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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

#151

Post by alabastervlog »

bilbo0s wrote: post #103
Obscurity4340 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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

#152

Post by nine_k »

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?..)

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

#153

Post by pc86 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #89
gruez wrote: post #54

Earlier 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.

Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.

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

#155

Post by bilbo0s »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109
bilbo0s wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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.

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

#156

Post by plorg »

repeekad wrote: post #83
areoform wrote: post #26

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…

$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?

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.

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

#157

Post by jimmydddd »

overfeed wrote: post #70
almogo wrote: post #22

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 p…

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.

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

#158

Post by Latty »

kombine wrote: post #63

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.

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

#159

Post by repeekad »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #124
repeekad wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?

> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemi…

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

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

#160

Post by goatlover »

immibis wrote: post #23
droopyEyelids wrote: post #5

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 th…

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.
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