Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

harvard.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 1001 posts

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

#921

Post by hnburnsy »

telotortium wrote: post #739
hnburnsy wrote: post #490

Can someone confirm that if Harvard turned down Pell Grants and Federal student support, they could admit whoever they want? >Private clubs are generally exempt from anti-discrimination laws under certain conditions. For example, being genuinely private and not engaging in business with non-members. However, there are exceptions to these exemptions. For instance, when a club receives significant government benefits o…

They could. Look up Bob Jones College or Hillsdale College, both of which operate without any federal funding. It appears that the elite universities are going to find out the same thing that the small Christian universities found out in the 1970s, which is that the federal government Can control you if they fund you. I believe Bob Jones in particular won a case in front of the Supreme Court giving them the right to…

ty

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

#922

Post by hnburnsy »

nrmitchi wrote: post #695
hnburnsy wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s more like a patchwork of locked treasure chests, each with its own key and its own label: this one funds scholarships, that one supports cancer research, another pays for upkeep on a library. Explain why direct donations cannot accomplish the same. I suspect that universities want endowment donations because they grow tax free.

My understanding is that a large part of endowments comes from large (really, huge ) donations. If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund. It's not entirely about what the organization wants, but also what the donators/sponsors want.

>If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.

You can make that restricted donation outside of the endowment. I thought endowments were for the support of students, not research.

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

#923

Post by jncfhnb »

steadfastbeef wrote: post #18
jncfhnb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.

Yeah but money is fungible.

It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.

Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.

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

#924

Post by yongjik »

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?

Bruh, have you been sleeping under the rock throughout the whole Trump-defunding-NIH saga.

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

#925

Post by searealist »

kenjackson wrote: post #647
impossiblefork wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly. Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.

Academic success isn’t what Harvard cares about. They want leaders, not kids who are great at “school”. Put it this way they’d much rather have Roberts or Obama as alumni than your typical 1600 SAT quant. Whats the best metric to find the people they are looking to educate?

Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?

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

#926

Post by nailer »

allturtles wrote: post #864
nailer wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I have no hesitation. How are you not finding it obvious that the government are trying to end racially based admittance programs?

Because I read the letter from the government to Harvard. Did you? Racially-based admittance is only one bullet out of ten. The government isn't demanding specific policy changes, they are demanding cultural and ideological control of the university.

Did you? As you can read, they tackle racial bias immediately and follow up with preventing advocacy for terrorism and racism, then viewpoint divergence. At no point are they arguing for a single viewpoint to exist, they are CONSISTENTLY doing the exact opposite:

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.

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

#927

Post by [deleted] »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #845
arrosenberg wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they ask for your political ideology on the Harvard application?

De facto yes. This is what essays, particularly "diversity statements" are for. Also, if you're an academic seeking employment, your work and professional connections will make it clear.

[deleted]

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

#928

Post by kenjackson »

searealist wrote: post #925
kenjackson wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academic success isn’t what Harvard cares about. They want leaders, not kids who are great at “school”. Put it this way they’d much rather have Roberts or Obama as alumni than your typical 1600 SAT quant. Whats the best metric to find the people they are looking to educate?

Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?

I don’t think most people are denied based on any specific thing. Asians attend these elite schools at much higher rates than their population. If there was a school that admitted based on grades and test scores only they’d probably be even more highly represented.

College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.

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

#929

Post by bakuninsbart »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #766
forty wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what "agree with the Palestinians" would mean. Like they are not happy with being genocided? I think that would be most people's feeling in that situation, though that doesn't show any proximity in belief, value or principle.

Yeah I guess this is what happens to censored viewpoints. Most people have only heard a caricature of it. The world is really a lot more interesting if you try to understand everyone’s actual perspective. It also becomes much more coherent. Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints. In what I’ve seen of “race realist” writings online, they tend to be very anti Israel. So to associate the admin…

"Race realism" is just a meaningless label Neo-Nazis use, because they are still trying to fly under the radar, or they are slightly embarrassed of being what their grand-parents fought. They might try to butter up their standing by (falsely) citing stuff like the Bell Curve, but it is still the same vile and evil ideology it was 80 years ago.

But not all fascists are neo-nazis. Just because a subset of today's fascists describe themselves that way, doesn't mean they are fundamentally different from other fascists. Look at Steven Miller; he's jewish, and quite obviously a white supremacist. He's all about dehumanizing people he thinks of as leser, and he welcomes the new fascist America. AfD, the german far-right party, is both very pro-Israel and loves to play "tread the nazi line and extend it"-game. Anti-semitism is a common, but not necessary prerequesite to fascism.

When I was younger I also thought the opposite of good should be bad, and it is silly to describe things as evil. I disliked the religious connotation, but have changed my mind. There are people committing absolutely horrible things, and calling it anything but evil is underestimating the depravity of those characters. To quote Captain G. M. Gilbert:

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

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

#930

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

aisenik wrote: post #900
NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Could you please cite some examples? This reads like a bunch of strawmen set up by someone aggrieved by trans rights and racial equality.

The first Harvard one that comes to mind is Carole Hooven, an enocrinologist who was pilloried for speaking obvious truths:

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/02/15/carole-hooven-wh...

Post reply on HN