stepping into that vacuum, filling it with the unrestrained and autocratic use of import taxes, moves that appear to be based on personal whim rather than on U.S. trade law,” says Mary Lovely, professor emerita of economics.

“Lots of the fights that they have picked—especially Musk’s out-of-control, rampant destruction of federal agencies from within—a lot of those fights they are not going to win in court,” says Thomas Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

“Military and surveillance tech aren’t bad or unethical as such. Instead, supporting national security and doing so in the right way is incredibly important. And supporting national security is, in fact, arguably the ethical thing to do," says Johannes Himmelreich, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs. 

“ I thought that [Pete] Hegseth, the defense secretary, was the most problematic overall, of all the ones that stayed in the process. I think given that Hegseth has made it through, that tells me that the other ones are likely to make it as well,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.

Before 1934, Congress—not presidents—had power over tariff rates and negotiations, says Andrew Wender Cohen, professor of history. But Democrats had an enormous majority around the New Deal era and passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, granting the president the right to negotiate tariffs in certain cases, Cohen says.