Four days ago, three members of the Trump Administration (Josh Gruenbaum of the GSA, Thomas Wheeler, acting general Counsel of the Dept. of Education, and Sean R. Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services), sent a Big Stick (or a rotten carrot) to the President of Harvard University and the head of the Harvard Corporation (Penny Pritzker, the sister of Illinois’s governor). It was one of those threatening letters that tell a university that they’d better reform—or else. “Else,” of course, is the withdrawal of federal funds. This threat was made to Columbia University, which caved. But Harvard didn’t. I suggest you read the Trump Administration’s letter by clicking on the screenshot below:
This is a Big Demand and covers multiple areas, which I’ll just summarize with bullet points. Quotes are from the letter:
- Harvard has to fix its leadership, reducing the power held by students, untenured faculty, and by “administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.”
- All hiring from now on must be based on merit and there will be no hiring based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
- By August of this year, Harvard must have solely merit-based admissions, again without admissions based on ‘race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof.” The “proxies” presumably mean the way universities now get around bans on race-based and similar admissions by asking admission questions like, “describe how you overcame hardships in your life.”
- Reform international admissions, by not admitting students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
- Harvard is to commission an external body to audit the university for viewpoint diversity. Though they’re not clear what “viewpoint diversity” means, it’s obvious that they want more conservative points of view and fewer professors pushing pro-Palestinian points of view
- Reforming programs with “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias”, including information about individual faculty who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or who incited violence
- Discontinue DEI programs, offices, committees, and the like
- Students are to be disciplined for violating University speech regulations, and student groups that promote violence, illegal harassment, or act as fronts for banned groups
- Harvard is to establish a whistleblowing procedure so that noncompliance with the Diktat above can be safely reported.
All this must be started no later than June 30 of this year, and Harvard has to report on its progress every quarter until at least the end of 2028.
Now many of these reforms are laudable (weakening of DEI, effacing any climate of anti-Semitism, mandating the kind of merit-based hiring used at Chicago, etc.), while others are problematic, the most being (to me) assuring “viewpoint diversity” (see Steve Pinker’s quote below). But the most offensive thing about this is the Trump Administration’s attempt to control universities using financial threats. Many of the people who will suffer by the withholding of government money (probably much of it earmarked for science) are not guilty of these violations, and it’s just a horrible idea to allow the government to demand that universities act this way or that.
Yes, Harvard should have already made some of these reforms, and I know it’s trying to enact some of them, but allowing political forces to control how colleges and universities are run takes one of America’s glories–the quality of its higher education that already attracts students from throughout the world–and turns it into an arm of one political party or another. (It would be just as bad if the Biden administration had threatened universities if they didn’t become more liberal, though of course they already are!). Universities should remain as independent as possible from the vagaries of politics, though of course if politics affects the mission of universities, then schools can speak out.
Harvard responded by giving Trump a big middle finger. Here’s the response from Alan Garber, President of the University, which I mentioned yesterday. Click headline to read:
A quote from the response:
Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
I encourage you to read the [Administration’s] letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.
Harvard’s letter doesn’t address the specific accusations of the administration’s letter, but simply affirms that Harvard will “nurture a climate of open inquiry,” respect free speech save for the appropriate “time, place, and manner” restrictions, and will “foster and support a vibrant community that exemplifies, respects, and embraces difference.” There’s nothing about anti-Semitism, viewpoint diversity (save the last claim above), or merit-based hiring. Garber could have responded, point by point, to what it’s already is doing to meet the demands of the government, but that would simply be playing their game.
And so, the administration began punishing Harvard: last night the Trump Administration struck back by freezing 2.2 billion in funds to the school. (archived here). From the NYT article:
Harrison Fields, a spokesperson for the White House, said universities are not entitled to federal funding. “President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence. Harvard or any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding.”
The university was the first to formally push back against the government’s efforts to force change in higher education.
Hours later, the multiagency Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded by announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million in multiyear contract value to Harvard.
And today’s NYT reports on Harvard’s decision (archived here) with a few words from Steve Pinker: (h/t Greg). They quote Harvard’s pushback as being “momentous”:
Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.
Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.
“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”
Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan University and a rare critic of the White House among university administrators, welcomed Harvard’s decision. “What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”
We’ll see if Harvard’s response gives some moxie to other threatened universities. So far Harvard hasn’t been one of them.
And Professor Pinker was quoted giving a good, pithy response:
Steven Pinker, a prominent Harvard psychologist who is also a president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, said on Monday that it was “truly Orwellian” and self-contradictory to have the government force viewpoint diversity on the university. He said it would also lead to absurdities.
“Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or the psychology department to hire Jungians or, for that matter, for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?” he said.
I of course agree with Pinker and Garber. Harvard needs to handle its own problems itself, though yes, it has to handle any real problems judiciously but swiftly lest it lose students and its reputation. Already worried Jewish students are applying elsewhere (see here and here). The government already has the power to step in if Harvard has permitted a climate of anti-Semitism to occur, but I’m not so connected to my alma mater that I can judge that. And Greg Mayer reminded me that withholding money and making demands in this way is NOT legal. As he said:
Findings of punishable error (e.g., Title VI violations) must be made via the procedures specified in the law alleged to have been broken. There’s a lot of due process involved, including the right of response and a hearing before a disinterested party, before an allegation can become an actionable fact. And even then, only the violating entity can be punished– you can’t take away a botanist’s NSF grant because some dean of student affairs is anti-semitic.
So what the administration is doing is largely illegal, and certainly unethical and counterproductive. And universities don’t have to obey anything but court orders—not demands from an administration that wants to bully all of those damn elite, liberal schools.
I wonder if viewpoint diversity would not just mean more conservative professors but also require climate change deniers and young earth creationists in the science departments. Both these viewpoints are unfortunately quite prevalent in the Trump supporting voters.
Good points. I’d add: there might well be a demand that RFK Jr’s eccentric views be included in the medical school curriculum.
It means whatever the admin. wants. But likely it means just hiring political conservatives and promoting viewpoint diversity between the L and R.
I hope not. But they might balance out the professors who believe trans women are women and those that believe sex is a spectrum.
Seems unlikely at Harvard. Penny Pritzker and her extended family believes TWAW.
https://www.forbes.com/profile/jennifer-pritzker/
Trump and Harvard deserve each other. I just lump them together as HaMagas.
The Federal government should not be funding universities and colleges. Why does Harvard have that huge endowment, anyway?
And should Harvard fund all the science that is done there? That endowment would quickly drop to near zero. I presume, then, that you want to abolish the NIH and NSF, at least insofar as they give research grants to universities. That, after all, falls under what you object to.
To run the numbers (for curiousity), according to this summary:
If we figure the endowment supports 5% in perpetuity, then 14 billion of the endowment would have to be dedicated to replacing federal funding of research. That’s about 1/4 of the total (which is 53B, wikipedia). Or better, it would soak up all the increase since 2019, when the endowment was just 40B (from here).
So in a sense Harvard really could go fully private. Of course they’d have to disappoint some donors who thought their money was earmarked for a building or whatever, it’s not a small adjustment. But they were not exactly living in poverty in 2019 either.
Perhaps a bigger problem is that they would have to build a system for allocating this money. Instead of relying on the NIH to judge who deserves a huge grant this year and who does not, they would have to do this internally.
Yes, what you say at the end is something I forgot to add, which was this “Even if you say Harvard is okay because of its massive endowment, vetting of grants, which now in the NIH and NSF is done by scientists, would have to be done some other way, and probably to the detriment of the process.” The way the NIH and NSF work now is pretty good in judging proposals on merit.
Thanks for bringing this up!
From the linked NYT article, some details on funding:
Within hours of Harvard’s decision, federal officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to the university, along with a $60 million contract.
That is a fraction of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.
Endowments that I know come from individual donations, earmarked for specific uses. The funds are not available for any use other than what was intended.
As a former trustee of a small private liberal arts university, my impulse is to tell the government not to tell us how to run our university. As a taxpayer, my impulse is tell the university, ‘you don’t like the rules, you don’t get the money.” As a citizen, Harvard can use its own money. My country is bleeding red ink.
See my comment above. As a citizen, you presumably oppose all government funding of university research.
I fully support Harvard’s right to reject federal funding so that they can run the university as their administrators wish without any government oversight or rules.
Hillsdale College in Michigan explicitly rejects all federal funding, including student loans and grants, in order to maintain their independence. Harvard, and other schools, can adopt this model.
For years science was funded by the government at universities without political oversight. Do you really think Harvard can maintain its status as a world-class research institution without accepting NIH and NSF money? The problem is not federal money, it’s the strings that the administration is tying to it for the first time. I don’t see why people don’t realize that.
Harvard can certainly do world-class research without federal money…as per the quote above they are richer than over 100 countries. The value of the endowment is around $51 billion. In comparison, the entire 2025 budget for the NSF is around $10 billion.
They also don’t need to charge tuition, and can probably double or triple the size of the enrollments without any problem.
Many have already said it, but it bears repeating as it is is often missed; much of Harvard’s endowment cannot be spent on things other than what they are earmarked for. That’s kind of the point of endowments. It would be illegal for Harvard to use much, if any of it for anything other than what it is specified for. So enjoining them to make up the loss of federal money by dipping into their treasure chest isn’t going to work.
I’m sorry, but is the endowment carved in stone or something? Modify/amend…I’m sure Harvard has a few lawyers around that might be able to help.
I understand they cannot do this in a day, but they can absolutely be more agile than this. A lot of what you and others are saying still comes across as excuse-making.
Last comment from me on this as I am well over the limit.
Don’t forget that the conversion of universities into research centers was pushed by the U.S. government after WWII, when the government realized that universities were home to remarkable innovation, discovery, and development that could be directed by targeted funding by new agencies such as NSF and NIH.
As for the current $2 billion issue, it sounds like the government is skating close to breach of contract — canceling grants and contracts for bogus ideological reasons after they have been awarded seems suspect… And something like 2/3rds of the $9 billion at stake goes to the affiliated hospitals, not to Harvard per se, so it seems like a weird kind of extortion to punish Harvard College….
“Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.”
If Harvard is so rich and powerful, then why does it need billions in federal funding?
I am torn on this issue. I agree that the Trump administration is acting obtusely.
However, Harvard is an enormously rich private institution that caters disproportionately to the most privileged members of our society. Yet the public must continue to support it through federal funding and tax benefits for some reason.
Harvard seems to want it both ways. If it wants to set an example, it should just untether itself from government sources of funding and then it can operate as it sees fit, as it has done for most of its centuries-long existence.
Harvard is really two institutions. There’s an undergraduate college which is, as you say,
And there’s a vast research complex, which hires PhDs and MDs from the same pool as every other such university. They aren’t downtrodden poor but they also don’t earn Google salaries. Their hiring is much closer to meritocratic than is undergrad admissions.
The research half is federally funded, 68% of it according to a link I posted above. I think the undergraduate half basically isn’t.
So the research money is the place the federal govt. has leverage on Harvard as a whole… but mostly isn’t the target. It wasn’t the cancer researchers who were out protesting Gaza etc. Nor were they much involved in earlier fights over Title IX rules for sports & kaangaroo courts.
Why doesn’t the vast research complex get funded by the university then? I’m still confused as to why Harvard’s research arm doesn’t have access to Harvard’s vast sums of money.
“What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”
The quotation from Mr. Roth may be taken out of some larger context. But otherwise it reflects a stunning lack of self-awareness. The charge of overreach applies exactly to universities and their pursuit of social justice and other expressly political goals. They have met resistance to their bullying of students, faculty, and alumni who favour research and teaching over political activism.
Will they change course? It’s hard to say. As our host said, “Universities should remain as independent as possible from the vagaries of politics, though of course if politics affects the mission of universities, then schools can speak out.” The problem is that universities stuffed themselves with activist professors who made it their scholarly goal to affect the course of politics, and now the worst sort of politicians have taken notice.
I’m with Pinker and our host on all of this, it’s all awful. But the universities painted this target on their own backs. People like me should have done more at the time to oppose the social justice activists. Now they run the institutions and will be very hard to root out. $2.2 billion worth of blunt-force trauma might be the only way to do so, but at terrible cost. It’s all awful.
Harvard’s response reminds of Lee Jussim’s piece, “We Tried to Warn You”
Preliminary List of Articles that Attempted to Warn Academics and Other Scientists that their Politicization of Scholarship, Teaching, Funding, Hiring and Promotions Was a Slow-Moving Train Wreck”
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/we-tried-to-warn-you
“… it presents over 100 references documenting the historical attempt of dissident academics to warn the rest of academia that this could come if they did not get their house in order. Now its here.”
Another “100” list I’d like to see is one listing the countries whose GDP is less than Harvard’s endowment.
AI tells me “There are 195 countries in the world, including 193 United Nations member states and the two non-member observer states, the Holy See (Vatican City) and Palestine.”
Stocks and flows. The relevant comparator to a country’s GDP is the income that Harvard’s endowment generates, plus its income from all other sources, not the capital of the endowment.
Yes, we often speak of a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio which is stock-to-flow but an internal comparison of debt with ability to service it from taxes paid out of GDP makes some sense, even if there is no objective way to say what that ratio should be (or shouldn’t be.)
I have an Excel file downloaded from the World Bank with data for 2023 for GDP [Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) estimates] for 200 countries. If Harvard has $51 billion endowment, then there are 73 countries with a lower GDP than that, according to the data in this file.
You can find the data here:
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712
There’s also a Wikipedia article entitled “List of countries by GDP (PPP)” – it contains the World Bank data.
A millisecond before I saw your reply, Jackie, I thought of Lee’s “Tried to warn you” essay. Excellent and true.
D.A.
NYC
But this has been happening for decades! As just one example, Title IX rules mandating that women’s sport must be funded to the same extent as men’s sport. Then there were all sorts of rules about how colleges must treat allegations of sexual misconduct (imposed under Obama, repealed by De Vos/Trump then re-instated by Biden, now rescinded again) … but really there are dozens and dozens of ways in which governments have dictated policies on all sorts of matters in return for funding.
I was wondering why there seems to be no mention of the “dear colleague” letters and the Tltle IX shenanigans. And as Jackie T. notes, Biden was forcing the inclusion of alternative “ways of knowing” into decision making and scientific research.
Overreach seems to be spawning greater overreach. The Trump input to Harvard should have been much more narrowly focused and vetted. It seems to me an immature art of the Deal salvo rather than a mature and judicious implementation of established law.
It seems to me that the Trump administration’s letter goes way beyond antisemitism and even beyond DEI. The tone—it seems to me—is to set an example: Harvard shall hereby bend its knee before the United States government. And, by implication, the same applies to all American institutions of higher learning.
But Harvard, in a gutsy move, is giving the government the finger. And it is doing so on behalf of, not only itself, but all of America’s colleges and universities.
Now what will happen? My guess is that litigation will happen. Does the government really have the power to freeze or cancel the contracts that it has made with Harvard? Can the government condition contracts (existing and future) on meeting the conditions it is stipulating? Must Harvard comply with the auditing processes that the government is requiring?
Ultimately, the question seems to come down to whether the government has the power to condition funding in the way it claims. Clearly, wherever happens will apply to all federal grants and contracts in higher education, so will have enormous repercussions.
Yes, as J. Michael Luttig says, “This is of momentous, momentous significance.”
Steven Pinker asks, “Will this government force the economics department to hire Marxists or… for the medical school to hire homeopaths or Native American healers?”
Funny, it was Biden who insisted the federal gov’t fund and encourage Native American healers. The Dpt of Interior is just one example:
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/biden-harris-administration-takes-steps-increase-co-stewardship-opportunities
“Secretary Haaland also announced that the Department has published departmental guidance on the inclusion and protection of Indigenous Knowledge in decision making and scientific research.
The policy applies to: National Environmental Policy Act; Endangered Species Act: Marine Mammal Protection Act: Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act; Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations; Advancing Equity, Justice, and Opportunity for Asian
Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders; White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Funny? It was Biden who refused to punish universities that failed to include and protect indigenous knowledge. I see a difference here.
I once did not understand what endowments were for, and I too wondered why a university with buckets of endowment money can’t just use that to weather the Trumpian storm.
Short answer: THEY CAN’T. The money is contractually spoken for.
Longer answer: the information on this is easily found online, and here is one example. https://www.acenet.edu/Documents/Understanding-College-and-University-Endowments.pdf
Numerous arts organizations deviated from the original donor’s intent during the pandemic. Perhaps, now is the time for universities. The doctrine of cy-près would seem to allow this.
The Sacrosanct Endowment? Not Anymore for Some Arts Groups
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/arts/endowments-coronavirus.html#
When they say they can’t, we should take that with a grain of salt. They have wizards at moving money sideways, counting successful gamble on X towards account Y retrospectively… and an army of PR people & lawyers to smooth things over.
In a comment awaiting moderation above (for too many links?) it seems that Harvard could replace all 2024 federal research support by dedicating to it the increase in the endowment since 2019. It grew from roughly 40B to 53B, and 13.7B at 5% is just right.
Your link says 4-5% as what a lump sum can support in perpetuity. And that “providing stability” is one of the main goals. There is no chance Harvard is permanently cut off from funding, but bridging a gap of 4 years (or 12) sounds exactly what “providing stability” ought to mean.
Pawel, if a comment of yours contains more than 1 link, it probably went straight into the trash, where Jerry usually does not look.
I have learned: one link per comment. If I have 2 links, then I need 2 comments or just give the name of the site instead of giving the link. For instance: See Wikipedia page entitled “List of countries by GDP (PPP).”
Trump couldn’t care less about Jews, antisemitism, or Israel for that matter. Just an excuse to attack the universities to add to his -hoped for- dictatorial powers. I feel used and abused
by this monster.
I agree that some of the changes demanded in the Fed letter are issues that Harvard should address. That is really beside the point. The relevant issue is that the Fed Government has no business demanding such obedience from a university in exchange for tax payers dollars. The only possible response is Go Away- See You in Court. Columbia has shown what fools they were to cave to the administration’s demands. This admin does not negotiate in good faith and would not follow ethical standards of response to any aquiescence to their dictates. Submission will only lead to more commandments and loss of independence. One does not need to be a fan of Harvard to root for their victory in this case.
Really? Tax money with no strings attached? Nice gig if you can get it.
It’s Harvard who will have to sue if it wants the money, not the U.S. Government suing to take it back. “See you in Court” is dubious bravado for a plaintiff against a defendant with infinite resources to defend its power of the purse. What would even be the basis of a claim against the taxpayers: you have to keep giving us money even though you hate us for the contempt we hold you in?
The supplicants we’re used to in Canada suing the Government for money are usually aboriginal groups who claim that some Treaty promise was breached when the Government decided not to fund some demand. “Show me the treaty” might be the U.S. Government’s rejoinder to “See you in Court.”
Oh, I do not hold that there should be no strings attached to tax dollars! It is the entire contents of the letter and its demands for expansive control over the university- who it accepts as students, who it hires, and what it teaches that is objectionable. And turning students over to the feds.
As far as the legal situation, I am responding to people quoted in articles stating that it is not legal for the government to use the funds appropriated for education as leverage in this way. I am not a lawyer and have no legal position on this. I do know that the trump administration has been taken to court repeatedly in the short time they have been in power and are often losing, including in the trump- stacked Supreme Court. I am not pleased with governance by judiciary, and wish Congress would step up.
The letter reads like something Bill Ackman had a hand in.
Thinking about Harvard’s pushback against the requirements, i.e., they want to have the right to operate contrary to the points in the letter, I understand it to mean that they:
See no need to make governance reforms
Want to maintain hiring and admissions based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
See a need to continue admitting international students who are supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism
Want to keep a very narrow perspective in viewpoints
Wish to keep programs that have egregious records of antisemitism or other bias
Think DEI a good thing and worth keeping
Are supportive of student groups that promote criminal activity, illegal violence or harassment
Think masks are ok for protesters to wear to preserve anonymity
See no need to investigate or discipline students who were involved in assaulting a Jewish student and building occupation
Don’t see a need for the university police to enforce the law
I don’t see the demands by the feds as unreasonable, except for the third party oversight (which crony is getting that big contract?) and I don’t understand why the Declaration of Independence is mentioned. I also see an issue with cutting funds already allocated (as with DOGE too), rather than having the changes affect future funding. This seems unfair.
Not being a part of this world, is it normal for funding to come with strings and compliance paperwork to fill out, or do federal programs just write a check for a specific task (“Investigate the effects of X drug on virus Y”) and then wait for the results?
I respect the opinions of those who work in this world and see it differently and I understand the need for government agencies to contract with universities for important research.
This begs the question “what comes next?” If reasonable issues are chosen to receive some sort of government enforcement the barriers of separation between government enforced policy and university policy no longer exists. A quotation (somewhat obscure in my memory) comes to mind…”First they came for the Socialists but I said nothing for I was not a Socialist….”
Several portions of the government’s demands are so obviously contradictory. In particular they are on the one hand fighting affirmative action and on the other implying quotas for conservatives. Thomas Chatterton Williams points this out clearly in the Atlantic but it has been pointed out in a lot of places.
Also while Obama and Biden did indeed expand title 9 and threaten to use it, they never did anything close to what Trump is doing here. I saw someone prominent claim on X that Obama is a hypocrite because he threatened to take away Hillsdale’s tax exempt status. As far as I can tell the well know title 9 case filed against Hillsdale was in 2023 by private citizens not Biden (and obviously not Obama) and it lost. This was more like numerous citizens filing title 6 claims against Columbia based on Trump’s expansion of title 6.
I think the best way for elite universities to rally public support would be to publish the salaries of all the researchers and their administrators who depend on federal funding.
“But is it good for the Jews?” — to repeat a question that was common in old times.
And the answer is No! Emphatically not!
To have those government illegalities, and that power grab, performed in the name of combating anti-semitism amounts to an invitation to prejudiced minds to hold the Jews responsible, even if indirectly.
Good balanced article and comments.
I’d add that I was under the impression federal money could already be withheld from institutions if they practiced discrimination in their admissions (e.g. in the case of Asians vs, oh yes, Harvard) or breaches of Title IX.
Universities have painted this target on their own backs and seem unwilling/unable to course correct themselves. For those pushing back against the government here, what do you suggest as an alternative? Our host says he’d like the universities to get their own houses in order. Of course, but it ain’t happening.
Harvard can do what they like, but the American taxpayer shouldn’t/needn’t be involved. They’ve indeed spoken at the last election.
Everything other than the “viewpoint diversity” is achievable, laudable, and should be what Harvard is striving for itself.
That’s not quite correct as far as I understand. First the administration would have to file a Title 6/9 claim against the university. The case would be overseen by a judge and the judgment would be made by the judge not dictated by the administration. Further in all such cases the judgements have been very limited and do not come close to this level of disproportionality. The interpretation of the law requires that the plaintiff prove that the university was actively not trying to protect students (as opposed to simply hopeless).
Harvard charges 70% in indirect costs to the grants of its researchers’ (from say the NIH, i.e. the US taxpayer) which are surely inflated above what the facilities cost to maintain and run and always have been. It’s been said for decades that the liberal arts dept might not exist were it not for the University “taxing” research grants from the science depts. They are draconian when it comes to the contractual (University legal dept’s) skimming from research collaborations between their staff and outside collaborators and patent licensing.
So, all that tax-exempt, compounded-interest cash that has helped contribute to Harvard’s grotesquely high endowment over the decades should flow back to the science depts, no? Just the interest alone on $50B easily covers $2B/year in research costs and honestly, Harvard’s endowment grows annually at 3-10%. Go fully private Harvard and do your own thing.