Harvard Rejects Trump Admin’s Demands, Going to Court

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It’s extortion. No previous White House has ever tried to use the power of the state to steer the nation’s preeminent institutions of higher learning in an ideological direction favored by the president.

“U.S. research universities, and the federal funding that supports them, are one major reason Americans have collected more Nobel Prizes than citizens of any other country. They also help make the United States the world’s innovation engine and the top destination for foreign students. No other country is as adept at converting raw human talent and ideas into cutting-edge products. Research universities anchor innovation clusters such as Silicon Valley, which in turn fuel the country’s economic growth.”

Nearly a month ago, for example, Columbia University agreed to most of the White House’s demands in the hopes that Trump and his team would restore $400 million in federal funding. Not only were those hopes soon dashed — Columbia didn’t get its money back — but the administration soon after proposed installing oversight personnel to help run the school in ways that would make the president happy.

In effect, the White House responded to Columbia’s appeasement by trying in part to take over Columbia.

+100

People cheering for this are puppets. It’s the beginning of a fascist regime. They want to control all of the elite universities so there are no alternative ideas or push back. Much like firing all the IGs.

Obama sent letters threatening universities to install DEI or lose funding. Full compliance.

It is the government's responsibility to uphold civil rights and non-discrimination laws. Call it "control" if you want - but it's controlling fairness.
The Trump administration's demands work against civil rights and are controlling ideology they agree with and eliminating opposing views. That is not appropriate government "control."
It isn't federal regulations or government policies that are to blame if students with more conservative views don't feel comfortable expressing those views on their campus, or similarly employees in a company. That's the result of the school and the company's chosen practices.
Is Trump going after Liberty University for being too conservative or too Christian?

Trump administration is demanding as one of several conditions that Harvard stop discriminating against Asians and Harvard said no. Very simple.

No, the letter is saying a bunch more. If that’s all the letter said it would be a normal case of “no we didn’t” vs “yes you did” settled in court. The letter wants a bunch of crazy stuff, the most outrageous being the idea the gov gets to oversee hiring and admissions to comply with ideological diversity as they see fit.

The problem isn’t the idea of ideological diversity, which is wonderful. The problem is the gov shouldn’t police thought in academia.

The Fed does this indirectly all the time. The Biden administration used the power of the purse to enforce DEI and gender identity policies across the country. Title IX as well. Affirmative Action. So you can't cherry pick what is acceptable for the government to do when it comes to the power of the purse. Which is why the schools are reeking of hypocrisy.

Obama did the same thing as well.

Neither Biden nor Obama tied funding to direct control of university hiring or admissions, as the letter to Harvard threatens.

I get the issue with trans athletes, but the number of people impacted by this war on academia is many orders of magnitude greater.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great leadership by Harvard, MIT and Princeton - keep it coming!!

Maybe the others will follow now.

+1000 My DS said the schools standing up to Trump have more aura. Columbia and the ones who folded are looking like sell-outs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great leadership by Harvard, MIT and Princeton - keep it coming!!

Maybe the others will follow now.

+1000 My DS said the schools standing up to Trump have more aura. Columbia and the ones who folded are looking like sell-outs.

Anyone else thinking Supreme Court stacked with Harvard/Yale grads might be Harvard leaning once this case gets there?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Harvard has hundreds of billions in endowments. They can support their own programs without 9 biillion in government funds.

Ok. And they will keep and retain all rights to their medical innovations, cancer treatments, etc., going forward. No more cheap labor for the government and no more technology available to them. Harvard can retain all rights. Public can no longer re rice the benefits or vaccines developed by this private institution.

Harvard is not the only does that in the world. Government can have better deal elsewhere anytime.

Tell us where and how, with specifics.

For a starter, there are more than 300 R1 and R2 research universities.

BWT vaccines will be developed by AIs now. Government should invest in Google, Microsoft, etc. instead.

AI research comes out of those very same schools. Quantum computing. Etc. All of the foundational grunt work is done at these schools because it is decades away from being useful in the market.

+1

Graduate students paid $30k are doing all the work. It was the bargain of the century.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tax exempt status next.

It's absurd the Harvard pays no taxes and gets $9B of federal money. Meanwhile their class sizes remain tiny, while they talk about equity and privilege, and play racial discrimination games where a black student has 10x the odds of getting in than an Asian American student with similar stats across all achievement deciles.

This.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Having Harvard stop doing research is like the Post Office stop doing mail. It makes no sense and it doesn't help any American ..


Oh wait, they're also trying to do that.

Harvard can do research all it wants. It's a free country. Nobody is stopping it.

Harvard is awarded such research dollars because they provide higher ROI than many other R1 institutions. Nobody at USAF gives a flying F about the name brand when they need advanced materials research. They gave it to Harvard (or MIT or wherever) because they know the quality of the product.

Move the money elsewhere and cross your fingers that our top students and researchers will follow it.

Just keep in mind that public funding priorities shift every 2 years or so. Places like Harvard survive for 100+ years because they are not completely beholden to public funding. Many other schools are.

The fine researchers will go to where the money is already.
Just a little shuffling, no big deal.

The funding has been cut across the board. NSF and NIH funding, gone.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Having Harvard stop doing research is like the Post Office stop doing mail. It makes no sense and it doesn't help any American ..


Oh wait, they're also trying to do that.

Harvard can do research all it wants. It's a free country. Nobody is stopping it.

Sure. Except it won’t be doing research for US federal programs.

Stopping this research primarily hurts the US, not Harvard.

Harvard is not the only university in the US.

This isn’t like shopping around for someone to fix your car. Researchers aren’t interchangeable and there will be significant loss of institutional knowledge.

This petty tantrum will primarily hurt the US.

Nice job, idiots. You don’t even comprehend the harm that you are inflicting on yourself.

MIT and Caltech is much more useful and necessary than anything Harvard does. Elite public universities can do them better at less costs.

Funding has been cut generally, including to MIT and Caltech. My daughter is a grad student at MIT and has been told to accelerate her work due to lack of funding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Having Harvard stop doing research is like the Post Office stop doing mail. It makes no sense and it doesn't help any American ..


Oh wait, they're also trying to do that.

Harvard can do research all it wants. It's a free country. Nobody is stopping it.

Harvard is awarded such research dollars because they provide higher ROI than many other R1 institutions. Nobody at USAF gives a flying F about the name brand when they need advanced materials research. They gave it to Harvard (or MIT or wherever) because they know the quality of the product.

Move the money elsewhere and cross your fingers that our top students and researchers will follow it.

Just keep in mind that public funding priorities shift every 2 years or so. Places like Harvard survive for 100+ years because they are not completely beholden to public funding. Many other schools are.

The fine researchers will go to where the money is already.
Just a little shuffling, no big deal.

The funding has been cut across the board. NSF and NIH funding, gone.

Good. Keep curing cancer at your own expense.

[Anonymous]

Go Harvard, go! So damn proud of my spouse's alma mater. Proud of MIT, Princeton and Stanford (their President just weighed in too!

https://stanforddaily.com/2025/04/15/levin-martinez-back-harvard-president/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Go Harvard, go! So damn proud of my spouse's alma mater. Proud of MIT, Princeton and Stanford (their President just weighed in too!

https://stanforddaily.com/2025/04/15/levin-martinez-back-harvard-president/

We are so proud to blatantly discriminate against Asians and Jews!

WAY TO GO!!!

F all these schools. Tax their endowment until they stop their BS racial discrimination.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:So dumb. “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”’

The government isn’t saying that. No one is forcing Harvard to do anything. They have a billion dollar endowment and can do as they please.

What they can’t do is foster an educational atmosphere of harassment and expect the taxpayers to finance it.

Sounds like you skipped the letter with the Trump admin’s demands. In the second link.

I literally quoted from the article.

No one is forcing Harvard to do anything.

Harvard is throwing a hissy fit because it wants to do certain things AND get taxpayer funds.

Doesn’t work like that.

All taxpayers will never agree on anything. If the standard for receipt taxpayer funds is agreement from all taxpayers, then nothing would ever be funded from public coffers.

Right. That's why we have elections. Trump won the last election. In no small part because people were turned off to the liberal elite messaging, the racial discrimination against white and asians, the never ending stream of woke ideology coming out of places like Harvard.

If I have learned one thing in the past couple of years is all the same people who say they can't stand racism against Asians had no problem with COVID epithets and violence against Asians and hate meritocracy when Asians actually thrive.

The same people who cry about anti semitism at universities embrace salutes and white supremacists like Stephen miller.

So no...no one is taking you any seriously any more. You've rung a false tune on that bell too many times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Harvard has hundreds of billions in endowments. They can support their own programs without 9 biillion in government funds.

Ok. And they will keep and retain all rights to their medical innovations, cancer treatments, etc., going forward. No more cheap labor for the government and no more technology available to them. Harvard can retain all rights. Public can no longer re rice the benefits or vaccines developed by this private institution.

Harvard is not the only does that in the world. Government can have better deal elsewhere anytime.

Tell us where and how, with specifics.

For a starter, there are more than 300 R1 and R2 research universities.

BWT vaccines will be developed by AIs now. Government should invest in Google, Microsoft, etc. instead.

AI research comes out of those very same schools. Quantum computing. Etc. All of the foundational grunt work is done at these schools because it is decades away from being useful in the market.

+1

Graduate students paid $30k are doing all the work. It was the bargain of the century.

+100

Scientific discoveries are built upon prior minor discoveries. It takes decades of time.

$18k- first job as a grad student researcher / then NIH

[Anonymous]

Jewish Harvard alum here, and I am 1000% in favor of what Harvard is doing. Most Jewish students and families support free speech and want the university to function as an independent institution, not an arm of the government. Trump is using antisemisitm as a pretext and using Jewish students as pawns. He doesn't give 2 shits about antisemitism on campus. And the ridiculous demands made on Harvard would not have made the university safer for Jews. Bravo, Harvard!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So dumb. “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”’

The government isn’t saying that. No one is forcing Harvard to do anything. They have a billion dollar endowment and can do as they please.

What they can’t do is foster an educational atmosphere of harassment and expect the taxpayers to finance it.

Sounds like you skipped the letter with the Trump admin’s demands. In the second link.

I literally quoted from the article.

No one is forcing Harvard to do anything.

Harvard is throwing a hissy fit because it wants to do certain things AND get taxpayer funds.

Doesn’t work like that.

You truly do not get it. There's a lot more at stake than Harvard. Colleges like Hillsdale are fine because they don't do cutting edge research that costs millions of dollars year in and year out. You are supporting the tactics of an authoritarian regime that is telling scholars and students what and how they should think, and allowing the mobs to take out people with whom you disagree. If you are in favor of these cuts because you are fearful of antisemitism or you think that Harvard is full of antisemites, you are foolish. Putin and Orban, and Mao all used these oppressive tactics. You're siding with the Devil, who will have no scruples turning on Jews when convenient.

Exactly this. Jews have just become a convenient excuse for repression and censorship by budding fascists and their right-wing toadies.

I want to see more Jews (I am Jewish) speak out about this. Stop using the historic hatred of Jews as a tool in fascism! I want nothing to do with this.

Also the way these people conflate anti-semitism with opposition to the current Israeli government does not in any way make me, a Jew, feel safer. I also oppose the actions of the current Israeli government. If I speak out about that, am I an anti-Semite?

We need to stop this.

I can't tell you how many Jewish people I know who believe this. You aren't allowed to saying ANYTHING negative about Israel ever.

+1. I am horrified by my otherwise progressive, liberal Jewish friends (even those who went to law school!) who would rather squelch free speech and academic freedom than have to tolerate criticism of Israel, or have their children be exposed to this on college campuses. They cannot comprehend intellectually the distinction between criticism of Israel's actions and antisemitism, even though there are tens of thousands of Israeli Jews who are publicly protesting against Netanyahu and the ongoing war in Gaza. It's short-sighted at best. The problem, of course, is that accepting the immediate relief offered by Trump's strong-arming of colleges comes with a very, very high price tag. Trump is not out to protect the Jews; he's courting the favor of White evangelical Christians who believe that they need to support Jews to hasten the second coming of Christ. When that happens, Jews who have not accepted Christ as their savior will be annihilated, which should strike terror in every Jew.

Because it comes from the same will spring as antisemitism. No other country has been held to the impossible standard that Israel has been held to. That comes from antisemitism.

Israel has declared war on Hamas. Their conduct of this war is no worse than our prosecution of the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. No worse than any number of other wars.

The Japanese killed 2000 at Pearl harbor. We proceeded to kill 2 million Japanese including civilian casualties in two atomic explosions. This war ends the moment Hamas unconditionally surrender.

I’m guessing that 95% of Jewish liberal Harvard alums (and a large % of non-liberal ones) are very much in favor of Harvard’s actions here even if they were appalled by the protests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So dumb. “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”’

The government isn’t saying that. No one is forcing Harvard to do anything. They have a billion dollar endowment and can do as they please.

What they can’t do is foster an educational atmosphere of harassment and expect the taxpayers to finance it.

Sounds like you skipped the letter with the Trump admin’s demands. In the second link.

The Administration demanded requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of the student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views.

It's that much worse that the "diversity statements" job applicants had to make before getting a job?

Yes it is. But also, we really should be playing a drinking game with the MAGA false and weak equivalencies.

But we would be drunk in 27 seconds.