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Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes

harvard.edu

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

#971

Post by AlexeyBelov »

amy214 wrote: post #944
dspillett wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they wan…

the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.

Hello, 55 day old account that's definitely not a troll

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

#972

Post by AlexeyBelov »

anonfordays wrote: post #936
viraptor wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Diversity is bad when it involves Whites, men, straight people or research involving these groups. If you think that's what the "other side" is saying, then you've completely misunderstood what the diversity idea is about. You can't compare one idea with the misrepresentation of the opposing idea. That's just making things up.

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

#973

Post by johnnyanmac »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #797
tines wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here: Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of fore…

Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.

ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.

Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.

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

#974

Post by johnnyanmac »

Ray20 wrote: post #962
EasyMark wrote: post #953

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.

>how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications?

I got at least one: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-doctor-maggie-carpenter-...

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/texas-abortion-doctor-...

it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.

>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?

As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.

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

#975

Post by johnnyanmac »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #890
chneu wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.

I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore…

> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point

ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".

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

#976

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #973
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.

ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses. Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.

Yeah, for about a century or two. This is not the first time all of this has happened. Read your history.

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

#977

Post by johnnyanmac »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #920
arp242 wrote: post #169

So 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.

If you genuinely cannot distinguish the two then that's about equally as bad as cognitive dissonance: Phenotype diversity != Viewpoint diversity The former is what current academia and DEI focus on, the latter is what the administration demands. Does this simple logic need to be expressed in Rust for HN folks to wrap their mind around it?

the contradiction is that "viewpoint hiring" =/= "merit based hiring".

I think you should give better faith to the community instead of breaking the guidelines here trying to prove a point.

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

#978

Post by johnnyanmac »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #842
arp242 wrote: post #169

So 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.

It's not cognitive dissonance, or bad faith. Of course. If you let Harvard do "merit-based hiring", they'll move a little in the direction of actually complying with employment law, but not much. If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades (i.e., if you don't have "enough" black people, you need to show how your recruitment pipeline means that's necessarily the case, like not e…

>If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades

Do you really think this administration is doing anything close to that?

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

#979

Post by johnnyanmac »

inglor_cz wrote: post #817
const_cast wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.

"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally). Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world. Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliabl…

IDK how it is today, but last decade the US was considered to have many of the best educational institutions.

>Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities.

Yes, because EU "left" would be accused of socialism, whereas the EU "right" would mostly be the US's existing left wing. the US right wing was always on a far side and these days fell straight to the AfD levels of extremism.

It's not one sided, but the spectrum is completely different.

>And Asian universities are a completely different world.

I'm sure they are. a history fighting within the eastern continent and a rule of emporers will shape differently than from a land of conquerers puahing for conformity who eventually tried to make nice as their regimes fell and created this hybrid of individualism and trade amongst one another.

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

#980

Post by elliotec »

Herring wrote: post #629
elliotec wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.

No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.

It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.

They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.

It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.

“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”

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