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Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

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Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#241

Post by rayiner »

runako wrote: post #236
rayiner wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not imagine it is congruent with the law to simply fire all the staff and shut down USAID (or "merge" it into State). The Fourth Circuit allowed the administration to proceed: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/28/appeals-court-usaid... That is not a final word on the constitutionality of dissolving USAID, but it's an indication that the Court didn't believe plaintiffs had a high likelihood of success on th…

The recent SCOTUS opinion that the President's official actions are not bound by the laws of man does provide a clear line of sight to really any action taken by the Executive branch. So it may not really even be productive to discuss limits on Executive power anymore.

That is in fact not what the Supreme Court said. It said that the President has immunity for “official acts,” just like Congress members and judges.

Say a judge dismisses an indictment of an accused murderer because the police didn’t have a proper search warrant. Then the accused murderer kills someone else. That could fall within the letter of “negligent homicide” laws, but the judge can’t be prosecuted for that because judges have absolute immunity for official acts.

Similarly, a red state prosecutor could have tried to prosecute Biden for something like negligent homicide on the theory that his opening of the boarder was a negligent act that resulted in deaths. Obviously you can’t do that, because the President has immunity for official acts. It would be completely insane if the President didn’t have immunity. President do lots of things which cause people to be killed, property to be destroyed, etc. You could prosecute those as crimes if you literally applied the criminal laws.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#242

Post by foxglacier »

otterley wrote: post #238
rayiner wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has the “violation of law” been established yet? There’s a pretty wide gulf between “I believe a violation of the law has occurred” and having the matter adjudicated. Didn't SFFA clearly establish that? The Supreme Court outright reversed the bench trial ruling, which had found that Harvard and UNC's programs comported with Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause. You have a point that I should've said "was found…

It’s not reasonable to characterize SFFA as a finding of wrongdoing on Harvard’s part. At the time, universities were adhering to existing law ( Bakke and Grutter cases). The Court then overturned its own precedent and decided that what was once acceptable under its own law was no longer so. The text of the Equal Protection clause didn’t change; the only thing that changed was the Court’s interpretation of it. So it’…

It seems like Harvard and those other universities might have been pushing the boundaries. Was the discrimination required or just allowed? The court for Grutter seemed to say it was "required" and for Bakke a "compelling state interest", but I might not understand the meaning of that properly. There are universities that don't discriminate (UC?) and they somehow get away with it. If you were running Harvard and trying your best to comply with the law, would you feel it's legally safer to discriminate or to not discriminate? The answer to that points to whether they were operating in bad faith or not.

Title VI seems to clearly say "don't discriminate" but again I might not understand how exceptions are allowed.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#243

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #149
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you citing the these institutions' contribution to the 20th century? We are 25 years past the 20th century, 35 years since the end of the Cold War (which was the spiritual end of the 20th century). What have these elite institutions contributed to the 1990+ world order?

Tons of research in the sciences, including medicine.

So nothing that required them to maintain a one-sided, antagonistic political stance?

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#244

Post by mmooss »

treis wrote: post #232
mmooss wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is that they are unresolved - there was no evidence, verdict. That was all suppressed, including by attacking the prosecutor. Why not clear their names in court? Prosecutors in every other circumstance wield almost unchecked power - except when the children of the powerful might end up in court. Name another prosecutor treated in this way.

Name another one that has acted so egregiously.

I don't know it was egregious; I think that was the media blitz by powerful people trying to shut them down.

Regardless, it happens all the time everywhere - witholding evidence, fabricated evidence, forced confessions, black site torture, endless harassment, etc. etc. What this DA allegedly did was relatively nothing.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#245

Post by nkurz »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #209
treis wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat disingenuous. Something like half of the grant is handed over to the University as overhead. Much of that is legit to cover things like labs but a lot of it goes to a cover a massive amount of administrative bloat. Also, nobody really objects to the research that leads directly to stuff private industry can use. That's not what people want to cut.

Antedote: When I was a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Computer Science research grant proposals included budgets for overhead. This was often, if I recall correctly, 10% of the overall equipment and salary budget. This was deemed a tax collected by the department and used to: - pay IT staff salaries - pay IT hardware and service costs (storage, communication) - etc Other costs…

The numbers you are suggesting do indeed seem reasonable, and if those were the overheads being used, they would probably be justified. But I think current overheads are often much higher. Here for example is a recent article saying that the proposed 15% cap on overhead for NIH grants would be disastrous for universities like Harvard that currently have a 69% negotiated overhead rate: https://deliprao.substack.com/p/understanding-nihs-15-overhe...

To be fair, I'm not sure if that author is using the same definition that you are. In the article, they clarify that a 69% rate means that a $1,000,000 grant has an extra $690,000 paid to Harvard. Still, the idea that the rates should be the same for all institutions and should be closer to the numbers you remember certainly seems worth considering.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#246

Post by [deleted] »

sampo wrote: post #177
mattlutze wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many people think these are funds to just run the universities. By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. Federally-funded academic science often looks like: 1. The university + government fund/run a project 2. Project creates new knowledge (cool!) 3. The government gets a pretty awesome license to use that knowledge 4. The government more often than not gives that knowledge away (or offers gre…

> By and large, what is being withheld are funds for research. I don't know precisely, but I would assume the universities take about 50% to 60% of the granted research funding as administrative overhead, and only what remains goes to the actual research.

[deleted]

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#247

Post by didgetmaster »

mmooss wrote: post #199
didgetmaster wrote: post #78

It is part of the political reality that we live in. Whichever party is currently in power, will inevitably use that power to promote ideas that are favorable to them and to dissuade ideas that they are opposed to. The same people who are whining about the Trump administration abusing their power by doing these things; were cheering on the Biden administration for doing similar things from the opposite angle. This is…

> the political reality that we live in Reality is something that exists regardless of what you think. Politics is what you make it; you don't 'live in it'; it's yours. > Whichever party is currently in power, will inevitably use that power to promote ideas that are favorable to them and to dissuade ideas that they are opposed to. No prior president of either party has done anything like what Trump does, and you know…

No prior president did anything like Biden did either. Only hyper-partisans will claim that only one side does radical things.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#248

Post by otterley »

foxglacier wrote: post #242
otterley wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not reasonable to characterize SFFA as a finding of wrongdoing on Harvard’s part. At the time, universities were adhering to existing law ( Bakke and Grutter cases). The Court then overturned its own precedent and decided that what was once acceptable under its own law was no longer so. The text of the Equal Protection clause didn’t change; the only thing that changed was the Court’s interpretation of it. So it’…

It seems like Harvard and those other universities might have been pushing the boundaries. Was the discrimination required or just allowed? The court for Grutter seemed to say it was "required" and for Bakke a "compelling state interest", but I might not understand the meaning of that properly. There are universities that don't discriminate (UC?) and they somehow get away with it. If you were running Harvard and tryi…

It's important to understand the context in which these laws and Constitutional amendments were written. They were designed and enacted after the Civil War (in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment) and the 1960s (Civil Rights Act, once we determined the Fourteenth Amendment was insufficient) to prevent Black people from being discriminated against. At the time, nobody, including the authors, considered these laws to be a shield to protect white and Asian people from discrimination. (At that time, there were hardly any Asians in the US anyway.)

So, from the 1960s until recently, the Court allowed universities to consider race in university admissions because it advanced a public policy that sought to improve the lot of Black people: the more Blacks could enter the ranks of the educated elite, the better off they would be in the long run, both socially and economically.

Over time, though, people whose admissions were rejected started to fight back: they felt that academic merit trumped all other considerations. After all, if they got better grades and aptitude test scores, weren't they more deserving of admission? The fights began, and over time, the Court chipped away at the acceptable use of race in admissions. Finally, in SFAA, the Court did away with them altogether.

As far as "pushing the boundaries" is concerned, actors will generally try to do whatever's in their best interest provided it's not illegal. There's no reward for maintaining a wide margin from legal boundaries when there's competition.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#249

Post by rayiner »

otterley wrote: post #238
rayiner wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has the “violation of law” been established yet? There’s a pretty wide gulf between “I believe a violation of the law has occurred” and having the matter adjudicated. Didn't SFFA clearly establish that? The Supreme Court outright reversed the bench trial ruling, which had found that Harvard and UNC's programs comported with Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause. You have a point that I should've said "was found…

It’s not reasonable to characterize SFFA as a finding of wrongdoing on Harvard’s part. At the time, universities were adhering to existing law ( Bakke and Grutter cases). The Court then overturned its own precedent and decided that what was once acceptable under its own law was no longer so. The text of the Equal Protection clause didn’t change; the only thing that changed was the Court’s interpretation of it. So it’…

> It’s not reasonable to characterize SFFA as a finding of wrongdoing on Harvard’s part

As I understand it, that’s the legal effect of SFFA. SFFA sued Harvard seeking, among other things, a declaratory judgment that Harvard’s admissions policies violate Title VI. The district court ruled, after bench trial, that Harvard didn’t violate Title VI. The Supreme Court didn’t remand for further proceedings, it outright reversed. Meaning that it found that Harvard’s procedures did violate Title VI.

Bad faith or malice aren’t elements of a Title VI violation. And I don’t see any legal reason why an administration couldn’t hold Harvard’s discrimination against students—which happened, even if the Supreme Court changed its mind about whether it was permissible—against Harvard in allocating federal funding.

Moreover, Harvard’s defiant response to SFFA provides a reasonable basis for the administration to believe it has continued to engage in discrimination: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/06/harvard-unite...

Of course, now that Harvard has decided to fight it, the administration will have to prove its belief: https://www.axios.com/2025/04/28/harvard-law-review-trump-ad.... That’s how these enforcement letters always pan out. Many targets fold to avoid litigation. Sometimes, a defendant fights it and the government has to initiate a formal enforcement action.

The DOJ, FDA, FTC, and SEC do stuff like this all the time. These agencies all lean very heavily on the threat of an enforcement action to enforce changes in private behavior without having to actually take entities to court.

Re: Why can't Ivies cope with losing a few hundred million?

#250

Post by foxglacier »

otterley wrote: post #248
foxglacier wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like Harvard and those other universities might have been pushing the boundaries. Was the discrimination required or just allowed? The court for Grutter seemed to say it was "required" and for Bakke a "compelling state interest", but I might not understand the meaning of that properly. There are universities that don't discriminate (UC?) and they somehow get away with it. If you were running Harvard and tryi…

It's important to understand the context in which these laws and Constitutional amendments were written. They were designed and enacted after the Civil War (in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment) and the 1960s (Civil Rights Act, once we determined the Fourteenth Amendment was insufficient) to prevent Black people from being discriminated against. At the time, nobody, including the authors, considered these laws to…

Is that how the law works? Because the Civil Rights Act was written with black people in mind, it only applies to black people even though the wording doesn't specify that? Surely it's quite an obvious omission that they would have written down if that's what they'd wanted. Is it a kind of trick law written to make people think other races are protected but due to how laws are interpreted, it was always known not to apply to them?
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