If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.

It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.

Habeas corpus - still in effect unless you're already in El Salvador.

Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.

If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.

If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.

Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens.

> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens

The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.

Not caught, he held a press conference and announced that he was going to try to do it.

So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?

Uh yeah, why wouldn't I?

I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.

It's not.

The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.

Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,

   No society is free where government makes one person's liberty depend upon the arbitrary will of another. Dictatorships have done this since time immemorial. They do now. Russian laws of 1934 authorized the People's Commissariat to imprison, banish and exile Russian citizens as well as "foreign subjects who are socially dangerous."' Hitler's secret police were given like powers. German courts were forbidden to make any inquiry whatever as to the information on which the police acted. Our Bill of Rights was written to prevent such oppressive practices. Under it this Nation has fostered and protected individual freedom.
    
   The Founders abhorred arbitrary one-man imprisonments. Their belief was--our constitutional principles are-that no person of any faith, rich or poor, high or low, native or foreigner, white or colored, can have his life, liberty or property taken "without due process of law." This means to me that neither the federal police nor federal prosecutors nor any other governmental official, whatever his title, can put or keep people in prison without accountability to courts of justice. It means that individual liberty is too highly prized in this country to allow executive officials to imprison and hold people on the basis of information kept secret from courts. It means that Mezei should not be deprived of his liberty indefinitely except as the result of a fair open court hearing in which evidence is appraised by the court, not by the prosecutor

There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.

Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.

It was very depressing (if financially understandable) to see other institutions immediately caving in.

What institutions other than Columbia are caving in?

A long list of extremely large, well-heeled law firms

Every law firm.

Every law firm is hyperbole but I meant what other universities other than Columbia?

> Every law firm is hyperbole

How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?

> I meant what other universities other than Columbia?

Trump has only really gone after Columbia and Harvard. (Institution is a broader word than university.)

Did you read the letter sent from the government to Harvard?

Enough! This isn't about arresting dissenters.

The Supreme Court found Harvard was violating, willfully and flagrantly, the fourteenth amendment to the US constitution. Over the past few decades, universities like Harvard have transformed themselves into neo-seminaries that put knowledge second and ideology first. They spend public money to promote ideologies that poison the social fabric and insult logic and reason themselves.

If universities don't want the government to go Henry VIII on them, they need to refound themselves as institutions of knowledge, not moral righteousness. If they don't, I will find it difficult to summon in myself sympathy for the state dismantling their privileges.

So you're fine with them arresting dissenters as long as you disagree with the dissenters? That's fairly antithetical to the ideas expressed in the US constitution.

I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.

> $9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American…

Now do what it gets them.

given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books

The people who want to hurt Harvard also want to hurt the local schools.

this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa

edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument holds almost no weight

No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.

Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.

We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.

even partially agreeing with anything the trump administration does on this forum makes you a target for downvotes.

let me cred fall. idgaDANG

You seem to be missing the point that federal research grants are not gifts, but instead paying for a service.

If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.

Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.

The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.

Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about that but this isn’t it, this is attempted coercion, and yes, it is fascism.

Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?

You forgot the cost of his golf excursions. (there are a surprising number of Trump golf trackers LOL)

https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/

"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"

nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.

I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution

> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility

They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.

With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.

If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.

That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.

He's not gonna be happy they can operate financially without his assent

He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.

> he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts

Harvard (and most institutions and powerful individuals) would be smart to maintain liquid assets and a bank account outside America’s control.

Maybe their endowment is held in treasurys they should start selling off...

LOL

I like the way you think!

Trump can make that illegal in no time. „No foreign funds” is a well known method of fighting opposition, tried and tested in many soft regimes (looking for a recent example, Hungary comes to mind).

This is true, and they have likely been accelerating the arrangements they already had for a while now. At the same time however, getting 50 billion in assets into various European jurisdictions is not at all easy. I'd estimate Trump could cut off 70-90 percent of what Harvard has to work with.

Alumni will need to come through for continuing operations if the worst does happen. And I'm certain Harvard has put some thought into that contingency as well.

This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.

>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.

>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.

More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:

>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.

https://archive.is/siUqm

if a $50,000,000,000 endowment can not be used to smooth things over in times of need or turbulence then the endowment managers need to make changes.

You can not possibly convince me that Harvard’s endowment doesn’t trivially have one year of liquidity in it.

I’m sure it’s not structured to handle a 7% annual draw down for the next 30 years. But it’s got plenty of time to restructure if needed.

Not to mention all those legal covenants have another side to them. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.

This is about lots more than money. Sure, Harvard can go without federal funds. Then comes federal tax breaks. Then Harvard's ability to recruit foreign students (no visas, no foreign students/professors). After that comes the really draconian stuff like the fed revoking clearances or not hiring/doing business with Harvard grads. Such things were once thought illegal but are now very much on the table. That is why Harvard needs to win the money fight no matter the numbers.

Right, money is just the first and most obvious cudgel. Does Harvard have any biomedical labs that require federal approval to handle hazardous materials? That could be delayed or revoked. Do they file taxes? They could face an audit. There's no shortage of painpoints an organization that large has exposed to an unethical government.

They could also possibly fire some administrators. Not every vice-provost out there is strictly necessary.

Just a few years ago, Harvard Crimson carried an op-ed complaining about the bloat:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...

I guess that Harvard probably does not need the Feds as much as the Feds need Harvard but I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists. I'm going to have to see what NYU is doing now.

Genuinely curious: what part of the federal government's letter to Harvard seems fascist to you?

Is the government asking a university to shift their bias away from skin color diversity to viewpoint diversity fascist?

Is there a historical parallel?

Or is it just the fact that the government is asking for reform, and any reform request would be considered fascist? If so, do you also consider the DEI reform requests fascist?

The thing to remember is that these grants are their research budget. The endowment is largely earmarked for educational projects. Your average university professor is there because they want to do research, not because they want to teach - so the research budget is critical for educating as well.

I assume Harvard has a plan for dealing with this dynamic. They have some extremely smart people there, so I don't doubt they've found a way.

What does the Federal Gov need Harvard for? Harvard gets 16% of its funding from them - what outweighs that on the aide of the Federal government?

The tax revenues from the $1.3T company that arose from their online yearbook?

Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually? 161 Nobel prize winners?

Its not clear what the effect no Harvard would be on those metrics.

I wonder how many Harvard graduates work for either Trump or the federal government.

Most if not all of his cabinet (surprisingly) have an Ivy League background. Not sure if that's an endorsement on them, or an indictment on Ivy League schools

The GOP / Trump administration shows no real focus on employing experts, Trump shows no curiosity about anything. They're slashing research and science across the board department by department. They employ anti science people as heads of departments that require science.

I don't think the GOP & Trump thinks they need anything from Harvard other than agreeing to impose first amendment violations on others on behalf of the GOP and Trump.

It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.

The university, as a private institution, has every right to hold whatever views and enforce whatever policies it sees fit within itself.

The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.

It's best when the bargaining about such conditions happens with mutual respect and without overreach, but respect and sobriety are in very short supply in the current administration. Even better it is when a university does not need to receive the government money and can run off the gigantic endowment it already has, thus having no need to comply with any such conditions.

(It's additionally unfun how the antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem, in a very muffed way, and any other kind of discrimination based on ethnicity, culture, or religion is not mentioned at all. Is fighting discrimination out of fashion now?..)

Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning?

The governments conditions are not unlimited.

Their proposed "viewpoint diversity" is absurd at face value.

Do you believe antisemitism is a problem at Harvard? If so, what led you to believe this?

From the feds documents they describe the federal government as thought police:

>Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.

Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.

I can't imagine what you think the majority of students believe.

I doubt they're cool with the ideas in the letter like the federal government auditing everyone's "viewpoint diversity" and mandating staffing changes to fit what the federal government wants.

Related ongoing thread:

Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684386 - April 2025 (2 comments)

This is the only correct response, but I don't think I'm being overly cynical in thinking they're being opportunistic either.

They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to unfashionable political views being silenced, so there's a pinch of hypocrisy in making such a show of standing for openness.

All in all though, I'm happy to see this.

Good. I think Harvard has faltered a bit recently with academic integrity scandals, but they are still well-respected overall. Them standing up for students is an important signal to other less high-profile schools that they can do the same.

A university that bows to political intimidation ceases to be a university. It becomes a bureaucracy. Harvard, as an institution capable of sustaining itself without relying on federal funding, bears a heightened responsibility to champion academic freedom and intellectual independence. Its financial independence positions it to defend these principles more vigorously than universities with fewer resources, which may face similar pressures but lack comparable institutional stability to resist government outreach.

Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.

This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.

No mention of anti-Asian discrimination? It made big rounds in all the American media circles a few years back, and if memory serves, MAGA boarded that train too.

These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. Once they got the SCOTUS win and affirmative action was toast, they quickly moved on from fighting anti-Asian hate to a new fig-leaf/tool to useful for fighting the next ideological battle, which was prominent protests against government policy, which happened to be pro-Palestine, so this is the best tool for the job.

The messaging is very similar too, conflating pro-diversity as anti-white, or anti-asian when needed, and now conflating pro-Palestine as anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas. It's dumb, lacks nuance, but effective when the Fifth estate is pliant, co-opted or otherwise ineffective.

Good points. But they did open themselves up to this by blatantly discriminating against Asian students. I mean, "you have an ulterior motive in arguing against our hugely racist policies" is not a great defense.

MAGA loves to say how universities screw over poor hard-working Asian students, and then they turn around and defund universities and fire researchers. Their pity on Asians is not sincere, because they detest higher education in the first place.

And I'm saying this as an Asian father whose kid is going to a US college this year.

The page acknowledges that Harvard lost that case and will comply with the ruling.

the irony of the evil being perpetrated around the world in the name of "antisemitism" is mind boggling

In the name of "fighting antisemitism"?

It's true, though. It's a convenient tool. "What do you mean you don't want to cede control to us? Don't you want to fight antisemitism?!"

It’s not ironic. This is a clever way to attack leftists and Muslims

Why clever? You make it sound like they are playing some sort of game 3d chess. Organized groups of Lefists and Muslims in the US became increasingly violent and started to attack a group of people based on their ethnicity. The federal government moved to protect that group. Same as with the KKK being outlawed, it was not a clever attack on whites.

Smells awfully like Putin's trumped up (ayy) play in Ukraine to "de-nazify".

Mind boggling the evils being perpetrated today in the name of "anti-zionism"

So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring".

I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.

Never mistake a man's rhetoric for his principles.

It seems like the government has a soft Monopsony. There are many universities willing to sell research, but the government is the biggest buyer and controls the research grant market

Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.

When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.

This isn't close to a monopsony but it's more directionally correct than it is wrong. Keep in mind research institutes can be funded by private foundations, state and local governments, industry (e.g. pharma), venture, or even foreign governments. The federal government is undoubtedly the largest buyer though. I do think there are other motivations to rely primarily on federal grants beyond number of dollars. In particular, funding sources other than federal grant money is often looked down on from an academic prestige perspective. Until now federal money came with very few strings attached compared to the perceived loss of objectivity that could occur when receiving money from other sources. The current situation may alter or relax the prevailing view on which sources of research money are perceived of as potentially compromising.

Good. More organizations that have the resources should be putting their foot down.

Public funds should not be subsidizing wealthy private universities. The end.

Scathing, and wonderfully so.

Ooh, I am jealous. A close family member has been branded egregious by various acting members of the current administration. I guess I am going to need to up my game if I want to be able to hold my head high at family gatherings.

Even if Harvard wanted to comply with the government letter, it's full of so many non-sequiturs and self-conflictions that it reads more like a piece of satire:

> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name

> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity

> In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023

> Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming

The letter is a complete joke. Giving it any sort of compliance would be giving validation to a set of rules that are literally impossible to follow by design. There is literally nothing Harvard could do to not be in trouble later.

Also buried in the letter is this gem:

> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.

Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!

This is Maoist-style social reform through and through.

What an outrageous and incoherent letter

So much for academic freedom

Presidents and their policies come and go; knowledge stays and grows.

As long as educators aren’t selling themselves short, I remain optimistic about the future.

These people (not only MAGA) perverted the very meaning of antisemitism to the point that it means nothing today. I am saying that as someone who's lost a family member to Holocaust. When I hear someone mention antisemitism today, 90% of the time it is to punish someone's views critical of Israel.

Which is, of course, deeply antisemitic of the people claiming antisemitism when they are talking about only criticism of Israel, to equate all Jewish people with the Israeli state.

Same, having descended from Holocaust survivors, what is happening in the U.S. and Palestine right now is chilling to me in its similarity.

There really is no incentive to compromise with the Trump Admin on anything. Even if you cave, they just go for more. You need to act like a cornered animal and not expect honest negotiation.

OTOH if Trump admin WAS at all rational partners they could be extracting historic changes from these institutions. But they won’t.

> 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.

So alongside antisemitism, The other demand is for changes in intellect. For some reason this reeks of Christian evangelical movement to purge wokism and anti-Zionism, both of which have run counter to evangelical dogma.

As information, the current administration is doing similar demands to foreign universities, trying to impose the point of view of the world in a president we didn't vote for.

Here is an article about the Trump administration demands to our universities.

https://www-publico-pt.translate.goog/2025/04/11/ciencia/not...

I hope everyone is ready for a general strike because that time is coming up at us rapidly.

Good for Harvard. As idiotic as many of its policies are, this is clearly government infringement of freedom and speech.

It’ll be nice if an institution finally decides to oppose some of the recent government overreach.

It’s really shocking to see an institution in our country take action that is not in its immediate financial best interest (assuming this letter translates to an action)

It's not just about finances. Trump just announced (possibly accidentally) that he's going to start deporting American citizens to El Salvador gulags: https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-says-the-us-could-de...

and they've been painting political enemies as criminals. It's pretty much the same situation as Russia/Putin but at an earlier stage of its development, and people want to avoid being the tallest grass that gets mowed.

It's good that some institutions are standing up but I don't expect it to go well for them.

He also said Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor may have committed treason for criticizing him as president after signing an executive order to investigate them.

Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.

There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.

The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.

Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Response

Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?

Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.

Yeah but money is fungible.

As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.

It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).

Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]

[1] https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/about-the-institute/histor...

I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.

I think that's what they're saying.

Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.

They don't. This is the federal government threatening to withhold payment for research they commissioned.

Good. Trump is simply trying to see what he can get away and the answer as it turns is a lot. Everyone need to stop capitulating to this nonsense. People, universities, companies, all of them.

Being anti-Israel should not be conflated with being antisemitic. After all, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for a reason.

Trump is using “antisemitism” as cover for the imposition of authoritarianism. This comes from Putin's playbook. Putin used denazification as an excuse for invading Ukraine.

Trump himself has espoused antisemitism from time to time, see below.

John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, reiterated his assertion that Trump said, “Hitler did some good things, too,” in a story published Tuesday in The New York Times. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...

Donald Trump dabbles in Nazi allusions too often for it to be a coincidence. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/trump-nazi-allusions...

Trump's re-election campaign that featured a symbol used in Nazi Germany. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53098439

Trump’s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4677700-trumps-latest-...

Trump campaign accused of T-shirt design with similarity to Nazi eagle https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/11/fac...

Donald Trump's 'Star of David' Tweet About Hillary Clinton Posted Weeks Earlier on Racist Feed https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-...

An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” are still on the shelves but “Memorializing the Holocaust” was removed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/naval-academy...

I would have preferred a much more concise refusal.

A demand letter that said only "Harvard may not use race, gender, or national origin as criteria for admissions and hiring" would be a lot more defensible, and much harder to oppose.

But the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith. And we have seen enough already that any independent organization would be very irresponsible to assume good faith.

I would go so far as to say that any institution trying to make decisions based solely on merit is required to resist this kind of pressure very forcefully. There are many examples of the administration using "DEI" as a buzzword when firing meritorious women and minorities, all the while promoting totally meritless white men.

-JD '08

The federal government cannot attach conditions that limit free speech onto federal funding. There is precedent for the federal government expanding into areas it has no direct constitutional authority over through conditions on funding. But e.g. 'regulating commerce within a state' is not something the constitution explicitly forbids. Whilst 'abridging the freedom of speech' is very much explicitly forbidden.

Importantly, the Civil Rights Act is a (well-litigated) law, not an ad hoc decree from the executive branch. If the current administration wants to strong arm universities, they should go through Congress.

If they want to abridge freedom of speech, they also need 2/3s of US states.

Or the Supreme Court.

As the Harvard letter says, "I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government..." This goes far beyond a demand to follow existing civil rights law. It's a demand for a full-on, government-monitored cultural revolution that will punish Trump's enemies and bring in his supporters. It's also hilarously self-contradictory. The government demands an END to all DEI programs, yet in the same breath, "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity..."

> The Federal government has always attached conditions in exchange for Federal funding and Federal contracts. This is not dictating.

It effectively is. Just look up the history of the drinking age - a classic example of the federal government using extortion tactics to override state rights.

Which was also a law passed by Congress. Congress passes laws.

Should we also say that the president can strike down unconstitutional state laws because the Supreme Court is in the federal government?

I don't think most people would consider "You can't discriminate based on race", to be extortionary. Instead, its a well accepted principle in most of society.

Same with speed limits.