[jltsiren]

There is also a certain kind of long-term thinking prevalent in older universities. Many American elite universities are older than the US, and it's plausible that some of them will outlast the US. If the current government of the country that currently happens to exist around them requires X, they might as well do X, because it's a short-term issue anyway.

I was at the University of Cambridge around the Brexit vote. After the vote, I remember someone issuing a statement that basically said "We survived the Black Death. We survived the Great War. We will survive this." I found it highly amusing.