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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

#681

Post by davidblowie »

os2warpman wrote: post #431
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?

Merit is not easily definable. Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent. Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a…

"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology"

Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.

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

#682

Post by deepsun »

hnburnsy wrote: post #655
robocat wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14% That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.

But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.

Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.

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

#683

Post by firesteelrain »

tmpz22 wrote: post #604
rtp4me wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With $50B in the endowment, how are they financially vulnerable? Honest question.

Much of the endowment is earmarked towards specific ends. It is not a slush fund for discretionary spending.

Earmarked implies discretionary so it is discretionary

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

#685

Post by firesteelrain »

gruez wrote: post #54
bretpiatt wrote: post #32

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…

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…

It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.

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

#686

Post by saagarjha »

aoki wrote: post #624
acmj wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad…

I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off. That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord F…

Some universities should make sacrifices for academic freedom, yes. That's what they are there for!

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

#687

Post by kelnos »

nailer wrote: post #668
mtalantikite wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out to you, "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Leadbelly used it at the end of his "Scottsboro Boys" [1] in 1938, and it likely was in use many years before that. Erykah Badu's "Master Teacher" also uses it prominently, which probably helped bring it out of AAVE into more mainstream use [2]. Anyway, that's all to say I find…

> "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.

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

#688

Post by saagarjha »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #613
amatecha wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the whole initial excuse for the tariffs on imports from Canada "because of fentanyl" despite https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...

If you don't measure you can just assume all valies are 0.

But assuming it's a large number is not possible, of course.

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

#689

Post by nsingh2 »

kelnos wrote: post #687
nailer wrote: 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 don't recall the term "woke" being all that useful. I really only started noticing it as a right-wing pejorative, often times being used by straight up racists, and to lesser extent by people pointing out performative solidarity, and this is not a recent thing either.

The meaning of "woke" changes depending on the person saying it, and the one listening, which makes it hard to tell what the person is _really_ trying to say.

Edit: Apparently it was recently popularized by BLM activists, but then took on a different meaning [1]. So it seems ambiguous, which to me makes it not that useful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke

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

#690

Post by saagarjha »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #402
overfeed wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> " These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. " By MAGA, yes. Asians themselves haven't forgotten about it nor will they forgive anytime soon.

Asians are not a uniform block. They forget, often, just like every other ethnicity. Or they convince themselves that the values are actually still being held.
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