They have more than enough money in their coffers to tell Trump to fk off for a few years.
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#952From 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.)…
The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#953From 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.
"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#954It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.
Columbia's administration obviously has no issues silencing free speech and dissent based on their actions though.
they probably don't have a $50 billion endowment to weather Dump's petulance.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#955The 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’s a good strategy. Even if Harvard had attempted to satisfy every bullet point, the govt could still retort that their demands were not satisfied.
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Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#956The 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’s a good strategy. Even if Harvard had attempted to satisfy every bullet point, the govt could still retort that their demands were not satisfied.
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Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#957Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#958Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable? Also, bullshit on IQ test…
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard? Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
Your question is, “even if IQ tests don’t show intelligence, how will someone who did poorly on one cope at Harvard”?
Seriously? That’s your question? And you think these low income students are why you didn’t get into your school of choice?
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#959Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
From [1]:
> Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What came out of the documents in that court case was used as research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was published[2], so we can see very well how they were screwing over poor, hard-working Asian students.
> Data on admissions—particularly at elite universities—is tightly guarded, making it challenging to identify both the students who benefit from racial preferences and the importance of race in admissions decisions… The data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC lawsuits are important because they make it possible to look behind the admissions veil to see how racial preferences operate.
It wasn't just Harvard, the University of North Carolina was included. The poor part is handled right there in the abstract:
> Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs [under-represented minorities] from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Echoed later on:
> Those who benefit the most from racial preferences (at least in terms of advantages in admissions) are those who come from higher socioeconomic status homes.
Asians weren't and probably still aren't benefitting from this, as:
> Looking first at the applicant columns, African Americans are most likely to be labeled disadvantaged followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites.
So not only do these "diversity" policies hurt Asians, they don't even help black Americans from lower socioeconomic classes, which seems to me to make all of it racist, including against black Americans - the ones most purported to be helped by this - and even against disadvantaged whites, who lose a whopping 25% of their chance to be admitted:
> a white, male, disadvantaged applicant with a 5% chance of admissions would only see his admissions probability rise to 32.1% if he were instead treated as an African American applicant
But the easiest misdeed to see is that done against Asians, hence the lawsuit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
Re: Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
#960So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring". I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.
Harvard admitted it needs to "...broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community..." This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/22/faculty-survey-...
Are conservatives a protected class now? We need DEI to make sure we hire enough conservatives in our company so we look super diverse