“Harvard would be well advised not to bite the hand that feeds you”
“These schools would be better off looking inward and saying, what did we do wrong? What could we do better? How did we create a situation where the population of the country is turning against us?”
I appeared on the Rick Leventhal Show on Newsmax on April 15 to talk about the fight between the Trump administration and Harvard over federal funding freezes. This may be a fight that finally needs to be had.
Partial Transript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
WAJ (00:58):
… The Harvard faculty is completely radicalized. Only 3% of the faculty at Harvard identifies as conservative, versus nationally 37% of people identify as conservative. It’s a monoculture, which has become increasingly radicalized, but it’s radicalized really only in one direction. It’s basically becoming a Zionist free zone. And when you exclude Zionists from campus the way they do, you’re excluding Jews. When you have marches calling for an Intifada, which was the bloody campaign against Jews in 2002, we know what you mean. And there’ve been Senators who’ve visited various campuses, including Columbia, who’ve spoken to students. They were afraid to walk around with Jewish stars around their necks. This would never be tolerated if it was any other minority group, but it’s tolerated because the campus is so radical.
Leventhal (02:10):
Bill, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when former President Obama said that it was okay for mask wearing Hamas supporters to chant for Intifada and violent resistance to Jewish students who were just trying to go to class. Why would he say Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism are unlawful and stifling academic freedom? It’s, as you said, it’s a double standard.
WAJ (02:34):
Well, actually it’s these protestors, the ones taking over buildings, the ones erecting, checkpoints, et cetera, who are interfering with academic freedom. There’s a lot has been made about this Columbia student they’re trying to deport. He devoted his time here, a foreigner, to preventing other students from exercising their rights, other students getting their education.
The reality is also there is no real academic freedom on campuses. You can’t get hired, it’s almost impossible to get hired if you’re either openly pro-Israel or conservative on campuses. For 20, 30 years, the faculty has been purged of conservatives and openly pro-Israel faculty. So the notion that somehow the Trump administration trying to bring a balance back, trying to increase ideological diversity, is destroying academic freedom, it’s just the opposite. It’s trying to restore it.
Leventhal (03:33):
And Obama isn’t the only Democrat to stick up for Harvard, New York. Governor Kathy Hochel, your governor, also released a statement saying quote, cutting funding to these institutions is absolutely despicable. And in the same statement, she says, people who criticize the anti-Semitism on campus are not wrong. Adding, anti-Semitism is rampant in ways that are shocking to me. Well, thanks, Governor. But you can’t have it both ways.
WAJ (04:00):
Right. If you want to be free from federal restraints, don’t take federal money. I mean, that’s the quid pro quo. You take federal funding and you have to comply with the civil rights laws. You have to comply with a whole host of federal mandates. Hillsdale College made a decision not to take a penny of federal money. They can do pretty much whatever they want. Harvard takes apparently $9 billion of federal money, and they have to comply with federal requirements. That’s the price they pay.
Harvard would be well advised, as well as many other schools, not to bite the hand that feeds you. They have become so divorced from the American public. And polling by reputable organizations shows that trust in higher education is at an all time low. More people, or the same number of people who trust higher ed don’t trust it. It’s losing popularity, it’s losing credibility. It’s ideologically divorced from the nation.
These schools would be better off looking inward and saying, what did we do wrong? What could we do better? How did we create a situation where the population of the country is turning against us?
Don’t blame Donald Trump. These remedies he’s seeking are really a symptom of a population which is fed up with higher ed.
Leventhal (05:16):
I’m glad you said that. As a professor at Cornell, one of the schools that Hochel mentioned, what are your thoughts on Trump threatening to freeze funding and what can Cornell do, your school, what can Cornell do better to protect its Jewish students?
WAJ (05:34):
Well, it’s going to have to increase the diversity of the faculty ideologically. There are very few openly conservative professors. I might be one of a handful in a campus of 2000 faculty. There there is programming, which is really noxious, by various academic departments, I support their freedom of speech and right to do that, but there’s no counter programming. There’s no balance.
The Cornell administration needs to make a concerted effort to bring balance back to the campus. As of now, it’s a monoculture, it’s a monoculture at the faculty and the administrative level. And the administrators in some ways are as radical or more radical than the faculty. So really changing the way you’ve done everything.
And get rid of the DEI programming, which causes a lot of the isolation and targeting of Jewish students, the notion that somehow Jews are white oppressors. You see it at Cornell, when they organize boycotts of Israel or a motion against Israel, it’s always framed as going against the white oppressors.
Get rid of the DEI ideology, bring balance back to the campus, nd you’ll go a long way. Because the antisemitism is a symptom of a deeper problem.
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Comments
Wishful thinking from the good professor. Nothing is going to change I’m sorry to say. The main reason is that there is no real incentive for change. The students, the staff, the admin, the trustees are not personally affected by withholding federal monies. You want change, you have to make them be at risk personally starting with the trustees.
Maybe/maybe not. Risking loss of federal funding is a big deal. Hard to be a preeminent research Univ w/o research funding. The researchers and their cut above students and grad assistants will bail for greener pastures. Undergrad programs that feed into those research disciplines will falter as.well.
Then there’s the potential to use budget reconciliation to remove tax exempt status for Endowments. Also room in reconciliation to require higher payout back to Feds off any patents developed in part or in whole including basic research with Federal $ Plus the option to make them ineligible for all federal student loans/aid programs and VA funds. Then there’s the question of accreditation and imposing a simple, strait forward requirement that Univ must be in compliance with Federal Civil rights statutes to become or retain accreditation.
With harvard patents they have multiple sources of income. They will have plenty of donations from progressive alumni, They have their war chest aka endowment. I bet they can believe that they can last until either Trump is impeached or the democrats reclaim Congress in 2026. They probably believe they can last until the next Democrat president unwinds all Trump’s EOs or some progress judge puts the kibosh on Trumps EO concerning them.
After devouring Jewish students why would they now be concerned about biting a hand?
So true! Recent examples SHOW that getting smacked in the face with the cold fish of REALITY causes people to re-examine their support for certain people!! I guess what really needs to be done is a USAID styled review of ALL FUNDING for “colleges”! WHY should any institution be granted US TAXPAYERS’ DOLLARS to indoctrinate and brainwash young minds into a leftist ideology of hatred and ignorance? Maybe we just need to MAKE A LAW – NO FEDERAL FUNDING for anything other than HONEST RESEARCH! OH, and HONEST RESEARCH doesn’t mean the college SKIMS 60% for “Administrative Fees”! We should also end the tax free (might as well be at the very low, sometimes rate) on Endowments! All of us have to pay PROPERTY TAXES on OUR HOMES or WE LOSE THEM! Why shouldn’t these places be paying taxes on ALL their properties along with the Churches on all property other than the actual Sanctuary (Catholic and Brother Warnock Eternal Baptist Support for Million$ Parsonage Church)!
So much to fix – so many felons to remove from society – so much wasted – so many DECENT people suffering! It’s going to take a while to fix all this crap! OH, and the “judges” – what to do with the leftist hacks in black???
Harvard is following a long established Ivy League tradition of excluding Jewish students. If we go across the pond, university students have centuries-long tradition of beating and murdering Jews (pre-war Poland, the HEP-HEP riots in Germany a little over a century ago, going all the way back to the Padua medical school).
An additional incentive for a university to stop engaging in illegal discrimination would be to deny federally supported financial aid to any student attending that university. The government can certainly do that (see Grove City, for example), and it would likely put financial pressure even on schools as wealthy as Harvard.
That’s not how they think.
Let me explain how they think, because a bunch of them are openly saying this.
They think they can give the middle finger to Trump and collect their plaudits from the Blue Sky crew. They think if Trump cuts their funding that they can easily find a leftist hack in a robe to ‘order’ him to restore the funding, and that the Supreme Court under the Dread Coward Roberts will either decline to take the case, or will do some procedural nonsense to let it drag out for years.
At worst, they think that they can file another lawsuit under a Democrat and have them ‘settle’ for whatever money Trump cut from them.
They don’t even consider a scenario where this money doesn’t come back to them eventually, because why would they? They think they’re in control.
“They don’t even consider a scenario where this money doesn’t come back to them eventually, because why would they? They think they’re in control.”
Spot on. Oberlin thought the same thing when they FAFO’d with Gibson Bakery. They thought they were bullet proof. Tot it all up and something ~ $50MM later,* they still think they were in the right. Harvard, among others, are on the same train.
* Judgement = $36.5MM + ~ $5MM legal fees for Gibson + (est) $10MM for their own defense, which was NOT covered by insurance, as Oberlin eventually found out was the case. And which non-coverage was upheld by the courts when Oberlin sued them. Imagine the crybully surprise—couldn’t hide behind mommy’s skirts after attacking Gibson’s
Was the money ever paid?
This was decades in the making of this culture. It would take decades in the fixing. I like the Democrats’ idea of taxing “billionaires”. Only the first billion of endowment is tax-exempt. Also, withhold Federal funding, including Federal student loans, from institutions of any size tolerating antisemitic actions.
Stop the “federal” student loans altogether would be better.
I don’t know. You see a waning of defenses of Jews (even religious ones) and Israel, even on our side. Things appear to be returning to the historic norms (Heaven forbid) – anti-Jewish double standards, etc. This respite Jews have had in the US over the past century or so are a historic aberration, and may not last.
And the government would be even better advised not feed them in the first place. Let them feed themselves.
I think Harvard won’t really engage in any self reflection since antisemitic countries can just fill in any money gaps from the US government. Qatar can just jump in and fulfill their little wish list. They’ve decided to die in the hill of being anti American, pro totalitarian regimes and antisemitic. And right now is their moment This is the peak of the complete domination of the Palestinian “cause.” So there’s no leftism without the Pallys. Climate change all their other little pet causes have been taken over by Palestinians And their grievances. Harvard knows that and they are going with it. I do think the hammer will fall as the pally movement which is anti woman anti gay and against all forms of liberalism and intolerant of decent will fall. At its heart it’s own craving for power and violence will cause them to self destruct like all supposedly idealistic but corrupt movements do. But it won’t happen yet with Trump to be the boogeyman. But it will happen eventually and Harvard will go down the ship because they are so arrogant and corrupt themselves they won’t see it coming.
In Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard, 600 US 181 (2023), The Supreme Court said Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded,
wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons
learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.
[***897] The judgments of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina are reversed.
Now it goes back to the trial court for a remedy.
President Trump gave Harvard a settlement offer. Harvard rejected it. Lets see what happens next.
Rumsfeld v FAIR was pretty explicit. So long as the Federal Govt is sanctioning what Univ DO/Fail to DO then that’s all that matters. The Feds aren’t supposed to use 1A exercise to punish a University but that’s not what’s going on here. This seems like a basic Civil Rights enforcement issue where there is a refusal to DO what is required under the Civil Rights Act. These officials, the staff, faculty, admin can all still exercise their individual 1A protections all day/night to speak up,.to write columns, give speeches, hold gatherings in support of Tranny nonsense. It isn’t a 1A issue IMO.
I have a good friend back East who’s in the financial business, and who has combed through Harvard’s finances. They are much more vulnerable than a lot of people think they are. Let us count the ways.
1. Federal money is two or three times what they get from endowment distributions. About 15% of Harvard’s operating income comes from the feds.
2. The endowment isn’t some big honeypot. In reality, it’s a hodgepodge of restricted grants.
3. About 11% of the endowment is taxable. Just imagine if the whole thing were to lose the tax exemption.
4. An outsized share of the endowment money is in private equity. This is a chase for yield, but also a good deal riskier as an asset class.
How is this evident on the surface? Well, Harvard has recently been floating commercial paper to cover operating expenses. Unless they come to terms with the Trump administration, they will begin the layoffs within about a year.
If nothing else, all of this shows that Harvard, and the rest of the Ivy League, are “private” in name only. They are feeding at Uncle Sucker’s trough like the rest of the non-profits. In the end, they will knuckle under.
One more observation. Unlike, say, Oberlin College, Harvard isn’t somehow insured for any of this. A dollar not paid by the feds will be a dollar lost to Harvard.
Actually, Oberlin turned out not to be insured for the judgment against them either. Much to their surprise—and our amusement. They sued their insurers, and lost those cases as well.
Oberlin thought they were insured for a civil wrong. The insurance company argued—successfully—that they chose to take what was an obviously indefensible position, dug in, and lost. It’s hard to imagine an insurance company that would cover a government deciding to withhold grants based on an organization’s refusal to comply with that government’s laws. Even if Lloyd’s offered that coverage, Harvard most likely wouldn’t have bought it. After all, what would ever make an entity not give money to Harvard?
So yes, Harvard is almost certainly not insured against that loss. They wildly misread the tea leaves.
Really? Great news about Oberlin. Got any links so I don’t have to look it up? I love it!
There is yet another problem. Let’s say they bend the knee to Trump and do something real about antisemitism. Guess what. Nothing really changes on campus. Still the same trustees, admin, staff, students. So they can’t riot for Hamas. They can still go nuts with climate change, transgenderism, blm, occupy wall street, and whatever the latest progressive wet dream is. Nothing is different except their jew hating goes underground and gets more sophisticated.
The problem with harvard isn’t their antisemitism. That’s a symptom. The problem is their anti-west, progressive monoculture, It is that bubble that needs bursting and I don’t think that can be done any longer,
As bad as the students are, I agree – its really the radicalization of Harvard’s own employees that’s the real problem here.
Not just faculty though, the administration from the President on down is as bad, or worse, than the administration. Even the Board of Directors needs to go – as we saw when the Claudine Gay testimony in Congress blew up.
Insane that Harvard’s been getting $9 BILLION in taxpayer grants every year. That needs to end regardless.
I saw earlier that the Trump Administration is going after their non-profit status with IRS. Probably won’t pan out, but should scare the crap out of them.
They should announce that no new grants will be issued, or current grants renewed, until Harvard can demonstrate to DOE that they are no longer discriminating by race, religion, political ideology, sex, sexual orientation, and gender (all of which, of course, they were and still are doing) – to comply the the SCOTUS ruling on their Racist admissions policy. I’d be absolutely shocked if the data on this has moved at all since before that ruling – seems like they’re just putting a fig leaf on it so its not so blatant, but still doing the exact same thing.
Back in about 1983 the USSC removed Bob Jones University’s 501c3 based on violation of Civil rights laws as they disallowed inter-racial dating and marriage. How can Harvard distinguish their violation of Civil Rights laws from Bob Jones University’s case, blacks in one case, jews in the other. The Civil Rights laws are inconsistent with DEI. Also, as I recall, Harvard’s new class has almost the same racial breakdown as their prior one, except that the East Asian portion increased by 10% and the white portion decreased by 10%.)
I was thinking about this the other night. This place is supposed to have something like 53 Billion dollars to the good stashed. That being said, I have no idea how they have the money placed, but assuming (for example) they had 30% of that money to where they could collect interest on it, and it would be wise now to get it that way, if possible, then the interest collected each year could easily fund everything that they have to fund, actually a much smaller amount I believe would probably be required.
That being said, between that, and the rather large donations they get, and the already way too high amounts they charge their students, they don’t need any Federal funding, and never really did to start with. Most of these Ivy league colleges never did.
More to the point, what really bothers me, is why have they been taking money from countries like China to start with? Harvard alone took something like 13 Billion from China over the course of a decade, and something is clearly wrong with that picture, and when we see what is going on at that place, and the students that are being churned out there that hate this country, one has to wonder why…
If a college is going to get Federal money, it should be one that actually needs it to stay afloat, not a wealthy one to start with that never needed it to start with, and one that is turning out well educated kids that don’t hate their country when they get their diplomas…
Universities like Harvard should lose access to Federal funding because they are busily transforming into neo-Marxist madrasas, consumed mainly with enforcing orthodoxy. As such they will grow more marginalized because they detest the messy realities of the diversity they claim to champion. Instead they culture conformity to wokeism with a zeal that alienates the majority, which is not a viable long term position in a democracy. So they will fade eventually, to be replaced by something hopefully better, but probably won’t go quietly.
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