What an outrageous and incoherent letter So much for academic freedom
Awesome response from Alan Garber
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 us…
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.
To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.
The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#203"Zaporozhian Cossacks write to the Sultan of Turkey" by Ilya Repin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks#/media/Fi...
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#204[flagged]
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I've visited a handful of encampments. Super peaceful, mostly kids educating each other about colonialism and the history of Israel's occupation and apartheid.
If you're looking for violence, the attacks on the Palestine encampments at UCLA were by far the most horrific violence on campus of the last year, and that was funded by Jonathan Greenblatt (CEO of the ADL, which is a racist org)
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#205The 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…
The governments conditions are not unlimited. Their proposed "viewpoint diversity" is absurd at face value.
Indeed. I wish the government side was more reasonable, but it's hard to expect now; they are into running a TV show :(
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#206With their large untaxed endowment, they should be fine without federal funding. Make it so.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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'm fine with stopping the flow of federal money to people who hate me in particular and who take a salary to convince others to do so too. Those who defend the conduct of universities need to pause and consider that the public has noticed the radicalization of academia, despises it, and will support state action to reverse it.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
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There is no evidence Trump has dementia. That is something his detracted unfairly say as if it is true, but there is no reason to think it is. I don't like him either, but that doesn't mean I will say unfair things about him.
I was speaking in probabilities, not making a judgment myself (I wouldn't be qualified to do so anyway). Numerous mental health professionals have made the assertion that he is, and he has a family history of it, so at the very least it can't reasonably be claimed with 100% certainty that he's not in the early-to-mid stages of dementia.
Furthermore, my statement was very clearly presented as a massive stretch in the first place; noting that it might slightly increase the chance that he'll be unable to make an attempt at a third term (even if by 0.01%). Sometimes squinting hard enough that the resulting bokeh resemble a silver lining is all you can do to muster hope.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. And all of those are necessarily in Harvards best interest to maintain too. This is compared to a direct payment to sustain operations which the government is saying they may not be in favor of. But its not like Harvard would say ”it may not be in our interest to produce successful people anymore.”
Harvard isn't the first to be targeted, nor will they be the last.
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#210It'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.
> all I can think is what a fucking lay-up
I am nervous about the US right now. So many cases are going to end up at the Supreme Court that is controlled by conservatives. It may not be the lay-up you think it is.
Also what happens if Trump just decides to ignore a court loss as he did with the recent deportation of Kilmar Garcia?