Harvard is one of many universities pissing and moaning about the Trump Admininstrations opposition to the discrimination embdedd in DEI programs. They must divest themselves of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion cult to get future federal funding. After all, this is the sort of top-down, swift-acting, executive-mandated government you asked for, and DEI is one of the reasons your people are no longer running it.
The elites who think we’re all idiots are dumbfounded by the possibility that someone else might win office and then use that authority against them. How dare you, as Muppet Great would say, make us live up to the expressions of power we planted, watered, and grew.
They love China because it can get things done without admitting there’s slave labor, poor working conditions, and a burgeoning organ harvesting environment if you complain about anything to anyone.
Back in the US, Harvard Elites are muttering in their lattes and shouting over their cabernet about rights they only care about when it props up their otherwise corruptable moral posture.
“Dr.” Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, said in a brave statement yesterday that, “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,” said.
I agree 100%.
It is not the government’s job to tell any private person or organization what they can say, think, teach, or learn – unless someone else pays for it. Just ask the proglodytes. If they send you funds and say you must or shall, that’s as good as law, even if it bends or breaks it. A condition that progressives and white tower leftists are keen to enforce when it advances their partisan interests.
Suppose we pretend the left is interested in intellectual and educational autonomy, which it is not. In that case, Garber appears to have been serially absent from this moral claim while the Biden Administration was telling schools what to think and teach because it was paying them. Nor do we find much opposition to the government’s censorship and intimidation regarding public health discourse or the use of funding to secure a specific narrative with doctors, medical schools, public schools, and others.
None of which matters because the government has no obligation to give public money to private universities like Harvard for any purpose. However, it is also well-documented that the General Government has secured the right to set the terms for money laundered through the federal bureaucracy, at least up to a point.
It cannot compel or censor your speech, but it can expect you not to discriminate in hiring or enrollment. Nor is it an abuse of power to point out the plagiarism problem and that something should be done to stop it.
But this is a world where discrimination in hiring and enrollment has long been regarded as essential to their false morality, with DEI amplifying the presumed obligation to continue the practice. Harvard is free to continue this regime or scheme, standing on its “principles,” absent billions in federal funding it doesn’t need.
You and your private university can keep your DEI at the cost of two billion dollars and any and all future monies for at least the next few years, and I hope you do. Taxpayers will see some small savings from funds not expensed, and you’ll still be getting a visit from the Departments of Justice and Labor.
Discrimination in hiring is still against the law.
Update: After Harvard said it wasn’t likely to comply, another 2.3 billion got the hook with the potential loss of up to 9 billion.
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.
How about we stop spending tax dollars on private colleges that teach future generations to hate America, period. The savings would have to be substantial.
