On Monday afternoon, Harvard made it clear that it would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands. Things heated up quickly from there as Trump moved to freeze yet another $2.3 billion in funding from the elite school.
It looks like neither party is going to back down. At some point, Harvard might finally have to dip into its famously massive endowment.
Reuters reports:
Harvard rejects Trump demands, gets hit by $2.3 billion funding freezeHarvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism accused America’s oldest university of having a “troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”The exchange escalates the high-stakes dispute between the the Trump administration and some of the world’s richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.
This video from WBZ News in Boston is pretty fair in its reportage:
Harvard President Alan M. Garber has posted an open letter on this topic. Here are some excerpts:
Dear Members of the Harvard Community,For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. In recent weeks, the federal government has threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses…The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.
Like many current defenders of higher education, Garber is falling back on a supposed commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech. I simply don’t buy it. I have been covering higher education for Legal Insurrection since 2012 and I have lost count of how many speakers have been shouted down on college campuses simply because the students disagreed with the politics or opinions of the speaker.
If Harvard wants to prove its commitment to free speech, it can invite someone like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, or even President Trump himself to give this year’s commencement address.
If such a speech is allowed to happen without incident, I’ll apologize to Harvard personally. Until then, none of their talk about Harvard’s lofty ‘values’ is worth anything.
Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and other elite schools could have avoided all of this by simply shutting down the open Jew hatred on their campuses. They chose poorly.
Featured image via YouTube.
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