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Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

harvard.edu

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Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online. The goal is white supremacy and antifemi…

When these people use "freedom of speech" all they mean is they want to say their vile Nazi stuff without people complaining.

Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#812

> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension." Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.

If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#813

The aggregate demands of the administration are confusing and contradictory. They seem to be simultaneously asking for: - an end to diversity initiatives - a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view - a new policy of not admitting international students with certain points of view - ending speech-control policies - auditing the speech of certain departments and programs - ending discipline of students who…

It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they wan…

  Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

  [..] The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time [..] was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

  [..] It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#814

The aggregate demands of the administration are confusing and contradictory. They seem to be simultaneously asking for: - an end to diversity initiatives - a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view - a new policy of not admitting international students with certain points of view - ending speech-control policies - auditing the speech of certain departments and programs - ending discipline of students who…

The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it. In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-white…

Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.

The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.

Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.

Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.

Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.

The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.

It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.

Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#815
post #687
post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Yes, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy that serves the people of Korea. Sometimes expressions have meaning beyond what advocates for the related concepts claim. For example, as I’m sure you are aware, ‘woke’ viewpoints repeatedly advocate for racial discrimination in American univers…

Lately it feels like "woke" in political discourse just means "anything Republicans don't like". What a waste of an otherwise useful term.

I’m liberal and I also find wokeness to be irritating, so it’s not just things Republicans don’t like. Like the above person says, it’s not just awareness of structural discrimination and the like, which I believe are real and ought to be addressed, but also a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard affiliated hospitals are dependent on NIH funding for survival. Wonder if they are included in the scope of this.

NIH falls under HHS, and the HHS acting general counsel was a signatory on the original letter. That said, affiliated hospitals are not owned or operated by Harvard. The affiliates could be pushed to drop their affiliation if NIH wanted to play hardball with Harvard.

According to NYT, “ 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.”

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally).

Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world.

Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#818

> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension." Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.

While I am not a friend of a mask ban, universities should absolutely teach their students to stay home when sick. Going to work sick is an abomination that should be rooted out. And it is a nice liberal cause too.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistency is undesirable, because if everyone is breaking a law, you apply the hammer of justice only if they aren't a friend. It's one of the best ways to look good to certain people as well,because you can claim to be just following the law.

Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".

The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.

Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

#820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online. The goal is white supremacy and antifemi…

When these people use "freedom of speech" all they mean is they want to say their vile Nazi stuff without people complaining.

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