Wow. Harvard is, at least for the moment, fighting back against the fascist Trump regime. At last, I am proud to admit my Harvard associations.
The shameful truth: I’m a Harvard grad (MPP, 1982) and for the past 40 years or so I have kept quiet about that. It’s been to my advantage occasionally, because people think “ooh - HARVARD! You must be SMART!” but mostly it really hasn’t made a big difference in my life. Having Harvard on my resumé has sometimes helped, and I’m grateful for that, sort of - but I also recognize that anyone who was impressed by Harvard was at best naive, at worst contemptible in their belief that an Ivy League connection somehow makes you better than everyone else. Trust me: it doesn’t. Most of my interactions with Harvard over the past few decades have not impressed me.*
But damn. At last, Harvard fights the good fight. At least for now.
Go, Harvard. Please don’t capitulate and make me regret admitting my affiliation with you.
(*) A great quote from a letter to the Real Paper many years ago: “If Harvard is so great, and Harvard rules the world, how come the world sucks?”
I would guess also that Harvard’s endowment being equivalent to the GDP of small nations also enables them, more than any other school in America, to give Trump’s federal-funds-withholding threat the middle finger. The loss of $2 billion won’t hurt.
That being said…while I like Harvard having the guts to stand up against MAGA, I don’t like the particular stance on which they are making their stand. Merit-based admissions is a good thing, not bad. And anti-Semitism is something that shouldn’t be tolerated (although some bad-faith actors are trying to conflate it with opposition to Israel.)
it makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
Although Harvard’s refusal made the biggest splash, as this article points out, several of the Big Ivy schools have also refused. Princeton even refused to capitulate before Harvard did. And we have Cornell as well. And nine universities have filed a lawsuit against the DOE for slashing funds:
This. Harvard is absolutely in the right on this. I just gave $18 to the president’s discretionary fund. (Jews tend to donate in multiples of $18, because in Hebrew, 18 spells “life”.) I’m not sure I’ve ever given money to Harvard before, because i can’t think of any charity that needs the money less. But today i wanted to signal support.
Some miscellaneous thoughts from a professor at NotHarvard (with bonus Kipling allusion, because hey! we are supposed to be Teaching Western Civilization now):
I’m cautiously pleased about this, and relieved that Harvard appears to have learned something from Columbia; namely, that if the cobra is telling you in unambiguous terms, “If you move, I strike; and if you do not move, I strike,” you have absolutely no incentive to do what the cobra prefers.
This is not going to work for most colleges and universities in the US, particularly not mine, because we don’t have a pet mongoose a 50.7-billion dollar endowment. Over 50% of our students are receiving Pell Grants, not to mention other federal funds such as work-study. Without that money, we don’t exist.
(Back to the cautious hopefulness.) The administration seems to have muffed their strategy by going after the big, well-endowed private schools first. DeSantis and Rufo were smarter; in Florida, they went after the little public liberal arts school (New College) and completely broke it, after which the others largely fell into line.
Let’s face it, they could completely break us any time, and probably will.
So that anti-Semitic Harvard is led by an anti-Semitic President–and that guy is a Jew!
As to the rich endowment, the vast majority is for very restricted uses (buying art for the museum for example)–so can’t be used to support general university operations.
I think a poster talked about tribalism in the current thread about what modern conservatives believe–so one wonders how this will work with reference to the Supreme Court–where 4 of the members are alumni of Harvard Law School, another 4 are alumni of Yale Law school–and only one from somewhere else–Amy from Notre Dame.
Those bad-faith actors currently appear to include the United States government.
And I am highly suspicious that if they succeed in peeling off first anybody who appears to object to the current behavior of the Israeli government and also happens to be or appear to be Muslim, the next group they come after will, indeed, be Jews. Though I suppose it’s possible they’ll keep using us for a while after that as their excuse to attack others.
Trump threatens to tax Harvard as a political entity after the university rejects administration’s demands
I can’t seem to link to it directly since it’s part of their “Live updates”. It’s the first article in the link at the bottom of this post for now.
Funny, in this passage:
Among the mandates in the administration’s letter are the elimination of Harvard’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning masks at campus protests, merit-based hiring and admissions reforms and reducing the power held by faculty and administrators “more committed to activism than scholarship.”
I initially misread it as “Among the madness in the administration’s letter…” and thought, wow, really telling it like it is there!
Columbia has been so disappointing in all this. First they allow their Jewish students to be intimidated and threatened, then they roll over and do what Trump tells them to do because the Trump admin pretends it cares about anti-semitism. Columbia has a 15 billion endowment so they should be financially stable.
I’m glad some other universities are standing up to Trump. When authoritarians come to power they always go after groups like the judiciary, labor unions, universities, the media, etc. At least Harvard is fighting back and not rolling over.
Yup. Speaking as a Jew, i am far more frightened of the Trump administration and the hatred it stirs up than i was by anything that happened on the Harvard campus during the peak of the Gaza protests. And they’ve already shut that down. Harvard was doing just fine combatting bigotry without the feds ordering them around.
It’s cute that you think this demand was made in good faith and that the administration has any actual intention about making hiring decisions based on “merit”. It’s a fig leaf for imposing governmental control over the university. Merit will be whatever the trump administration says it is.
And I have news for you - faculty hiring and retention is already based on merit. Considerable merit.
I suppose they could eliminate legacy admissions for students, but then none of the repubs would ever get in…
I graduated from a public university and don’t exactly view Harvard with a great deal of fondness. But kudos to the president and whoever else wrote that letter. I emailed the president that I was proud of him and his stance and that I will gladly Donate a little bit to help make up for what the so-called government has taken away.
And I give you exhibit A: Trumps cabinet, merit based hiring predicated on a) allegiance to Cheeto head, b) lack of anything close to real experience, c) bonus for a TV resume, and don’t forget d) white