Harvard Sues Trump Over Funding Freeze
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paused $1 billion in grants.
Harvard University filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump over the $2.3 billion funding freeze.
“Defendants’ actions threaten Harvard’s academic independence and place at risk critical lifesaving and pathbreaking research that occurs on its campus,” according to the lawsuit. “And they are part of a broader effort by the Government to punish Harvard for protecting its constitutional rights.”
In March, the government alerted Harvard it would review $9 billion in funding.
Harvard said it would not comply to a list of demands, which include dismantling DEI and limit the antisemitic protests.
That’s when Trump froze $2.3 billion.
This is a school that has an endowment worth over $50 billion. Why does it need my taxpayer money?
Without our taxpayer money, Harvard claims that cancer, infectious diseases, and neurological research will be affected.
From The Wall Street Journal:
“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a community message announcing the lawsuit. Research at risk by the funding cuts, Garber said, includes work into child cancer, infectious disease outbreaks, and easing the pain of soldiers wounded in battle.
Harvard argues in the lawsuit that the government has cut off funds “as part of its pressure campaign” to force the university “to submit to the government’s control over its academic programs.”
The lawsuit sets up a legal showdown between America’s most prominent university and the president of the United States, who has been on an escalating campaign to reorder elite higher education.
“The freeze and the looming threat of additional funding cuts will chill Harvard’s exercise of its First Amendment rights,” claims Harvard. “Harvard will be unable to make decisions regarding its faculty hiring, academic programs, student admissions, and other core academic matters without fear that those decisions will run afoul of government censors’ views on acceptable levels of ideological or viewpoint diversity on campus.”
Um, the government is telling you to protect Jewish students. It’s telling you to stop the antisemitism.
Harvard needs to change.
SCOTUS already told the school to end the race-based affirmative action in admissions.
We know the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) paused $1 billion in grants.
Senior officials told The Daily Caller the move came because Harvard has been “intransigent with respect to obligations to protect students on this campus from the effects of insidious antisemitism.”
“Harvard needs to fully come into compliance with Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” one official told The Daily Caller. “They need to remedy the violations of Title IV with respect to Jewish students on campus, they need to make sure that the not violating title six with respect to their admissions practices, and they need to provide sufficient guarantees that this conduct is not going to repeat itself.”
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Sue away to your heart’s content.
Or as Pogo said, “If you can’t win, don’t join them; learn how to lose.”
Discovery gonna be a hoot. Does Harvard really want to have all its dirty laundry aired in public? Do they want to quantify all the different ways they violate the Civil Rights Act with DEI and/or.DEI by another name? Last I checked they have to provide annual certification that they don’t engage in discrimination… find one instance and that certification is false…that falsehood allowed them to remain eligible to receive Federal Funds… which would now be a fraud. What’s the statute of limitations on defrauding the Federal Gov’t, b/c they’ve had more than one President to sign off over the last couple years.
These guys would be far wiser to have accepted the Trump Admin directives. It would have allowed them to clean up their house of the problems they know damn well exist and put the blame.on Trump. Instead they have chosen to ‘hang together’. IMO they have chosen very poorly.
The Trump Admin made some demands, particularly for “diversity of viewpoint”, that Harvard could never accept. This went far beyond the demands made of lesser universities like Columbia, that only related to student conduct and protests. Obviously, the Administration wanted Harvard to go to court.
Maybe but that doesn’t explain Harvard’s rejection of the opportunity to negotiate with the Admin in private to find a compromise without the ‘deal breaker’ issues v making such a public issue of rejecting all the Admin points and filing suit. FWIW deliberate viewpoint discrimination is not acceptable either, especially when those doing it also claim to respect ‘diversity’, trumpet a commitment to ‘inclusion’ and demand ‘equitable’ treatment…
If you can’t sue anybody you don’t like over anything you want, what’s the point of maintaining a Law School?
Give out lots of diplomas and make lots of money.
Employ democrat influencers and grifters like Tribe and Warren.
There is the small issue of accreditation. Wouldn’t be beyond the real of possibility to create a Federal level review of academic accreditation and require strict compliance with basics like the Civil Rights Act to receive federal approval. Congress could easily create such a neutral standard and then add that no graduate of a Law School which fails the review could practice in Federal District or Circuit Courts for ten years following graduation. That would put serious consequences into play.
Harvard really doesn’t care what we think, but they do want our money.
Harvard’s problem is they want the money….and the $ comes with basic strings attached…like not violating the Civil Rights Act. Seems simple enough to the rest of us. Unfortunately ‘our betters’ can’t seem to stop their fanatical desire to classify, divide,.reward, punish by race, religion, ethnicity. Heck they keep making up whole new categories to add to their diversity olympics even though putting a thumb on the scale outside of very narrow, individualized redress is verboten and has been for decades. I suspect the folks who have offered up fraudulent certifications that these sorts of illegal discriminatory acts weren’t taking place on campus will absolutely care what the brake public thinks when they get hauled off to prison, anything less at this point is overly generous, grossly misplaced compassion. Eff these racist, fascist goons.
The granting of monies to colleges are contingent on said college complying with 1st Amendment, and various title IX
, X and other civil rights sections. DOE simply says they’re out of compliance. Case closed. Take away their tax exempt status too.
“In the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts”
Harvard will get away with this. At least for a fairly long while.
Easier for harvard just to comply with trump. Why do they want DEI anyway? Its huge liability for harvard. Harvard could dismantle DEI and blame it all on trump. Dumb move to fight this.
Did you read Trump’s demands? They were very complete and thorough, and invasive. Harvard deserves every bit of it, but of course they’ll say no. How dare the plebeians presume to speak that way to Harvard?
There really is no upside benefit to any college with DEI. Its big waste of time, money, and resources. It exposes the institution to legal risk. There’s no reason to do it if you don’t have to.
ideology.
they can’t help themselves
It’s not just that.
DEI is a manipulation tool for the Left.
Those who control the institutions, who have taken them over in their long march, care deeply about DEI and its disruption of what we care about. It’s a naked show of power, and now that they’ve taken the hill by surprise, they’re not giving it up.
We may have to flatten the hill and build a new hill where it used to stand.
Never mind the fact that it shortchanges the students.
Teaching the students to focus on race/gender/ethnicity/whatever, rather than actual merit and skills, will often lead to suboptimal choices.
Do your best. Make employers see the value in the job performance and skills you can provide, rather than other unimportant characteristics. Those other things are a crutch that really should not be leaned upon.
One question that comes to mind is what does Harvard do with all that money, $2.3B equates to about $330,000 for each undergrad.
Something like 70% of it goes to central administration. The researcher keeps only around 30% to do the work of the grant. Not sure the exact percentage, but Harvard’s “tax” is higher than at most universities.
OK, so negotiation is over. Revoke the rest of the grants Harvard gets, and make them ineligible for Federal Student Aid for their students.
Especially the latter. Federal Student Aid allows them to sign up their middle class students for huge loan balances, while giving grants to their more favored DEI population. It allows the price discrimination that’s bankrupting the middle class and sending them into lifelong debt.
Debt that Biden wanted to stick back onto the taxpayer.
Disconnecting especially Harvard with its huge endowment balances from FSA will force them to give grants to almost all their students, not just their favorite pets.
I feel the Trump administration will lose this case. It’s one more instance where the administration’s heart is in the right place, but its execution is flawed, and Trump acts too quickly. Harvard filed its suit in Massachusetts, where the plaintiffs expect to prevail easily.
Did the administration act too quickly? If it had considered the government’s grants procedures more carefully, denying Harvard out of future funding, it would have been in a stronger and presumably winning position.
Harvard’s trustees have called a full-court press on the Trump administration and set it up for an embarrassing defeat by claiming to withhold spending that had already been approved without following federal internal procedures.
Its a pity those stupid people in the administration didn’t have your wisdom and ability to predict the future to guide them.
Harvard’s indirect cost (IDC) rate is 69%, considerably higher than the 50-55% charged by other major US research universities. This means that faculty awarded a $100,000 federal research grant will also receive an additional 69% ($69,000), but it’s not the researcher’s to spend. The $69K goes to the university administration to cover overhead, however that is defined. IDC rates are based on an algorithm negotiated between the university and the federal grant-awarding agency. .
welfare is welfare
Harvard bungled their case on affirmative action admissions, and lost it for all colleges everywhere. Now harvard is going to lose this case the same. The arrogance of harvard needs to be checked.
Harvard is a legend in its own mind. They have some good programs in STEM, however they have other programs which are mediocre at best—as demonstrated by their consistent lack of action in dealing with serious academic misconduct and lack of faculty disciplinary proceedings that ANY other whackademic institution would have been forced to take against the multiple offenders that have emerged. They haven’t done a damned thing to those people, and any other institution would have fired them.