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Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

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

#871

Post by jhp123 »

sam_goody wrote: post #851

Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed. I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine. I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding. Trade schools cater to the lower income, are…

the money is for research not education.

A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.

The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.

Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.

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

#873

Post by chneu »

nsingh2 wrote: post #700
tines wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here: Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of fore…

Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1]. We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to i…

There's a whole Radiolab or this American life episode on this.

Basically, young people haven't lived through anything and are very willing to give up democracy.

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

#874

Post by chneu »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #835
kashunstva wrote: post #486

From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension." So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)…

A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc. Steelman, don't straw man.

That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.

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

#875

Post by belorn »

dspillett wrote: post #796
kweingar wrote: post #224

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…

I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.

Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.

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

#876

Post by Bluescreenbuddy »

porphyra wrote: post #261

Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?

Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.

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

#877

Post by Bluescreenbuddy »

brigandish wrote: post #795
yongjik wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> then they turn around and defund universities Harvard was one of the universities "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students", so I'm not sure the criticism holds, especially when the government's letter is asking for merit based admissions reform. Are there other universities that weren't discriminating against Asians that the government has or has moved to defund?

And exactly how were they "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students

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

#878

Post by Bluescreenbuddy »

FloorEgg wrote: post #540
esrauch wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics. That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?

Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith. I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media be…

Because you sound like a concern troll/sea lion. Ask your question better.

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

#879

Post by chneu »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #406
squigz wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from. Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.

There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.

This rings true for much of South America at one point or another. Lots of African nations. Several in SE Asia as well.

Heck, just in the last few years we've seen several countries regress by a decade or more because of military coups or similar.

Really, if you look at many countries that haven't been a world power, this has happened once or twice in recent memory.

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

#880

Post by chneu »

clivestaples wrote: post #147

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 c…

Part of nafta was to slow the increasing costs of production, not lower them.

When looking over time it definitely worked in many regards. Things didn't get as expensive as they would have otherwise.

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