The Trump administration is considering cutting the steep 145% tariff on Chinese imports by more than half, possibly as early as next week, as US and Chinese officials gear up for high-level trade talks in Switzerland,

The New York Post

reported, citing sources close to the negotiations.US officials are reportedly weighing a reduction of the levy to somewhere between 50% and 54%, a move aimed at easing tensions as trade negotiations unfold. The proposed cut, according to

The Post

, would be accompanied by a separate plan to lower tariffs on imports from neighbouring South Asian countries to 25%.“They are going to be bringing it down to 50% while the negotiations are ongoing,” a source was quoted as saying by

The Post

.US President Trump hinted at the potential tariff shift during a meeting with UK officials in the Oval Office, stating, “It’s at 145 so we know it’s coming down,” while expressing optimism over US-China ties. “I think we’re going to have a very good relationship,” he added.Retail industry leaders, including Walmart’s Doug McMillon, Target’s Brian Cornell, and Home Depot’s Ted Decker, reportedly urged Trump to consider easing the tariff burden during an April 21 meeting at the White House. Though the executives described the session as “productive” and “constructive,” no specific outcomes were disclosed.Retailers have since started preparing for a range of tariff outcomes. Jay Foreman, CEO of toy company Basic Fun, was quoted by

The Post

that many are now asking vendors to quote prices based on tariffs between 10% and 54% to ensure flexibility. He added that a 54% levy would still push prices up significantly, such as a Tonka truck jumping from $29.99 to $49.99 but that’s “workable.” A 145% tariff, however, would push the price to nearly $80, which he warned would “bring sales to a virtual standstill.”Nick Mowbray, CEO of toy brand Zuru, said “the speculation is 54%,” but noted that it has “definitely not been told explicitly to retail yet.”Meanwhile, White House dismissed the tariff rollback talk as speculation, reported the news agency

Reuters

. “When decisions on tariffs are made, they will come directly from the President. Anything else is just pure speculation,” said a White House spokesperson.Still, retail executives say treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s recent remarks at the Milken Institute Global Conference, that the current rate “isn’t sustainable”, gave them confidence that a shift is imminent.Lawrence Rosen, chairman of Cra-Z-Art, confirmed to

The Post

that retailers are hearing similar figures, “We are hearing China at 50% to 54% and other Asian countries at 25%.”Foreman revealed that Basic Fun has seven containers en route to the US under the 145% rate and plans to store them to avoid the costly levy. The rest remain in warehouses, awaiting green light.Noel Hacegaba, COO at the Port of Long Beach, said hopes are high the Switzerland talks will help “de-escalate growing trade tensions,” but stressed that shippers need “a strong signal” before adjusting supply routes.Retail expert Gerald Storch, former CEO of Toys R Us, told

The Post

that since the White House meeting, retailers seem “less panicked” and have slightly “relaxed” their urgency for domestic sourcing.While the situation remains fluid, the toy industry, with 80% of US toy sales coming from China and broader retail sector are closely watching for any official word from Trump in the coming days.

In Satyajit Ray’s 1980 satirical fantasy film Hirak Rajar Deshe, literally “in the kingdom of the Diamond King”, the education minister of the king dictates what should be taught in school. Finally, the minister closes the school. Is the story a true reflection of the contemporary world, to some extent?

The nature of education and how it shapes society can be examined in a variety of contexts, from the fictional kingdom of the Diamond King to real-life Donald Trump’s America. Given that Columbia, an Ivy League university, surrendered its academic freedom, and Harvard, the oldest and richest American university, has chosen to legally defend it, one would wonder what academic freedom is and what its scopes and limitations are.

When then President Pranab Mukherjee spoke at the “International Buddhist Conference” in Nalanda in 2017, he invoked Nalanda and Taxila, the ancient universities, to pitch for an atmosphere free from prejudice, anger, violence, and doctrines. “It must be conducive to free flow intellectual persuasions,” he stated.

A difficult path

However, it’s not so easy, always. Scholars who disagreed with church theology or behaved in ways the church deemed unacceptable risked persecution in medieval Europe. Then, philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt created a new university in Berlin in the early 19th century. The fundamental principles of academic freedom – freedom of scientific inquiry and the unification of research and teaching – were institutionalised in and diffused to other countries by the Humboldtian model of higher education.
Today’s seemingly made-up concept of academic freedom can be summed up as follows: students have the right to learn in an academic environment free from outside interference, and teachers have the right to instruct. The right of teachers to engage in social and political critique is another definition, though. In a 2022 paper published in the Houston Law Review, Yale Law School professor Keith E. Whittington stated that universities committed to truth-seeking and the advancement and dissemination of human knowledge essentially require “robust protections for academic freedom for scholars and instructors.”

Definition of freedoms

At the UNESCO-organised International Conference in Nice in 1950, the Universities of the World pledged for “the right to pursue knowledge for its own sake and to follow wherever the search for truth may lead.” Academic freedom was then defined as “the freedom to conduct research, teach, speak, and publish, subject to the norms and standards of scholarly inquiry, without interference or penalty, wherever the search for truth and understanding may lead” at the first annual Global Colloquium of University Presidents held at Columbia University in 2005. But is defining and accomplishing academic freedom really that straightforward?

Tenure, promotions, pay hikes, research funding, and academic honours are all intimately correlated with research publications in the current academic environment. Thus, today’s scholars are driven by the peer pressure of publishing. And the interest of funding agencies has a significant impact on academicians’ research. Nowadays, universities are also concerned with their international rankings, which are largely based on research papers.

‘Publish or perish’ culture

How serious is today’s “publish or perish” culture? Quite a bit, indeed. One significant exception was 2013 Nobel laureate British physicist Peter Higgs, well known for the Higgs Boson. Higgs never published aggressively. He stated that he became “an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises” and that he would have most likely been fired from his job at the University of Edinburgh if he had not been nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1980. However, he thought that because he would not be deemed “productive” enough in today’s academic system, no university would hire him. Thus, today’s academic system doesn’t even permit a future Nobel winner to peacefully conduct his own research without regularly generating research papers.

Nowadays, there’s little scope for leeway in a pre-scheduled framework of university curriculum. Furthermore, as American biologist Jerry Coyne put it, a geology teacher who casually informs his students that the earth is flat is not exercising academic freedom but rather is failing in his duties. Compared to general freedom of speech, academic freedom of speech is more limited. For instance, a non-academic can criticise the effectiveness of vaccines, but they can only do it with academic freedom if they have the necessary academic credentials. Academic perspectives are frequently subject to peer review, in contrast to public speeches.

And, importantly, academic freedom may be as much as a country’s politics and society at the time would have desired to offer academic institutions. For instance, several fields of research, including sociology and genetics, were outlawed as “bourgeois pseudoscience” in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Checks and balances

What’s the freedom of a flying kite, indeed? When a kite is flying high, it means that the person holding the spool has just let it soar. Without the monarchs’ generous financing and allowing foreign scholars and students, would ancient Nalanda or Taxila have been able to exercise their academic freedom? What happens if that person believes the kite is behaving strangely? Of course, a democracy has checks and balances, such as the judiciary and periodic elections. Therefore, academic freedom and political interference in it are continually being redefined by changing sociopolitical dynamics.

Academic freedom certainly sets up a protective umbrella over scholars’ activities; however, this protection is neither absolute nor guaranteed. As some powerful politicians still view universities as “the enemy,” Hirak Rajar Deshe becomes a timeless doctrine that holds that education is more than just imparting knowledge; it’s also about moulding souls, developing minds, and enabling people to think critically and behave morally. A university serves as a prism of enlightenment to the community it caters to.

However, efforts to define a framework for acceptable academic freedom and to ensure it continue.

(Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)