541–550 of 1001 posts
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'm not so sure. The Harvard endowment is huge. I might not be so much "moral fiber" as having enough fuck you money that risks don't matter as much as they do to others.
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Republicans Are Floating Plans To Raise the Endowment Tax. Here’s What You Need To Know : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/11/increasing-endo... Proposed College Endowment Tax Hike: What to Know : https://thecollegeinvestor.com/52851/proposed-college-endowm... College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.…
LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
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 t…
Republicans Are Floating Plans To Raise the Endowment Tax. Here’s What You Need To Know : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/11/increasing-endo... Proposed College Endowment Tax Hike: What to Know : https://thecollegeinvestor.com/52851/proposed-college-endowm... College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.…
Converting the Corporation to Harvard Church is about the least shenanigany thing I could think of in this tale.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Harvard_University
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Harvard admitted it needs to "...broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community..." This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/22/faculty-survey-...
Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.
With their large untaxed endowment, they should be fine without federal funding. Make it so.
Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.
Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.
Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.
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I suspect much less than 50% actually wanted legal residents of the United States disappeared to El Salvador. Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
> Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government. You're describing a coup or revolution. Isn't that highly anti-democratic considering this president just won an election? Why should the 50% be under the thumb of the 3.5%?
And just as just, violated his oath to the constitution. How long, precisely, should we allow him to violate his oath and our rights?
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.
Harvard admitted it needs to "...broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community..." This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/22/faculty-survey-...
That's true now. It wasn't always true. From: https://www.aei.org/articles/are-colleges-and-universities-t...
- In 1989-1990, when HERI first fielded this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right.
- in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right
Now you say it's 2.3% conservative.
The universities argue they haven't changed, it's the politics of the right. I'd say they are correct as the right now to disavows and ridicules the output of universities on things like climate change, tariffs, vaccines, health, voter fraud in US elections ... well it's a long list. It wasn't like that 30 years ago.
The universities are supposed to be intellectual power houses fearlessly seeking out fundamental truths and relationships, regardless of what the people in power might think of their discoveries. Both sides of politics once celebrated that. Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate. They allow and encourage all types of thought, but insist they be exposed to a torrent of opposing thoughts so only the soundest survive.
Frankly, I'm amazed 2.3% still identify with a mob that clearly wants to undermine that. I'm guessing it will drop to near 0% now.
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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.
They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized. At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.
If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.
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He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.
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.
Oh, those federal jobs he’s been DOGEing for the past weeks in an attempt to demotivate folks out of them?
This administration’s incoherence comes back to bite it in the ass again.
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Billionaires pay 37% or 20% on their investment gains, can't really explain it to a 5 year old because congress and the IRS make it complex.
They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes. Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)