It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they want and don't need to think about the other.
The end to current diversity policies and the start of others combined is a demand for u-turn: stop allowing the things we don't like, start allowing the things you were stopping.
Same for speech: stop auditing the speech we want to say, start auditing the speech you were previously allowing.
And so on.
In the minds of the administration it makes sense, because they think of each item separately where there is conflict and together where there is not. Such cognitive dissonance seems to be their natural state of mind, the seem to seek it.
Much like their cries of “but what about tolerance?!”¹ when you mention punching nazis. They want the complete about-turn: LBTQ out, racism/sexism/phobias in. You are supposed to tolerate what they want you to tolerate, and little or nothing else.
--------
[1] My answer there has often become “you didn't want tolerance, you specifically voted against continued tolerance, what you voted for won, intolerance is your democratically chosen desire, who am I to deny the will of your people?”.
Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
[..] The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time [..] was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
[..] It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'
The quotes seem to be from the famous book "1984" by George Orwell. We had it in English literature class in high school.
There are some other famous quotes from that book or one of his other famous books, "Animal Farm".
Writing from memory and googling, so may be wrong:
"Some people are more equal than others."
The society that Winston finds himself in puts forth the slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The meaning of this phrase is to force confusion upon the members of the Party. It is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party.
According to the article, the original version with "2 + 2 = 5" suggests complete submission to the oppressive regime, with the protagonist's mind being irreversibly altered.
Technically part of the Ministry of Love, Room 101 is the most feared place in all of Oceania and Winston learns far too well that it is here that the …
What is the final message of 1984?
… a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the ability of a repressive regime to manipulate and control individuals to the point where they betray ...
I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.
Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.
Sadly America was founded on principles that too 200 years to try and undo. And given the last year alone, they are still stripping rights as we speak. I don't know which fork we turned on that made us so reliable on racism and sexism to function and band together as a country that much of the EU seems to have navigated better. Maybe reconstruction should have had an actual Nuremburg trial instead of "forgiveness" (aka pushing the can down the street until someone could assassinate the one trying to compromise).
the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.
It literally is this way. America has ignored the plight of poor working class whites by grouping them with elite whites and treating them as one privileged group.
Then they focused on elevating nonwhites non Christians and homosexuals to higher social and economic standing not realizing or simply choosing to ignore that most white people really arent that much better off than non whites if you remove elites from the statistics.
So to poor white Americans this seems like a free pass or line jump for everybody else and we are now living through the political reaction to this injustice.
You can't tell 65% of your population to step aside without some repercussions.
Authoritarian governments are arbitrary governments, all decisions are made arbitrarily. Consistency is unnecessary. That's the trouble with choosing power as a guiding principle over reason or consent.
This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.
No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.
It doesn't serve the goals you think it should, that's not necessarily stupid.
> High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states).
Yes, but the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance" and, to the extent that it related to economic performance, doesn't have any necessary relation to a broad aggregate, its more concerned with very specific aspects of relative distribution.
I maen, what are their goals? To make more money? Yes, stupid to crash the economy just to insider trade. Power and influence? Yes, it's stupid to overextend too fast. Ask 99% of regines from human history (Rome, Soviet Union, Great Britian). Ideaological warfare? Yes, it's stupid to outright declare constitutional war on day 9x out of 1400.
What are their goals?
> the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance"
well they should have. Again, Bread and circuses. Mess with people's money and they get neither.
Again, stupid move. This could have been an easy, silent, calculated takeover in the course of two years. Instead they just swung a hammer at the house and are frustrated that people are yelling at them.
Who is "others"? Who is "aggregate"? You're being vague because your idea doesn't make any sense.
Let's be clear:
1) Trump very clearly - very obviously - cares a lot about broad US economic performance compared to China.
2) This is at odds with his desire for unlimited power within the US, because corruption and oppression doesn't do very well economically.
That's why it's stupid - it doesn't serve its own goals. One of those two has to give.
He and his voters don't understand "Woke" is great for the modern economy. You want everyone working at their absolute full potential. Slaves don't invent chips, corruption drives away business investment, etc. It's very simple to understand if you're not a racist, but the South has been stuck on this point for generations.
Very unlikely in the first place, but second, that way lies far worse chaos.
Similarly, when Julius Caesar turned the republic into an empire, and was subsequently assassinated: it did not mean the empire reverted back to being a republic - rather that centuries of increasingly despotic emperors lay ahead.
Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.
> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)
Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)
And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.
French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.
The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.
There are also historical examples of nations where nothing was done to reign in the chaos and that led to far worse long term consequences for the people.
Looks to me like a legitimate and democratically elected regime. There are many unsolved issues in the world, having sympathy for people getting exactly what they want seems like a waste of a finite resource.
(1)
It is still an interesting topic, because in this case, it has world-wide consequences.
(2)
Many of the problems of the world can only be solved if people are convinced that those are important problems. You need to fix people's closest problems first, like their bread and perceived security. Each individual has just one life, I wouldn't say it's selfish to want an OKish life, and only then think about what's best for the human race.
(3)
Most of the right voters were convinced (and might still be) that they were doing what is good for them. But it isn't. They voted wrong, they were tricked against their actual will.
(4)
This is not a singular event. The same may happen somewhere near or around you maybe sooner than later, so analysig how it happened, which groups exactly voted against their own advantage, and how to make the consequences clear and understandable beforehand, and how to prevent it in general -- all this is important.
Not wasted resources at all. The opposite. We need to remember that this is not a boring news topic.
Until america experiences the full consequences for their stupidity they will continue being stupid. Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, with a responsible person nearby and then never again.
The sooner that happens the better for everyone it is.
OK, burning is happening right now, so mission accomplished, I guess? Are you sure people will learn from it? And who is the responsible person nearby in this reality?
> Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, ...
That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove.
Also, this is not an individual Darwin problem like the stove example -- this has consequences for many bystanders who did know better, and many more bystanders who had no say in this.
Nowhere near it, the hand is hovering near the fire - people are shouting "don't put your hand in the fire" and the kid is saying its nice and warm and see nothing bad has happened, I am going to put my hand right into the fire and it will be great.
Trump term 1 they bailed out the Farmers for 20bn when they messed around on tarrifs and blew it up. They learn't that there are only two outcomes to fucking around 1) you win, 2) you find out and they give you 20bn.
If those are your outcomes the only rational choice is to vote for Trump and cheer him on in fucking around as much as possible.
beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."<
So you really have no idea! Sad!
I suppose you have also never been hungry and bitten into a wonderful-smelling and -tasting hamburger only to find that a finger (yours, to be clear) is in the bite, and thus you become at one moment both ravenous attacker and fearful prey struggling to escape?
Such experiences are part of life, to be embraced only afterward.
It isn't strong vs weak. But the lack of such experiences sets you apart from others and marks you as literally inexperienced. It does not mark you as smarter or stronger, but as one who simply "has no idea!"
You'll never know (until you do!8-))
I revisited the "stove experience" several weeks ago. While at a convenience store I entered the restroom to find the sink water running full blast. This only increased my urgency and aided the process (as flowing, dripping, or running water often does). Once relieved, I walked over to the sink and plunged both hands into the cold whirling water in the basin. At once I was caught between my (vividly-imagined) thought of cool swirling relief and the sensory reality of boiling hot water - the former wished to enjoy the pleasant ice-cold flowing water in the sink and the latter could not withdraw fast enough.
Life provides you with a sequence of such experiences:
- a pre-adolescent viewing with puzzlement his older siblings as they mature and begin to participate in courtship,
- falling in love,
- making love, etc.
Some people never have certain experiences. We're all different to some degree b/c of that.
Go ahead, put your hand on the stove. But be careful about touching that woman!8-))
P.S. Yes, I turned the sink off, depriving the next poor soul of my worldly experience.
Dismantling the current world hegemony might have a few unanticipated impacts. When little Timmy responds to burning his hand by evaporating the world economy we might not be so smug.
The smug little so-and-so here is the USA. Dismantling their hegemony and releasing the 95% of the world that are not Americans, I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm as MAGA chants "lock her up".
How many Americans despise the liberal universities and their students? How many Americans think the US should be a Christian nation?
Fascism is popular. Many people will fall for it. Time and time again. The US is not special- it happened in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal. It can happen in America.
They're not selecting to maximize performance, they're selecting to maximize their own control. Pete Hegseth isn't SecDef because he's good at it. He leaks war plans and can't get through a press conference without being seen with a drink in his hand. He's SecDef because he'll do what Trump tells him to do regardless of whether it's legal or a good idea. The tariffs aren't meant to bring manufacturing back. They'd have gradual and consistent and the money raised would be earmarked for developing that industry at home if they were. They're arbitrary because they're the way the people in charge punish countries and companies that don't bend the knee. Everything they're doing is about removing the institution of government with its pesky rules and procedures and bringing everything under the control of one guy who can reward and punish arbitrarily as he sees fit. Overall economic performance simply isn't a factor.
It's changed my outlook a lot to make an arbitrary decision to stop assuming people are stupid when their stated goals don't line up with their actions, and to start assuming the easily predictable results of their actions are their actual goals regardless of what their stated goals are. Once I did that, I started being able to understand and even predict what these previously inscrutable people would do next.
their stated goals (avoiding obesity) don't line up with their actions (food choices that promote obesity), so they must have different goals (enjoying food regardless of whether it promotes obesity). not the opposite of their stated goal, just a different one.
I think you're equivocating between the value of the actual goal itself and the value of the actions they're taking in the context of fulfilling that goal. Blowing up the economy to maximize your personal power is short-sighted, I agree, but once you accept that as Trump's goal you'll see that arbitrary tariffs (and other financial manipulation, look at how he's using federal funding to thought police universities and punish dissident state governors) is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to [federal funding]. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
>is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
He really screwed up the "people beneath you" part with his "effective strategy" . The people beneath him wanted at best lower prices and at worst stronger deportation. As it is, they are the ones suffering the most from these economic policies (because blue states tend to have more funding to weather this BS) and he decided to go full mask off on the idea of deporting US citizens. These aren't popular actions nor views, outside of the most fringe supporters (who aren't enough to carry such a narrative).
You're taking everything I discuss and projecting my moral approval on it. I've purposely expressed no opinion either way, but you can't fathom the idea that Trump might be good at something. You have to live in a world where he's just a flailing idiot, and I'd caution you to take some time with the fact that that flailing idiot is currently batting a very prescient .666 against those of us who'd like the USA to at least last out their own lifetimes.
lol you think .666 is a lot? The entire South has been stuck on this point for generations. They keep voting for tribalism/racism/nepotism, and the poorer they get the angrier and more aggressive they get.
Voting is just one big popularity contest, and 54% of American adults read at or below 6th grade levels.
I'm just not a good bootlicker. I call stupidity wherever I see it. You can keep your "caution", I'm moving on from this conversation.
It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.
They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.
It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.
“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”
Not stupid, just careless. Trump has fuck-you money, he doesn't care about the rest of the country. He wants means of extortion so people have to lick his boots to get a reprieve.
Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".
It's a social problem. Smaller democratic political arenas work closer to the ideal. Larger political arenas have more noise and less concise agendas, because of the disparate groups being appealed to. The US is too big. Large societies, across time trend toward authoritarianism (sometimes leading to full-fledged) until revolution and dissolution. Then the remaining states fight amongst themselves within a region, assembling into a singular organization due to practical and political factors, until it starts over again. Eventually you get something like europe and most of southeast asia. States tend to be more stable if they roughly match their regional terrain boundaries and aren't too large.
The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.
It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online.
The goal is power. Suppressing DEI, etc is just a simple way to find a group of people that have different values and eliminate them from the power structure.
An important part about targeting DEI and trans communities is that these two groups stand for immutable properties: I can’t change my race. I can’t stop being my gender identity.
When you “other” people based on immutable properties, it becomes very dangerous. If you can’t force someone to be white and straight, what do you do with them? The government stops funding programs to help these groups, they spread lies and fear about them, and then they sit back. When the people in power tell their supporters that the “other” are the enemy, what recourse is left for one’s safety other than violence. Authoritarian regimes always trend towards genocide, and they always target groups with immutable traits.
Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.
The demands of the administration are the demands of a bully who doesn't want your lunch money, he just wants you to know he can take it away at any time.
so you understand how much "tons" is with regards to a population of 330m Americans? Now consider that China probably has gigatons and is where all of NA gets most of its supply.
They want to have the old system (deliberate bias and vehement denials of there being any "bias,") but working for them, and the way to demand that without describing it is to require all of the results and "forbid," by name only, the necessary methods.
It all makes sense with a fascist power logic. The goal isn't to implement consistent policy to reach rational targets. The goal is to wield power and slowly errode any opposition with divisive actions that support anybody that is loyal to you. Importantly being loyal doesn't guarantee you will be spared. In these goals consistency is irrelevant, in fact being inconsistent and acting with arbitrary despotism is a feature since it produces more fear.
If you ever find any fascist critique of their enemies you will quickly realize that all of which they accuse their enemies of doing, they will do themselves. Decry freedom of speech as no one is "allowed" to say sexist/racist things anymore? Be sure they will go in and ban books, political thoughts and literal words. Hillarys emails? We literally operate our foreign policy in signal groups.
Quite frankly I am a bit puzzled by the neutrality with which some Americans try to analyze this absolutely crazy political situation. It is like pondering over the gas mixture in the smoke while your house is on fire, absolutely unhinged.
First I think people who recognize there are problems is what is needed now. You leaving makes things worse.
Then again, it is understandable not everybody has the luxury to be in circumstances that allow adequate forms of resistance.
If you ask about which country, I'd say it depends. It depends on who youaare, what your skills are, which climate zones and cultures you prefer, whether you're willing to learn a new language and so on.
Nothing they do makes sense until you accept that hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, for them and their base. They know that what they're asking for is impossible to meaningfully comply with...
You see the establishment of separate, unwritten classes of things here, right? It will be a case-by-case basis which of these rules is invoked, that way no matter what happens they're "just following the rules we all agreed to" but they get to hand-select which thoughts are compulsory and which are forbidden.
What the demand is, is institutional fealty to Donald Trump. Trying to interpret it as anything else is going to lead these institutions into poor decision making. Harvard is doing the right thing.
>>- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
I'm sure we both know what this one means though. Forcing the university to hire people who think the earth is flat and that climate change isn't real - for the sake of diversity of course.
It makes sense when you realize that their true position is "free speech for me but not for thee". The contradictions are about censoring speech they disagree with and promoting speech they like.
To the fascist regime, "diversity" means "hiring black or gay people". Likewise "diverse points of view" means "viewpoints that think it's okay for black and gay people to be hired and for transgender people to pee". And "speech control" means "kicking out people who shout Hitler did nothing wrong in the middle of the library". And "inclusion" means "letting black or gay people study". It's all newspeak.
The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it.
In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-whites or non-christian.
What's interesting is that this is not necessarily a struggle between the top of a hierarchy vs the bottom of one, but between two different hierarchies. The democrats support cultural non racial and economic hierarchies, while the republicans support racial international and the same economic hierarchies. So while they both support the rich over the working class, there is a struggle over whether to support racial and international hierarchies. Democrats tend to support globalization, i.e unifying of the power of the top of the economic hierarchy across international boundaries, while eliminating racial and sexual hierarchies as they are seen as "inefficient" from a neoliberal perspective. Republicans are more focused on the "national elite", the rich people that depend on america being a global hegemon specifically, energy industry, military industira-complex, etc..
Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.
The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.
Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.
Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.
Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.
The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.
It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.
Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.
- Stop promoting Democrats' agendas as the ultimate truth; stop bullying people for non-Democratic views
- Allow Republicans' agendas to be equally represented
Is it really so difficult to understand?
Out of many bad things Trump has done, this isn't really bad for anyone except core Democrats voters.
The US academia has become hostile to anyone except one particular culture. This should stop.
Conservatives should start their own universities, if they aren't happy with the existing ones. The federal government has no business enforcing conformity to certain ideological demands in private institutions. It's right there in the very first amendment.
If the university was founded by the government, it should represent Americans. All of them. Half of Americans are conservative. Approx. half of academia should be conservative.
Harvard is older than both parties. There is no good reason why it should cater to only one half of Americans.
Why should any university go out of its way to "cater to" conservatives and liberals in equal measure if those ideologies don't equally value things like reason and truth? The mission should be providing education and facilitating research, not keeping political partisans happy.
So, we should have merit-based hiring with respect to race and gender, but then have a quota-based system for political affiliation? How do you even measure this? Who counts as a "conservative"? MAGA-only, or do we get to count RINOs? Won't people just lie about their political beliefs to get a job? Do you detect any irony in the way your agenda exactly parallels that of structural racists who see racism in any job where the racial distribution doesn't match that of the general population?
The reason that academia is overwhelming left-leaning is that those are the people that choose to go to grad school and pursue academic careers. For whatever reason (whether ability or inclination) conservatives do so in much smaller numbers. You want conservatives in academia, go get a Ph.D.
Are you arguing that _all_ universities that receive government funding should cater equally to conservatives and liberals? Given that Texas Christian University receives funding from the government, would you argue that it too should stop receiving federal funding until represents America equally?
If they receive federal funding, they should represent Americans. If 100% of Americans will be Democrats, then it can be this monoculture. If more people shift to Green politics, or Libertarian, it should represent those more too.
If there is a Christian university, it should either be sponsored by Christians only, or similar funding should go to other universities representing other major American groups (for example Jews).
Discrimination based on political views should be treated the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation or race.
Conservatives have started their own Universities. No one likes going to those schools, and they end up bankrupt, with students who are functionally uneducated.
I don't think Trump University was ever indented to be a real university. Wasn't it basically the Trump-branded version of those late night infomercials promising to teach you how to get rich in real estate? You know, the ones where ultimately they basically just sell you a bunch of tapes for $5000?
If you're looking for an actual conservative university, a better example would be a place like Liberty University. I think the problem is starting an institution is hard, it'll only really hit its stride like 100 years after being founded, and it's hard to keep an ideological project on track for such a long period of time.
With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.
If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.
That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.
College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities. A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
Other article:
proposing an 8.6 percent tax hike
When hacking the government rules is used against you.
>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in
taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.
But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.
>But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Taxing donations is really thorny. If people realize that the government is taking money they want to give away... they stop giving away money. It's a self-terminating cliche in action. So you either leave it alone if you want to encourage people stimulating charities, or you make the tax very small.
>Same goes for religious organizations,
I don't fully know. Some attempt at separattion of church and state. The government tries to maintain that except when other boundaries are crossed.
It does sort of fall into the same umbrella though, when regarding tithes.
People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education. You and I are not chartered as an educational endowment; things like Roth IRAs exist for us.
I think the point is that money for many was taxed before the paycheck ever came in. And you have no control over it. Part of your W-2 goes to fund social security, part of it to fund the federal, part of it to fund the state.
Taxing donations is just double dipping on your money. That's how you discourage donating.
why do you disagree? Most people working a job do have taxes taken out. That's why you get a "return" when the IRS realizes they took too much or you provide other means to deduct your taxes.
The comment attempts to suggest that something is being taxed twice. It is not. The original income that funds some investment is taxed. After that, only further income is taxed. The existing principle is not.
In France, we ran an NGO whose music festival got a bit big… a million or two of beer sales. Tax office came in and put that part of the NGO under the business rules, ie we paid and received VAT, paid the corporate tax at the normal rate, etc. We ended up putting the entire charity under the business rule because it was more profitable (saving VAT on all providers, while our donations were exempt of VAT).
I’m surprised USA doesn’t have a rule that industrial/commercial sections of any org is liable to all corporate tax laws.
we "sorta" do. It's an all in or all out matter with 501c3's. You declare a non-profit and essentially all your money needs to be funneled back to the company. There's many other regulations to prevent the most obvious means of fraud.
No skin in the game, but curious to know why any Republican would want to raise taxes. Is this some sort of power play like the tariffs? Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz.
They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
> They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
A very large portion of the country vote Republican, and I would be surprised if they are by and large the most well-off part of the American public.
The voters are not the party and the party is not the party leadership. The actual policies that end up being supported have little-to-nothing to do with the stuff that gets talked about while campaigning, and this only gets more true the further away from the actual voter the position is.
These voters were scammed. Many still don't realize or believe this, and they avoid real news for the purpose of keeping faith in the easter bunny they voted for.
And you are right... that's why "The Party" instead appeals to "the party" with various single issues (you know all the hot topics) and implement (or perhaps, pretend to implement) those while the real bills "The Party" want are passed under their nosess. "The Party" spends a dollar on "the party" while grabbing hundreds from the vault they all pitched into.
Worked for decades. Not so well when Trump so publicly tanked the economy and snatched one of the 3 untouchable things.
> Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz
Yes. The abstract of "the economy" doesn't matter. The priorities are "owning the libs" on Twitter and other media, and their own personal bank accounts which can benefit from insider trading the tariffs, state-sponsored memecoins and so on.
Easy, Harvard is essentially a training center for their ideological enemies on top of providing an actual education. They're just putting the boot down and saying stick to teaching instead of implementing and advancing a specific ideology. If taxes are the tools, so be it.
Harvard is a private instutution. If they want to teach underwater basket weaving, there's not much you can do to stop that. Anymore than Trump can raid apple and tell them to start making Androids. I thought a billionaire businessman would understand that much; imagine if Clinton back in the day tried to seize Trump Towers.
And while we long forgotten: don't forget that all of this is illegal. to retract congressionally appropriated funds that were already budgeted. The time to yoink this stuff legally was a month ago.
LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
It's JD Vance's keynote speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference. The speech, which I've just skimread, is mostly well-worn US conservative complaints about US higher education. He also talks about red-pilling because he's down with the kids, and he adds Jesus sprinkles in case you forgot he's Christian.
The speech is dull but it's bookended with two spicy statements, both of which you mostly quoted. The latter statement is not his words but a quote from Nixon.
Opening statement: «So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement in this country, I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country and so I'm excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.»
Closing statement: «I really want to end this on an inspirational note [...] and the person whose quote I ultimately had to land on was the great prophet and statesman Richard Milhous Nixon [...] there is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom, and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40-50 years ago. He said, and I quote: "the professors are the enemy".»
EDIT: And for the context of the Nixon quote, it comes from a private conversation Nixon had with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on December 14, 1972, recordings of which were released in 2008: «Henry remember... we're gonna be around and outlive our enemies. And also, never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.». It's worth noting that Nixon was already keeping an "enemies list": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List
It doesn't matter what Nixon's context was Vance was quoting him literally by proclaiming it a piece of wisdom.
Posting the entire speech only bolsters my view. For example
"[To accomplish goals].. I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities..."
I'm confused about your argument. I don't consider it a smoking gun just a concise example of what Vance and MAGA Republicans belive. There's no context confusion, it's on video, and it being dull only shows how comfortable he is exposing insane views.
The spicy soundbites on their own are scary and do suggest the state wants to destroy intellectuals.
The speech they're from doesn't.
The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society. Vance even claims some academics prefer to ignore evidence that refutes their positions, and he's against that; that would be a valid pro-intellectual position if true (but it's completely nebulous and unsourced)
The thesis of his speech was he doesn't like the content of what academics profess and he thinks they ought to teach his political views (and his audience's political views) instead. That's not anti-intellectualism, i.e. "don't trust those book-learning types, look to the common man for answers". This guy still wants ivory towers provided his cronies are in them.
Also it's interesting to see where his quote came from. He clearly picked an on-theme Nixon quote just to appeal to his audience, and he seems to miss the context of the Nixon quote in that Nixon is a paranoid nutter saying it, not coming from a rational place like Vance thought he just did.
I’m not half the country, but I can explain it to you. Billionaires already pay tax on investment income. Universities are exempt but now the proposal is that they pay as well, just like individuals (including billionaires) and other profit-making groups.
Why do you expect a billionaire to steal from billionaires? a portion of non-essential stealing comes from respct, and of course these billionaires are all a part of the same club.
The other lens is simple as well: big fish don't go after the other big fish. That just ends in two hurt fish and no food. Trump thought he was going after a small fry and underestimated the response. just because Columbia folded doesn't mean all universities will.
Doesn't this tax only apply to "net investment income"/realized gains? Billionaires technically already have to pay it at a higher rate. And well they generally do? I mean when they personally actually sell stock and or receive dividends and interest.
Most of the wealth being in stock is really tricky. You can't really tax stock ownership, but at the same time stock can be leveraged against business deals (Musk for example bought Twitter with largely stock, without having to sell it first and therefore being subject to tax), and you can take out loans with stock as collateral.
Sure, if you exclude primary residence. We aren't trying to fuck with the middle class, just the uberwealthy. I'd be fine with only taxing collateralized stock on people with over $20M in net worth too. We just don't need to provide tax breaks to the rich to make them more rich.
It's such an odd argument - the wealthy always seem to know what their net worth is. We could just make them declare it. If they lie, straight to jail.
Do they? I think exactly the opposite is true - if you ask any sufficiently wealthy person, they’d need a team of people working for a bit to arrive at a very hazy net worth number. Private stock is extremely illiquid and doesn’t usually have a good mark to market, ditto most artwork. My impression is that even most public stock doesn’t generally have the depth of liquidity to absorb a founder selling any significant fraction in a short timeframe without cratering in value.
How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
I'm not defending billionaires and I believe they should be heavily taxed, and huge inheritances should be outlawed, but what's Elon Musk's net worth, for example? He surely doesn't have $369 billion in cash. Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year? It's tricky.
> How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
They get to tell us what they are worth. Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud. There are some areas that are tricky, like pre-market startups, but we have things like 409A valuations that help with that. Penalties should have no statute of limitations - if you lie about it, you get to look over your shoulder forever. It's not perfect, but as you have clearly recognized, there is no perfect system that allows for a reasonable degree of freedom.
> Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year?
Not really tricky! He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2. If the value goes down 99%, you pay way less tax (or none if he's no longer wealthy enough to qualify). He can sell his shares to pay it, and I honestly do not care if he is not liquid enough to do that - that's a situation he put himself into. No he doesn't get a tax break on the loss - the rich have a sense of entitlement that their wealth belongs to them free of charge, and I think they should have to pay maintenance. Without public utilities (roads, electricity, air and sea traffic control, etc) and social stability, most of these billionaires would lose their wealth to warlords very quickly.
> He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have $8B worth of shares and I have $2B in cash, and if the wealth tax is 20% I will have to pay all my cash this year. If my shares goes down to zero next year I'm broke. I couldn't just sell $2B worth of shares in the first year either because that would have affected the value of the shares. This is not how taxes should work.
Everyone agrees on income tax or capital gains tax because they are both cash, and the tax is also in the same currency. If we can find a way to tax wealth in the same "currency" (for example 20% of your share portfolio, plus 20% of your cash) then it might work. Obviously the state may not always be able to use shares to fund infrastructure, and cashing out those shares would diminish the value. Also it's still hard to do that for, say, real estate investments.
What doesn't make sense? He'd owe $1.6B the first year, and then he'd be shit out of luck because he drove the stock to 0. Not my problem. And you should stop putting yourself in his shoes - you will never be a billionaire, and you probably won't be a mega-millionaire either. Start worrying about your own situation.
In any case, the whole thread about "net worth" is really besides my original point, which is that collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event. The only reason we got into net worth was because I said I'd only apply it to high net worth individuals, since they have almost exclusively benefitted from the economy over the last 10-20 years. This is also super achievable because to get the bank to loan you money, you have to declare the value of the assets and the bank has to agree with the valuation - super easy to determine tax on that number.
I don't feel that strongly about it if he is just sitting on the assets, but if he's leveraging them to buy Twitter, OpenAI or to donate money toward overthrowing the Democratic order, then yes, he should absolutely pay taxes for the privilege.
I'm not worrying about billionaires. I'm discussing about hypothetical ways we can tax them. They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
> collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event
> They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
Disagree. We've been negotiating from the middle. We got the New Deal because the alternative for the wealthy was facing a socialist revolution.
I'm all for threatining them with a socialist revolution if possible. However, I'm afraid they are better prepared this time. In today's world a (metaphorical) guerilla war that targets one small win at a time might be more prudent. The wealthy is not necessarily smart. Not all will see it coming.
When I bought my home I had to sell $XXX,XXX of stock to make the down payment. If Jeff Bezos wants to buy the same house, he would use a line of credit from the bank, collateralized by his Amazon shares (or whatever source of wealth) and pay with that. I paid 15% in long-term capital gains, he pays 0%. Under my plan, he would pay 15% LTCG for collateralizing his stock,. If I had to pay it, then it's entirely fair and reasonable that we expect him to pay his fair share too.
You could have done the same thing with a margin-enabled brokerage account, e.g. Interactive Brokers or Fidelity.
It's not particularly hard. Just have enough collateral to not get margin called. And, like the margin interest rate better than the tax hit. Shop around for rates. Notice, you don't have to pay the entire down payment this way.
If you have amassed 6 figures of stock and are buying a house, you're qualified to educate yourself on these topics. It's usually worth reading up anytime you incur that sizable a taxable event.
I am not saying this is a great idea, BTW. Just, it's an idea within many people's reach.
If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument - why would you suggest it? The tax laws shouldn't favor the gross accumulation of wealth, nor the starvation of the treasury, so the laws need to change to force the rich to pay their fair share.
I believe the GP is just cautioning rando HN readers that they should not rush out and make their down payment in the manner described, as opposed to liquidating some of their stock options for "real cash" like the GGP had to do.
They are just explaining a reasonable method that the (above) average HN reader could use to be in the same situation as Bezos of having a 0% tax on their down payment.
In the US, there's a pretty massive exemption (well, deferral) for capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence, so once you have one home to work with, the down payment is (kind of?) tax-free anyway.
They definitely shouldn't. It's absurd to suggest that because a middle-class homebuyer can get a margin loan through iBroker means that we should let the richest people in history dodge taxes in this way. If no one would actually do that, then it really doesn't matter that they technically can. The obvious solution is to take away the privilege from the wealthy and make them abide the same rules as the rest of us.
Another very rational reason for such a margin loan for a home down payment is if the stock you wanted to sell hadn't been held for a year and therefore its sale would not yet qualify for long-term capital gains rates.
You might choose to pay margin interest for up to a year so that the stock sales become taxed at the much lower long-term capital gains rates instead of like income.
That might make sense for someone in the 24% federal bracket which ends at just under $200K of annual income, depending upon how much longer one needs to hold the position to achieve the more favorable taxation. Certainly far below the yacht-owning bracket.
Bezos gets a much better margin rate than you or I would ever get on IBKR. And IBKR doesn't margin call, they straight up auto liquidate. Bezos's lender would never do that to him.
And withdrawals from margin accounts should cause taxable events too. Honestly it is up to the industry to justify and propose a workable tax scheme that makes margin accounts feasible. Withdrawals triggering taxable events seems fair to me, though.
If I get something of worth, non-related to the stock/ownership, for the current value on my stock/ownership, I should pay taxes on that amount. I am using the stocks value to gain something. If I take out a loan for businesses needs, that is in the interest of the thing I own. If I take out a loan to buy a separate thing, I have leveraged the current value and have therefor realized the current value and should pay accordingly.
Why does it matter? It eventually gets taxed through estate tax and at a higher rate than income. This obsession with taxing them _now_ only makes sense if the point is to punish the the rich.
Agreed. For the revenue tax activists want from billionaires, it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional. The non-profit tax exemption fight is about "income taxes" which billionaires already have to pay (but avoid). So it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.
If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).
> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.
It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.
> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes
It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.
> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]
What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.
Recommend James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" to learn more about the evolution of property valuation and rights. The systems of land rights in up to the 1500s-1800s were quite complex. The modern state imposed a uniform system of free-hold tenure which shifted the complexity to the downstream consequences.
The concept of freehold tenure is pretty central to the book. Not sure you could get any more on-point for the general reader looking for a book recommendation.
But since you ask: the peasant's rights to land were exquisitely bespoke. No tax collector could figure out how much one family owed versus another in another county. The rules in one prefecture of one county may have been completely unresolvable with the rules of a county a hundred miles north. Everything was negotiated family to family over generations, with rights in one place having no corollary whatsoever with the rights in another area, making the tax man's duty a fool's errand.
So, I don't your first statement "European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today." is really meaningful. Because no generalization can be made about the rights of a European peasant. That problem is the whole reason for the systems of freehold tenure that prevail today: making the territory "seeable" by the state.
You're talking about something entirely different. The typical case for the renting medieval peasant is that the rent on a given plot of land is set by custom, the nominal amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason. No administrative task could ever be simpler than collecting the rent.
Landowners responded to that by adjusting the size of the units in which land rents were due, which is why a major demand of peasant movements was for standardized units.
The fact that rents were absolutely nonnegotiable led to other developments, such as the lord being so indifferent as to exactly who was renting from him that the renter was free to leave his status to whoever he chose in his will.
> amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason
That's only true in a narrow and a relatively obtuse way. For starters that varied to a huge degree between regions and types of contracts.
e.g. in England freeholds were indeterminate and or more or less worked the way you are saying.
However most peasants didn't have those, before the plague the overwhelming majority of peasants were villeins (i.e. serfs), inheritance was customary and lords were not legally obliged to pass it to the serf's descendants (also there were all kinds of fees, fines and stuff besides the fact that they weren't legally free and there was no legal system to protect your rights).
Leaseholds and copyholds became much more common due to labour shortages after the plague. leaseholds were not inherited and market price based. Copyholds were inherited and rents customary fixes (but again lords could and would impose all kinds of arbitrary fees to get their cut).
Then you had the enclosures starting the 1400s (a lot of the land peasants relied on was common)
Again, you're generalizing. To say that doesn't work in medieval Europe is probably itself a generalization. But if you read the book, I don't think this would be a point you'd be arguing.
The Supreme Court explicitly allowed property taxes in Pollock decision. They haven’t for wealth taxes (they still might allow it but they also might not).
"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"
A wealth tax is generally considered to be a direct tax. If you wanted to enact one at the federal level, my understanding is that it would have to be done in proportion to the census. So, given that Mississippi is around 1% of the total US population, Mississippi would have to pay 1% of the wealth tax. Mississippi is the poorest US state, so that would be a very regressive tax.
An income tax is also considered to be a direct tax, that's why it took an amendment to the Constitution to enact one.
The Constitution applies to taxes at the federal level, not state. States could enact a wealth tax the same way they enact property taxes now (depending on their state Constitutions). The problem for them is that wealth is a bit more mobile than property.
And yes there are arguments about what a direct tax really meant in the language at the time the Constitution was written, there are arguments that the income tax should have been legal without an amendment. But that's not how it went down.
"Double taxation" is absolutely constitutional. Tons of things are double, triple, quadruple and more taxed.
I make a W2 salary. I pay federal income taxes on it. I pay FICA taxes on it. My employer pays payroll taxes on it. I might pay state income taxes on it. One event, tons of taxes. I take that quadruple taxed money and buy a dinner with a beer. Sales taxes on the overall sale, additional taxes on the alcohol, additional sales tax riders because I bought it in the touristy night life area. Triple taxes on my quadruple taxes, good lord! Unconstitutional!
Worthless phrase, "double taxation".
> That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
Once again, the several different taxes applied to my salary income. Then on that I go buy a gallon of gasoline, uh oh, federal gas taxes on that. Or I buy a plane ticket and that gets Federal Excise Tax (7.5% of the base fare), the Federal Segment Fee (currently $5.20 per segment), the TSA Security Fee ($5.60 per passenger), and more. Oof, "double taxation"! Even at the federal level!
If they sell and incur capital gains. But they have so many better alternatives than you or me. And if they do incur capital gains they pay the same tax rate (or maybe 5 basis points higher, depending on your income) as you or me.
Borrowing against assets. Wealthy people get low, low rates, much lower than the hoi polloi would get on a HELOC or brokerage account margin loan. Banks like having them as clients.
Not only they get low rates, but if they have friends in the palace, they tend to be beneficiaries of large governmental contracts; during times of economic upset, they are the beneficiaries of large “monetary injections” that later cause inflation and prices to rise for all of us. During 2008, COVID, and the Mango recession the wealthy got much much wealthier, and all we got was expensive eggs and higher costs of living.
You don't pay back the loan. You die, your assets pass to your heirs, and their cost basis is stepped up. The heirs sell some of the assets to pay the loan back. They don't have capital gains because of the stepped-up cost basis.
There are finer points I don't understand such as:
1. Is the stepped-up cost basis available to the estate or only to the heirs? If it's to the estate, it's easier for the bank to trust they'll be paid back.
2. If the heir gets the stepped up cost basis, what legal guarantees does the bank have that the heir will pay the loan back?
And probably a lot else. I assume there's expensive lawyering and accounting involved in setting it up, so it isn't cost-effective unless you have a certain amount to shield from taxes in the first place.
First of all, prime can be pretty good vs being taxed. Secondly, who knows what kind of sweetheart deal can be pulled for a small (in the big scheme of things) "loan" when banking of billions is at stake.
> Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns
Not to you or me. Giving powerful people who can send more business the bank's way a freebie on their personal accounts might make sense as a loss leader.
An ELOC for a HNWI can be significantly lower interest than a mortgage. They can often get "fed funds rate/LIBOR + 0.5%" or so. This is because they can accept a floating rate, while mortgage rates get locked in for 10-30 years.
Only short term gains are taxed as income. Long term capital gains tax caps at 20%, wildly lower than the top income tax bracket of 37%. And it's always possible to defer short term gains (e.g. put your trading money in an IRA).
IRA contributions are drastically limited to a $7000 cap per year under 50. Whether they should be is another question, and one worth exploring.
Long-term investment is rightly seen as something to be encouraged hence the lower tax rates. You can make the argument that the rate should be more like 0% since the money invested and risked was already taxed most likely...20% is a reasonable value for the market regulating infrastructure provided by gov't entities.
IRA caps are low, but loads of people earning enough that they'd reasonably save more than 7k annually have access to 401ks or similar accounts that raise the annual cap to >30k, vastly more than the typical person is saving.
The middle class isn't taking advantage of low capital gains rates to earn more from their taxable brokerage accounts because they haven't even filled up their tax-advantaged accounts.
There are loopholes to roll all sorts of nonsense into an IRA though. There was a whole news cycle in the 2012 election about Mitt Romney's $4M "IRA" or somesuch. And IRAs are hardly the only shelter from income tax, they're just the most obvious.
The simple truth is that wealth beyond the ~$10M level in the US pays essentially zero "income tax". It just doesn't happen, no one does it. Short term gains are only taxed for small investors who don't know any better.
"Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on social networks that this year he will pay 11 billion dollars, thus becoming the largest taxpayer in the history of the USA."
That was on a sale of Tesla stock that he'd held for much longer than the long term rate threshold. He paid 20% on it, or plausibly less. I, personally pay a higher rate than that. Big numbers notwithstanding, Elon Musk shouldn't be paying less tax than I do, sorry.
You're dodging, and I know you're smart enough to know how this goes. I don't make money with long term stock, I make salary. I pay >>20% tax on that salary. Billionaries make, statistically, zero salary. All their income is on long term gains. All of it. So billionaires pay 20%, and that only if they're dumb enough not to find other shelters.
You're just saying "Well, that's the way the tax code works". I'm saying "The tax code sucks", and your point is non-responsive.
So how "over time" do I need to wait until I start paying the same tax rate as a billionaire? Seems like your solution to "the rich pay less tax" is "well, everyone should just be rich then"?
"Let them eat cake" makes for extremely poor federal revenue policy.
Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money though - that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists. Spending and borrowing is heavily encouraged at all levels, while investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income to prevent the poor from being able to "work smarter".
> investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income
Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
> Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money
No, it isn't. People who save money are terrified of risk. There's nothing stopping anyone from investing the money.
> that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists
That's the excuse the government makes to inflate the money. You'll never see a politician point out the real reason for inflation. It's so they can spend it without raising taxes, but it does cause inflation, and inflation has to be blamed on something else. Anything but the truth.
> Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
Buying a few stocks on an app is not anywhere near the same thing as being an accredited investor. Access to the most lucrative investment opportunities are not available to the average person, and that's almost entirely due to rules intentionally created to block anyone but the already wealthy.
The methods that institutional investors have, like market making or delta one strategies, aren't available because of the rules, it's because individual investors literally don't have the scale, flow and networks to do it.
Second of all, at the end of the day it's other people money's they're using, and are entrusted to manage. You can't demand people to just lend money to anyone, any sort of free market of loans will quickly coalesce into a few capital allocators.
Please, this thread is about the average wage-grade worker (money earned via the "sweat of one's brow"), not an "accredited investor". In this example, almost anyone in the US can open up a Robin Hood, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc account with probably $25. You don't need access to the most lucrative investment opportunities to make money; simply buy a standard S&P 500 ETF and call it a day. Over time, the chances of you making money with your investments are high, and the tax burden is lower, meaning you get to make and keep more money in your pocket. That is a win for everyone - not just the magical "billionaire".
The average worker in the US needs these sorts of opportunities to be self reliant. You don't need to be a billionaire to make money on the market, you just need a few dollars, some time, and the will to take a little risk. Stop hating on the average worker...
Sorry, nothing prevents the poor from working smarter. Just because you are poor does not mean you are uneducated. And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income. Literally anyone in the US can open an investment account and get started. The lack of desire is the real issue.
> And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income.
What? There is literally a class of people considered accredited or sophisticated investors.
To be considered an accredited investor by the SEC you must have a net worth of over $1M -not including- your primary residence, and you must have an annual household income of over $300K.
We have tax-advantaged retirement accounts to enable the middle class to save a reasonable amount in order to retire without being a burden on society. A typical saver doesn't have additional extra money leftover for a taxable brokerage account that exposes them to capital gains taxes.
Low capital gains taxes aren't meaningfully encouraging somebody making 75k and saving 10k annually to continue with their saving plan.
No but their earnings are mainly in their companies, and those can hire fleets of tax attorneys and accountants to crush their tax burden.
Once the money is in stocks, it doesn't get taxed unless you draw on it, but the billionaires can use strategies like buy, borrow, die (which last I checked only really works if you're north of ~ $300M) to avoid personal taxes.
Billionaires benefit most from the largest tax exceptions. No tricky accounting needed it’s baked blatantly into the tax code. Long term capital gains are specifically lower than short term capital gains. Further gains are only taxed on sale allowing a lifetime of growth to pass to the next generation tax free.
They also operate at a scale where many tax breaks become viable. CEO owners aren’t paying themselves nominal salaries because they are actually working for free. Creating a shell company to own your 50k car isn’t useful but it’s damn well worth it if you’re buying a 50+m dollar yacht for personal use. Turning depreciation into a nominal loss offsetting capital gains etc.
Meanwhile people of lesser means get stuck with all kinds of crap like a 10% early withdrawal penalty on 401k plans.
>> College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.
> LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
Because they already do it for billionaires: unlike university endowments, billionaire investment income is not tax-exempt by default, it's already subject to income tax [1].
[1] At least theoretically, ignoring the loopholes and tax-dodges billionaires can take advantage of with literal armies of accountants.
They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes.
Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)
Imagine how much federal revenue would increase if that 1% paid the same effective rate as say a typical plumber, rather than the <10% they currently pay. That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt.
I hear that sentiment a lot, but it doesn't seem right to me. My salary is pretty close to the median plumber's income, and my family's effective tax rate last year came in at... 1.6%. And that's with all retirement account contributions going toward Roth accounts. If we'd chosen to contribute to traditional IRA/401k accounts instead, the EITC and child tax credit would easily turn our tax bill negative.
A quick search tells me the median plumber salary is ~$60k. Your telling me your entire tax burden is ~1k? I find that hard to believe, and if true is pretty darn atypical. That's closer to what I was paying when I was making ~10/hr.
Yes. We had $50k of taxable W2 income ($63k including pre-tax insurance premiums and HSA contributions), $13k of taxable family leave benefits, $4k of interest/dividends (mostly qualified dividends, taxed at 0%), and $9k of long-term capital gains (taxed at 0%), making our pre-tax gross income about $89k. Only $66k of that is subject to taxes; the standard deduction brings that down to $37k, on which the tax is $4k. With a $2,000 child tax credit, $400 saver's credit, and $200 foreign tax credit, our tax liability is reduced to $1400, which is 1.6% of $89k.
"That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt."
It might also result in even more spending. I don't think that there is any "natural ceiling" when it comes to willingness of politicians to spend other people's money. The only ceiling is external - how much will the system bear.
Edit: it's an honest question. Maybe the top 1% paying 40% of all income taxes is too much tax. Maybe it's not enough. Without knowing how much of all the income they make it's a meaningless number.
According to the Tax Foundation[1], for tax year 2021, the top 1% of U.S. earners—those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $682,577 or more—accounted for 26.3% of total AGI and paid 45.8% of all federal income taxes.
My personal opinion is that income tax should be more progressive, but I know that plenty of smart people disagree on that.
Your source leans right-center, so probably good reason to suspect their reported top 1% AGI is low and their reported federal income tax estimate is high.
1. Does not follow. Just because you don't like someone's politics doesn't mean they're dishonest.
2. Your own link contradicts you. It says explicitly that that site hasn't failed any of their fact checks and doesn't use loaded words that they say are typical of that category. It says the categorization is because the site promotes libertarian policies.
There are a lot more taxes than the federal income tax. It happens to be one of the most progressive taxes. Anyone focusing on that and ignoring all the others is trying to scam you.
This is true for ultra high net worth individuals. They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
It is also true for many “normal” one percenters. For example there is a service for incorporated anesthesiologists where you tell them where you plan to go on vacation and what dates, and they create a bullshit anesthesiology conference, including the brochure and other artifacts, that meet the letter of the law IRS definitions for a valid business expense. None of this stuff ever hits AGI.
A simpler example: social security taxes hit a cap at a bit under $200,000/year. Somebody working fast food at minimum wage is paying 6.2% on every dollar they earn, while with my fancy tech job I’m paying a substantially lower percentage.
The social security "tax" should really be conceptualized as an investment, not a tax. The typical fast food worker has probably not passed the first bend point in the Social Security PIA formula, meaning that social security is giving them 90 cents on the dollar*. You, with your fancy tech job, are likely well past the second bend point: social security is only giving you 15 cents on the dollar* (and nothing, obviously, for earnings beyond the payroll tax ceiling).
It's a progressive system overall - but it wasn't designed for the purpose of wealth redistribution, hence the payroll tax ceiling.
* More precisely, their monthly benefit at full retirement age increases by 90 cents for each additional dollar of pre-retirement average monthly earnings, whereas yours only increases by 15 cents.
If the asset appreciates faster than the interest rate there's never a need to sell. If the interest rate is lower than the capital gains tax rate, paying the interest is cheaper than paying taxes.
UHNW individuals can borrow until they die. Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis. The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
Normal people can't do this. If I die owing money, my creditors will take it out of my estate before it passes to my heirs. UHNW estates can be structured differently and creditors can accommodate different payment terms (get paid second) because they know the money's there, and it saves taxes.
I assumed you asked a question to learn something. If you're not interested in learning, please continue believing that everyone gets the same tax system. Otherwise keep reading.
> the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
it has a fairly detailed explanation of how it's a completely different ballgame above a net worth of $300m. Grantor trusts allow sidestepping estate tax and...
> The loan and the interest payments
"The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was. Income that would normally have been derived by selling assets. Obviously it has to be paid back. No one said it's free money. Only that it's (largely) tax-free money.
The interest payments are lower than the income tax would've been on the same amount of income.
> and dont forget the inheritance tax.
You mean estate tax. Explained above.
> Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
Not in the same way, and not nearly as effectively.
> There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
> "The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was
Borrowed money is not "income" in any sense of the word. When I was on summer vacation, I decided to take a class in accounting. One of the most productive uses of my time. I recommend it. P.S. if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income", that's called fraud.
> If you read the link I posted
I rely on my CPA for tax advice, not the internet, nor do I care much for misusing accounting terms. I've read too many articles that confuse income with revenue, wealth with income, and so on.
> They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
The estate's value is reduced by what it owes.
> if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income"
sigh C'mon man, engage in good faith here. Stop saying things I didn't say.
If you can borrow cash against assets, don't have to pay principle until you die, and only pay low interest payments then it's functionally the same as selling those assets at a low tax rate. That's the principle.
And if you can use trusts to avoid estate taxes then there are no (or very low) taxes due ever.
> I rely on my CPA for tax advice
Ok ask your CPA what they know about using trusts to avoid estate taxes. Maybe it's BS but maybe it's true. Without some curiosity, how will you ever know?
> not the internet
More reputable sources than Reddit indicate it may be possible to use trusts to greatly reduce or eliminate estate tax:
The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.
Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.
So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.
Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.
> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Tell us how that works.
> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?
So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?
I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?
I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:
There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.
This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.
[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.
Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).
Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?
Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.
If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.
I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.
There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.
I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.
If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.
People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.
Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not
If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.
> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.
Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.
> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.
How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?
What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?
> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.
Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.
Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.
Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.
In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.
Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.
By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.
You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.
> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax
Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.
Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)
Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.
--
While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?
Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)
If they don't wanna pay so much in taxes, they should stop having so much money. Taxes function to raise revenue and thus have to go where the money is.
There are no loopholes for investment gains. If you are talking about offsetting losses and delaying gains, those options would likely be available to endowment funds.
I think the 9 billion is very misleading. More than half goes to hospitals affiliated with Harvard. I am not sure but I don't think they get anything from the endowment. The impact of loosing this money would be very uneven across different parts of the university and hospitals affiliated with it.
The faculty of arts and science would be fine. Yes, some cuts, a hiring freeze etc. The med school and public health school would feel a big impact. They employ so many people on "soft money" through grants including many faculty members.
The hospitals are a different story and I am not sure why they are even lumped together.
Yeah this isn't purely a question of Harvard's P&L being dependent on subsidies. The money in question is grants attached to specific practices or research. The money isn't just gratuity for Harvard being so great, it's awarded for specific objectives that Harvard was deemed capable of delivering. Cutting off the money isn't going to hurt Harvard, it's going to stop all the programs the grants were funding.
People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad things do happen, you will probably see mass layoffs of researchers in particular in life sciences and biomedical research.
I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.
That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.
That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.
I understand. I am saying they are correct that much of Harvard's endowment is not discretionary, even if they accidentally used a term that implies that it is.
This might be true for Harvard, but I don’t think free speech should only be for those who can afford it. I know my school couldn’t if the government came knocking.
Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.
This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.
Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?
If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?
My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.
Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).
So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.
Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.
I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.
> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.
I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.
Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."
Stephen Miller made it clear this morning:
"Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."
If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.
Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.
That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.
The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?
Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.
i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.
Cannot edit my original comment, because I wrote it 16 hours ago, but I am somewhat surprised by the fluctuating up/downvote count, going from 0 to 6 and back.
It seems that the very idea that some employees in academia might be superfluous is very disagreeable for some HNers.
Why? Institutional bloat is a well known problem, it happens in private sector, public sector, churches, military, wherever you can think of. It probably already happened in Ur and Nineveh. Why should academia be somehow immune from this problem?
And if it is not immune, shouldn't it try to do something with it?
There was a massive increase in tuition in the last generation or so. How much of that extra money goes to the core mission of the universities, and how much is spent on "nice to have extras", starting with opulent campuses and ending with "Standing Committees on Visual Culture and Signage"?
Everyone has to trim the fat down a bit from time to time. Even Google and Meta. Why not Harvard.
People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.
People in HN have been complaining about university admin bloat for many years. In this thread, the problem is it’s political and people struggle with the cognitive dissonance about that stuff.
This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.
>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.
>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.
More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:
>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.
I've seen arguments of this general shape and form many times about this, and yes, this is true. In general, Harvard should not spend down it's endowment when it has other sources of revenue.
I think the issue here is that this _is_ an emergency. Harvard should consider that Federal money gone for the near future and spend and plan to spend as if they will not have it. There is no point in them continuing to exist as an institution if they accede to these absurd demands.
>You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% last year, growing the total by $2.5 billion. In the previous year, the endowment returned 2.9%, though the total endowment decreased as the gain was offset by contributions to operating expenses. [0]
In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
>In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something. The argument is that they shouldn't raid endowments by doing additional withdraws to fund the current shortfall.
> the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest
THATS WHAT WHAT THE FIFTY BILLION IS
It’s a war chest that has been carefully cultivated over decades. The fifty billion is the result of a hundred years of investment and management.
If it can’t be spent now then when the fuck exactly can it be spent? In 200 years you’d still be saying “this is the seed corn for tomorrow!!”
I’m not saying burn it down to zero. But the whole fucking point of an endowment is to provide stability during trying times. If you can’t use the interest that has been accumulated now then when the fuck can you??
Their principal is not intended to be spent, ever. The point of an endowment is not to "provide stability during trying times".
The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity. Which Harvard already does and has always done. Interest from their endowment is already a large part of their revenue. That's what the endowment is for.
Returns fluctuate wildly, while expenses are roughly constant. So obviously expenses are drawn conservatively. And if investment works well, you can grow the endowment too. Obviously it is up to the university to strike the right balance.
The more it grows, the less risk there is in the future. But if you start spending it more than the levels of its average returns, that's high risk. And the point is it's supposed to last forever.
You also need to grow it simply to account for inflation and other rising costs.
How much is “enough” money to hoard in an endowment though? We hear lots of arguments about how the concept of a billionaire is itself obscene, why can’t we apply to same logic to institutions? E.g. much like people say “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, perhaps endowments over some similarly arbitrary value shouldn’t exist either.
Well, it's proportional to their spending to some degree. It takes a world-class endowment to fund a world-class university. And it's all from private donations.
Harvard doesn't make a profit. It educates students and does research. It sounds like you're arguing Harvard should be broken up or something? But based on what? Is it abusing its power or something?
Paraphrasing J. P. Morgan, the man, in the midst of the Panic of 1907 reassuring a banker concerned about dipping into reserves to pay out depositors: "what are reserves for if not times like these."
Eat the seed corn. Fight. Then raise unencumbered donations from the billionaires whose balls haven't fallen off. If Harvard plays this correctly, they could become one of the flag bearers of the legal and financial resistance to Trump.
To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.
The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.
Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.
Endowments have come from people over the entire history of the institution. The vast majority of the endowers are likely deceased and won't be able to agree to change the terms of their endowment.
And yet some trust, estate, or descendant somewhere ultimately has the authority to change those agreements. These things are not immutable facts of the universe, they can be changed.
As for the minority where that is not the case, it also means nobody will have standing to sue if the school decides to stop letting someone who died 200 years ago decide exactly how Harvard's money will be spent.
They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized.
At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.
I don't know that making a bad investment makes them terrible fund managers, just as making a good one would not make them brilliant. Don't you need a string of data points?
If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.
>...much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose
I would assume that a tax on an endowment would be like a capital gains tax, i.e., taxed on the investment growth. Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's reserved because the donation was earmarked for a specific purpose (eg. a business program or whatever), not because they reserved 30% on tax owing.
>Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's probably safe to assume donors are competent enough that such glaring loopholes don't exist. After all, the concept of endowments being used as long term savings, rather than spent immediately, isn't exactly a new concept. Failing to take this into account would mean any earmarks are void after a few decades.
It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.
He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.
He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.
No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.
That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.
Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.
The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.
The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.
There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America. If you're in the US and doing business with a bank, the courts can order that bank to do things or face isolation from the entire financial system.
> There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America
There are to varying extents. You want a country that isn't aligned with or dependent on America, but also isn't its adversary. (And which has a good banking system.) That list was classically Turkey, the UAE and Switzerland. Today I'd add India, Qatar, Canada and Brazil and remove Switzerland.
Yeah I'm no expert in financial systems but since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S. or locked away overseas and can't be transferred in for the next ~4 years.
It's much more than that, foreign banks will comply with US court orders, it's not just a blockade.
US courts shut down a series of Swiss banks that were trying to hide American's assets behind the swiss banking secrecy laws while also doing business on American soil (just having bank employees in the country did it).
> since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S.
Of course it does. The hypothetical we're considering is the administration illegally freezing bank accounts. You don't need something legally impenetrable. Just complicated enough that it slows down the goons while you fight them in court.
This is true, and they have likely been accelerating the arrangements they already had for a while now. At the same time however, getting 50 billion in assets into various European jurisdictions is not at all easy. I'd estimate Trump could cut off 70-90 percent of what Harvard has to work with.
Alumni will need to come through for continuing operations if the worst does happen. And I'm certain Harvard has put some thought into that contingency as well.
Trump can make that illegal in no time. „No foreign funds” is a well known method of fighting opposition, tried and tested in many soft regimes (looking for a recent example, Hungary comes to mind).
This is about lots more than money. Sure, Harvard can go without federal funds. Then comes federal tax breaks. Then Harvard's ability to recruit foreign students (no visas, no foreign students/professors). After that comes the really draconian stuff like the fed revoking clearances or not hiring/doing business with Harvard grads. Such things were once thought illegal but are now very much on the table. That is why Harvard needs to win the money fight no matter the numbers.
Right, money is just the first and most obvious cudgel. Does Harvard have any biomedical labs that require federal approval to handle hazardous materials? That could be delayed or revoked. Do they file taxes? They could face an audit. There's no shortage of painpoints an organization that large has exposed to an unethical government.
According to NYT, “ of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”
If I give a school 20 million yearly to research a specific form of cancer, and I find out that they instead used that money to upgrade the plumbing in their dormitories and spent nothing on cancer research, I would not give them 20 million ever again.
Sure, due to funding cuts students will suffer with slowly degrading infrastructure and will need to do plumbing fixes at some point. But that doesn't mean people who give them money for one purpose are happy with it being used for another purpose.
This is absolutely par for the course for university endowments. They're not big pots of money, they're thousands of small pots of money with various restrictions on their investment, disbursement, etc.
For a quick institution specific overview, see “with donor restrictions” on page 20-21 (pdf page 21-22) of their most recent annual report[0].
I’d imagine “maintain and invest the original contribution in perpetuity” covers majority of the restricted funds, with use-specific restrictions in a distant but comfortable second. Since it’s Harvard, they probably also have more funky restrictions than the average bear (gifts of stock in kind with restrictions on timing of sale, voting, etc.).
those endowments, especially for the Ivy League schools, aren't liquid at all. They'd take a massive haircut if they had to start pulling funds from it
Presumably they could go to a large bank and make a deal so that they only have to take a relatively small haircut by getting a loan to be paid back from endowment interest.
Harvard is probably thinking they just need to draw the $1 billion extra for another 4 years. Unless, Trump runs for a 3rd time which he has floated. If that happens then I think everyone's just screwed.
With an overbearingly powerful executive like the federal US executive you can come up with so many ways to fuck with companies or institutions like this one beyond not giving them money.
It's very dangerous to assume "oh, this will only last four years". The rights currently being eroded (free speech, habeas corpus and voting rights themselves) are required for free and fair elections. Even if the term of the current Shitstain In Chief ends when it's supposed to, his replacement will be from the same cloth.
I'm sure he's got plans to issue an executive order declaring all of the votes against him null and void because they weren't cast and counted within 4 hours of each other on election day.
Which is, of course, why the internet is a spectacular failure and SpaceX is our best chance to ever put a man on the moon, and polio is still ravaging the country. Great point.
From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)
This is how we know that the Republican party has no interest in freedom as the word is conventionally defined.
I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here:
Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.
This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.
Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1].
We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to inform themselves either, which makes things much worse.
A large part of the population struggles to even entertain a hypothetical scenario. I’m active in several agricultural forums, and it’s clear that many participants lack fundamental knowledge across the board. They’re generally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussion. Almost every comment they post seems aimed at shutting down the conversation rather than continuing it. There is no curiosity. The world is already way too complex.
I think that's a function of the internet combined with a new flavor of individual exceptionalism. It is shockingly easy to engage only in echo chambers, even without knowing it. You're just on a site for people with similar interests, nevermind that those people all agree with you entirely.
Combine that with the lessons kids are learning that they are legitimately unique and special, and anyone who makes them feel bad is just wrong, and here we are.
Or maybe I'm just the old man shouting at clouds now. Who knows.
The “unique and special” kids are mostly Americans, I think. At least I don’t recognize that parenting style anywhere around me.
I really think the world is too complex for most people and they outsource their critical thinking to the group they chose to join or even were born into.
I don’t think it’s a modern problem. Religion formed enormous safe spaces for incurious people before they ran into new peers via the internet.
Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.
ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.
Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.
The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.
A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc.
"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality
Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.
it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.
>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?
As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.
That's exactly my point: all three articles says nothing about any doctor's responsibility for abortion with the goal to prevent harm to pregnant woman. No arrests, no charges, no fines, nothing, not even single case (as far as I know; your links also describes zero such cases).
And still women are bleeding out. What else could it be other than doctors' political stunts at the cost of women's lives?
I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.
> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point
ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".
Morals ostensibly drive logic for some (not most, most are boring tax stuff) laws, but what's really going on is some group of people thinks the law will advantage them and so pushes it. Blue Team doesn't inherently care about black people, they care about getting black Americans' votes. You'd hope the moral and the instrumental would align, but not always.
It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.
Probably not, they'll just pump up international student numbers to recoup and basically gut the domestic student experience. There's near infinite demand for American universities overseas even now.
I think you're wrong. I know several bright students that have decided to not go to the US now given the persecution and targeting of international students.
Intl students are not mad. Who is going to pay the US intl student premium, to add the Columbia tag. Intl students are paying for very specific future life paths.
I am nervous about the US right now. So many cases are going to end up at the Supreme Court that is controlled by conservatives. It may not be the lay-up you think it is.
Also what happens if Trump just decides to ignore a court loss as he did with the recent deportation of Kilmar Garcia?
Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
> Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
> I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
I can sort of theorize that human society does have the ability to cycle that is partially based on human life spans / human memory. It is like a LLM that runs out of context and then starts forgetting what it learned in the earliest part of the context. For humans it is related to our lifespans as we culturally forgot what we have learned, and thus have to relearn it.
That said, I think that periods of peace are punctuated with war. War resets the pressures that build during peace. This is similar to how refactors or rewrites are needed every once in a while as the technical debt builds up as requirements and use cases change over time, especially if no one was paying down the techn debt as you went.
Cultural ouroboros. Eventually we become so distant from our past selves culturally that we identify once normal, helpful, natural things as foreign. I'm seeing this with the new wave of mental illness in my generation.
Or you could find illegal conduct for congress people, have them sued in criminal courts, and then hold elections to elect people (republican or democrat) who will make congress function as it is meant to.
Perhaps someone can provide security services to republican congress people who are threatened with violence if they dont toe the line, so that they are safe enough to stand up to trump. (This is an actual reason given for their cowardice)
The core fundamental problem from my viewpoint in the US political system is unlimited campaign contributions which empowered the ultra wealthy. This means that elections are fought between ultra wealthy people and politicians have to first appeal to the rich people to get them on their sides, rather than the majority of the people.
You need to fix this, otherwise you have muted the impact of the majority of people in your democracy.
Perhaps. The Courts and the Legislature have yet to defend their powers, but the crunch point to do so is approaching. When we get past the stage that they have fully capitulated to Trump then it'll get truly ugly.
From a geographic standpoint, the conflict isn’t state vs. state this time around, though, it’s rural vs. urban. Blue cities in red states. Red counties in blue states. Not very conducive to conventional military conflict.
The biggest irony here is that after Roberts, the justices Trump appointed are the conservatives most likely to do the right thing. Gorsuch and Barrett are fine justices (even if they have opposing views to mine), Kavanaugh could be worse. Hopefully he doesn't get to choose another one or we'll get another Alito or Thomas.
So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions
Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and
Hiring".
I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.
I have never been a "woke" person, but Trump really makes me doubt the meritocracy argument. If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now
If Trump were a black woman (or man), he would have never survived the release of the Hollywood Access tape and therefore would have never gotten elected.
Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
> Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
Nope. Though you also missed the part where the manufacturing of "felony" charges was so novel they had never been attempted before. The closest parallel is probably the case of John Edwards who was acquitted: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/us/edwards-jury-returns-n... But you probably think it's because he was also a white man and not because there was no criminal act.
I'm curious if you can even sum up what exactly was the felony that Trump was convicted, or even better, who's the victim? Because all I saw was an overzealous DA in NY with utter disregard for the actual law.
> You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
Yes. And clearly people of DC would rather elect a Democrat crackhead over any Republican.
My point was about surviving scandals as a candidate. Trump survived the Hollywood Access tape, where it would have buried most candidates. Your example was "whatabout Barry" -- but they're not comparable (and Barry did not survive his scandal, but went to jail).
Why would you expect Trump to go to jail for a manufactured felony charge? Even if it was a legitimate case, the sentencing guidelines would not have recommended jail time.
As others have pointed out to you, "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Leadbelly used it at the end of his "Scottsboro Boys" [1] in 1938, and it likely was in use many years before that. Erykah Badu's "Master Teacher" also uses it prominently, which probably helped bring it out of AAVE into more mainstream use [2].
Anyway, that's all to say I find it sad and funny that people are all up in arms about being "woke" these days. It's like stating "I'd prefer to be ignorant".
> "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world.
Yes, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy that serves the people of Korea.
Sometimes expressions have meaning beyond what advocates for the related concepts claim. For example, as I’m sure you are aware, ‘woke’ viewpoints repeatedly advocate for racial discrimination in American universities.
I’m liberal and I also find wokeness to be irritating, so it’s not just things Republicans don’t like. Like the above person says, it’s not just awareness of structural discrimination and the like, which I believe are real and ought to be addressed, but also a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with. Hence, the GP comment. If we can't agree on meanings of words, we talk past each other instead of to each other.
You see your two meanings and you realize how arguing about the term without aligning isn't a discussion, right?
----
as an aside:
>a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
I'll be "woke" here and note the discminination in when a demanding male tends to be thought of as "leadership material", whereas a demanding female in the same role is called "bossy". These kinds of internal disciminations is exactly what "woke" people try to address (and ironically enough, are dismissed as "militant" over. Because it talks about topics people want to shut down).
>This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with.
It is worth noting that it is a right-wing tactic to capture the meaning of words. "Woke" used to mean "being aware of social and political issues and injustices," but right-wing usage of the term has diluted it to the point where it can't be used for its original meaning anymore.
I think the thing to consider is that the right-wing is focusing on the things that are the most likely to produce outrage amongst a certain part of the population when they talk about being woke. They'll hyper focus on one protest gone violent rather than thousands of peaceful gatherings in town squares, for example. They've always been very successful at creating this division through their rhetoric and selective focus.
If you're aware that structural discrimination and social injustice exists, then you already are woke. The expression of it might be different for you -- more MLK than Malcolm X, say -- but that doesn't mean you're not woke. We shouldn't let them muddy things when the goal is helping all beings be awake to reality.
I don't recall the term "woke" being all that useful. I really only started noticing it as a right-wing pejorative, often times being used by straight up racists, and to lesser extent by people pointing out performative solidarity, and this is not a recent thing either.
The meaning of "woke" changes depending on the person saying it, and the one listening, which makes it hard to tell what the person is _really_ trying to say.
Edit:
Apparently it was recently popularized by BLM activists, but then took on a different meaning [1]. So it seems ambiguous, which to me makes it not that useful.
You have come to the realization that systemic racism exists, and it grants privileges to the dominant socioeconomic groups. Congratulations, you are now "woke"!
That's what the term originally meant, before it was turned into a strawman for "anything I don't like" by the conservative media machine and weaponized to divide people.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
It sounds like you're aware of the present reality of race and how it impacts how one is treated in America just for being who they are.
> I have never been a "woke" person
I have news for you!
Edit: to be clear, I'm certain you don't match the the adversarially bastardized caricature of what a "woke person" is, but it sounds like match the original, well-meaning definition.
It's not cognitive dissonance, or bad faith. Of course.
If you let Harvard do "merit-based hiring", they'll move a little in the direction of actually complying with employment law, but not much. If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades (i.e., if you don't have "enough" black people, you need to show how your recruitment pipeline means that's necessarily the case, like not enough get the required type of degree), you'll get much better compliance.
Frankly no. I don't think they actually care in the way that equal outcomes was baked into what it meant to be Blue Team for a while, and the bureaucracy ("deep state") is against them, especially in Massachusetts, and I don't think they're competent enough.
How is this a no brainer? How many of their faculty identity as believers in a flat earth? Are we concerned about that viewpoint being underrepresented as well?
We're talking about going from 2.3% to maybe 13%. And this isn't a reflection of attitudes among people who are potentially employed there, it's a reflection of overt, rigid filtering on the basis of political beliefs.
Typically, in order to be employed at a college, you have to be smart and aware of the world. This qualification disqualifies basically all conservatives.
That's not true. Painting the "other" as some sort of one-dimensional malevolent retard isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. I promise.
There are real people, even smart people, on the other team. They have thoughts, kids, impressive degrees, goals unrelated to politics. They enjoy sunshine and hiking. They think they're doing what they're doing for good reasons. They believe themselves to be good people. They might even believe you to be a good person.
So pick one or the other: having a broad representation from many walks of life is important or it's not. You can't mix or match depending on which group you like.
And that is what I'm commenting on. I'm not a fan of Trump's "war on DEI" but if it was applied with some consistency I could take it as a genuine difference in viewpoints. That would be okay. But the movement is railing hard and vitriolic against anything with even a whiff of "DEI" while applying wildly different standards to themselves. This is hard to take as a genuine difference in viewpoints.
Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.
"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally).
Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world.
Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
From my European pont of view, I think the definitions of left and right have shifted a lot.
Sure, in Europe left and right may be more closely matched in academia, but most "right"-leaning Europeans would not be anywhere near the "right" in US-terms, so your argument is comparing very different things
Depends. German Burschenschaften, though not massive, strike me as very far right. IIRC one of them had a big row over whether they can accept a member who was ethnically Chinese. (That guy was a full German citizen born in Dortmund, but of Asian ancestry.)
> Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
I agree generally, however you should be aware that American republicans are not referring to these people because they don't know anything about them. While the American left is typically extremely US-centric, the American right is even more so. So, while you have a point, you are giving them far too much credit. Their view of American education IS their view of education in general, because that's all they know. If they wanted to know more they would have to educate themselves, but they're ideologically opposed to education, so...
And, to be clear, it only takes a small look through Republican policy making to deduce they are ideologically opposed to education. They outright say it, usually.
And it makes complete sense when you think about conservatism as an ideology and education as a concept. Education is the processes of breaking down thought processes, destroying preconceived notions, and seeking truth through evidence. It denounces the idea that what is correct is what is common. It denounces the idea that wisdom is just a given, and not something to be worked towards. This is directly antithetical to conservatism. Conservatism values maintenance and blind belief, keeping stability for the sake of stability. It values faith in things working, and not evidence of why it's working. It denounces the notions of explanations and reasoning being required. It upholds the status quo because it is the status quo. It's naturally risk-averse, anti-creative, and small-minded.
This is the reason progressiveness, whether it be in Europe or anywhere else, thrives in education whereas conservatism struggles. It is, however, important to note that this does not perfectly line up with American politics. But, the American political system is associated with these underlying ideologies and thought patterns.
IDK how it is today, but last decade the US was considered to have many of the best educational institutions.
>Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities.
Yes, because EU "left" would be accused of socialism, whereas the EU "right" would mostly be the US's existing left wing. the US right wing was always on a far side and these days fell straight to the AfD levels of extremism.
It's not one sided, but the spectrum is completely different.
>And Asian universities are a completely different world.
I'm sure they are. a history fighting within the eastern continent and a rule of emporers will shape differently than from a land of conquerers puahing for conformity who eventually tried to make nice as their regimes fell and created this hybrid of individualism and trade amongst one another.
- In 1989-1990, when HERI first fielded this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right.
- in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right
Now you say it's 2.3% conservative.
The universities argue they haven't changed, it's the politics of the right. I'd say they are correct as the right now to disavows and ridicules the output of universities on things like climate change, tariffs, vaccines, health, voter fraud in US elections ... well it's a long list. It wasn't like that 30 years ago.
The universities are supposed to be intellectual power houses fearlessly seeking out fundamental truths and relationships, regardless of what the people in power might think of their discoveries. Both sides of politics once celebrated that. Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate. They allow and encourage all types of thought, but insist they be exposed to a torrent of opposing thoughts so only the soundest survive.
Frankly, I'm amazed 2.3% still identify with a mob that clearly wants to undermine that. I'm guessing it will drop to near 0% now.
> Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate.
American conservatives are increasingly not grounded in facts and reality. This isn’t partisan, it’s just an observation of reality. I used to identify as a conservative, but they have become less and less grounded as a party.
that’s the faculty of arts and sciences—is this administration going to mandate university economics and business schools —which likely lean heavily capitalist—demand ideological diversity and bring in more communists?
If conservatives are applying at a more than 3% rate then either 1) Harvard is using some method besides directly asking for their ideology to discriminate against conservatives or 2) they are being rejected on non-ideological grounds e.g. merit.
If they are not applying at a rate of over 3% then there is no discrimination.
It sounds like you don't really know if they are being discriminated against, even though you are stating it as fact. The 3% number could be biased due to any number of reasons, conservatives may not apply to Harvard for ideological reasons, or student ideologies may shift during education.
It's possible that you can identify right-wing high schoolers based on their writing, but I don't really see a problem with rejecting students if they are touting unpopular and/or discriminatory ideas. Universities have the right to maintain a culture of openness and learning, and conservatism is often antithetical to that.
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the
Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
Conduct violations at Universities are a pretty broad set of rules at universities and don't necessarily line up with what's legal or not but more with the university's cultural and social norms.
Some of those international students with their visas revoked apparently only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune. They are going after any level of law breaking in order to match their stated goal of kicking out criminals, since they are having trouble reaching the numbers promised in campaign speeches.
I’ve only seen one person expelled for support of Hamas with evidence - the doctor who went to a funeral in Lebanon of the Hamas leader assassinated in past year. The administration was super proud of that one. Show me evidence of anyone else that has any association with Israel/Palestine conflict protests that actually support Hamas. It does not have to be an either or proposition - one can be against Israel killing civilians and against Hamas.
And for other arbitrary decisions there’s several examples of people expelled for gang activity who simply had tattoos.
From the feds documents they describe the federal government as thought police:
>Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.
Even ICE had a deleted tweet that makes it clear the thought police are active:
I prefer these thought police to the thought police we had previously.
The "diversity" thought police had very strong views about what the only acceptable thoughts were. These people are like, "if we could get it up to 30% that would be a huge victory". Actual diversity in thought at top American universities would be a boon.
Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?
Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent.
Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up".
Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar".
Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed.
I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university? Formal education that the government regulate has different goals from non-formal and informal education. If the goal is to be a primer for leaders, then they can be that without mixing it with formal education.
If we want the selection process of future leaders to be government regulated under formal education, then we should have a discussion on how such system should look like. The current system is a bit like the old fraternal groups, with the admission system being relocated to the university admission board. There should be better way to select future leaders.
> If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university?
There is no universal definition of what the goal of a university should be.
At the very top of Harvard's mission page it says, "Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world."
There is NOWHERE where they say anything even remotely like, "Our goal is to reward students who do well in high school coursework and testing." Nor do they say anything like, "The mission of Harvard is to teach as much academic material to students as possible."
In contrast Caltech says, "The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society."
It's much more focused on solving science and tech problems and a focus on educating outstanding students. There is very little here about leadership.
And so you tend to see that CalTech has some of the top scientists and professors in the world. At the same time, even in tech/science companies, they occupy a small percentage of CEOs. Those aren't the people they are intending to nurture.
There's room for different types of education with different goals and metrics, including admissions metrics.
And anyone can create a university and say,"We look at grades and test score. We don't ask for recs or essays. Don't care about what your goals are. We stack rank based on GPASATAPs and then select the top N." That's a perfectly valid approach. I wouldn't want to go to that school, but it sounds like there are some students who would, and I wouldn't object to it.
I am not that knowledgeable with US law, but to my understanding, U.S department of education has a policy for higher education, based on the Higher Education Act of 1965, as well as educational policies set forth by Congress. The higher education act references universities as part of what it regulate.
So if I would attempt with a universal definition of what the goal of a university, it would start by being an institution that complies with the standards set by the Higher Education Act and is accredited by the U.S department of education. As part of the formal education system, the goal of the regulations and laws will be enforced onto those classified under it.
Which returns me to my original question. What benefit is there to be classified as formal education if they don't share the intention (and goals) of the formal education system?
In reality though, Harvard actually educates perfectly ordinary physicians, engineers, etc., and I assume that the vast majority of their output consists of relatively ordinary people.
What people need isn't leaders, but the capacity for decentralised self-organisation.
Their decision to make education into finding or creating leaders is, I think, a terrible mistake and socially dangerous, and in a way exclusionary. If they are truly successful and are able to notice natural leaders and bring them into their institutions that might well channel the capacity of ordinary people away from decentralised self-organisation and into a pure elite society.
As so many people who hate the Ivies tell me, you can get just a good of an education at your local CC and state college. That option is available and they don't have the emphasis on leaders and they also tend to accept most people who are qualified.
The reasons people want to go to Harvard aren't simply because of the academics to be ordinary engineers.
I'm a Swede. I don't care about Harvard myself. But here in Sweden we some historically excellent universities, and some places that were a little second rate as we viewed it.
But the Germans don't care. If they get to be called professor they're happy, so they come, and they become professors at these once second rate universities, and then they put out research that is as good as any, and they have PhD students and everything, and the end result is that it's basically transformed our old second rate institutions into places actually producing good research; and apparently this is the way it is Germany. All their universities produce good research.
I think the future here, in the long run, is it should be that it won't matter where you go, only what you do, and I think that's something which should be, not just embraced universally, but pushed for deliberately, in all countries. If Harvard is really successful in finding potential leaders, then they are dangerous to society.
Furthermore, most of Harvard's graduates will be ordinary engineers, or ordinary physicians or ordinary practitioners of some field, whether it's what they studied.
And yea, most of Harvards grads will be ordinary. And they could’ve just have easily gone to UMass. But a higher percentage will be leaders. And that’s the reason they admit who they do.
Essentially, the Germans are turning all the schools that I would have dismissed as 'what even is this' into something respectable, churning out good research, churning out good PhD students, etc.
Because they don't dismiss the places that I had dismissed, they transformed them.
Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?
I don’t think most people are denied based on any specific thing. Asians attend these elite schools at much higher rates than their population. If there was a school that admitted based on grades and test scores only they’d probably be even more highly represented.
College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.
The thing is, acceptance at these elite universities is _highly_ correlated with academic performance. It’s just that different racial groups are admitted in different ranges. You won’t find a single Asian at Harvard at or below the median Black SAT score. The range to be accepted as an Asian is also higher than Whites, which is higher than Latinos, which is higher than Blacks. How can you possibly explain this if it’s not a quota system based on race?
I don't think this is true. First, I don't think the SAT data exists for Harvard broken down in this way (if you have it, please link it). Furthermore, there were Asian students accepted in the 2nd and 3rd decile -- this is below the average for African American students almost certainly. So, I find your claim very likely to be false.
Now if you said that admissions has favored African American students in the Affirmative Action era over Asian students then I'd agree. But Affirmative Action is also over per last year's Supreme Court decision.
It's not just Black students over Asians, it is the entire gradient I outlined, and they continue to use race in admissions, they just obfuscate the reasons now.
Again, the statement you made earlier seems almost surely false.
And how do you know they continue to use race? You have access to data that the rest of us don't? Again, if you have data to support your claims then post a link.
How do you know MIT isn’t now discriminating against Black students? How do you know what MIT metrics? Maybe it only cares about test scores and not other aspects? Also MIT is a D3 school, or a D1 school.
> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
They're objective measures (don't depend on the person applying them), created subjectively (people choosing criteria based on their preferences/ideas), and chosen subjectively (people deciding which ones they want to rely on more). I meant objective originally, as in many people claim the whole process is objective.
They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of:
1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success
2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success
3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2).
Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success.
They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1).
By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end.
The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable?
Also, bullshit on IQ tests. They do reliably predict a number of socioeconomic factors, so I suppose they’re a great way to keep the poors out. How very “enlightened” of you.
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard?
Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
When the "other side" is pretty much evil, yeah, you are the good guys. Like, by default. I would even go so far to say Harvard could do much, much worse and they would still be the good guys.
On a closely related note, you are legitimately out of touch with reality if you believe any part of this is done with the intention of "merit". This is done to strengthen allegiance to MAGA and conservative ideology.
Does that sound a bit scary and fascist-like? You decide. But it's explicitly stated as the goal of this constriction on higher education in Project 2025. So, take it up with them, not me.
Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
This administration has ZERO credibility to define what "merit" is.
> Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
Are you referring to the defense secretary Pete Hegseth? He also attended Harvard so clearly there's some intersection in how both Harvard and the Trump administration evaluate candidates.
Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.
If the Trump admin could directly control admission, I truly believe future classes would consist of close to 100% far right leaning ("anti-woke") WASP types.
It really isn't. Harvard used to be a special cultural institution now it's just another research institute. Whoopee, nothing can be special, everything has to all be the same gray sludge cause otherwise it isn't """fair"""
While I agree with this, if you read the letter of demands from the administration I don't think Harvard had any choice. I think the letter was much more egregious than what the Columbia demands were (at least from what I read about the Colombia demands). I think if Harvard had acquiesed it wouldn't have much reason to exist anymore, and I say this as a Harvard alum who took plenty of issue with the direction of the university in recent years.
In contrast, most of the demands I read for Columbia, except for the one about putting the Middle Eastern studies department under some sort of "conservatorship", seemed relatively reasonable to me if they hadn't come from the barrel of a gun and from an administration who has clearly defined any criticism of Israel and any support for Palestinians as anti-Semitism.
> Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
I'm not so sure. The Harvard endowment is huge. I might not be so much "moral fiber" as having enough fuck you money that risks don't matter as much as they do to others.
No. This fight will be much bigger than money. It’s true they have money, but this will be a literal fight of academic freedom against authoritarianism.
More of that! When a mountain of old money is suddenly put at risk, it can easily be mistaken as moral fiber. We will see if Harvard suddenly decides to defend others, or just fend for itself.
Maybe? Or maybe they realize that they will lose all future credibility with students, government and NGO's if they bow to the conservative & Christian right?
There are two outcomes for the the current American government situation - a slide in to authoritarianism (it's right there in Project 2025), or these wackjobs get voted out because they are destroying global financial stability.
If it's the former, Harvard eventually has to cave because literal Nazi's.
If it's the latter, Harvard is screwed if they capitulate.
The thing is there's really no choice. The version of Harvard we get if they cave is the same as burning it all down. It would be dead as an educational institution and would only serve to foster the same kind of insane doublethink that leads people to ask for "diversity in viewpoints" at the same time they ask for the removal of the viewpoints they disagree with.
Yes, I doubt they're cool with the ideas in the letter like the federal government auditing everyone's "viewpoint diversity" and mandating staffing changes to fit what the federal government wants.
I don't know, is it moral to give legitimacy and a platform to someone like J. Mark Ramseyer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mark_Ramseyer)? Less clear example would be keeping around Roland Fryer.
I find that very few people and even fewer institutions are consistently always on the right side of things morally, even in very clear-cut cases (never mind that what exactly the "moral thing" is, is a whole discussion in itself). It's probably better to look at the overall pattern rather than a incidents (either good or bad).
I have no opinion on Harvard myself by the way; I don't know enough about it. I'm just saying this is not an especially good criticism.
This is the only correct response, but I don't think I'm being overly cynical in thinking they're being opportunistic either.
They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to unfashionable political views being silenced, so there's a pinch of hypocrisy in making such a show of standing for openness.
It's my understanding that the issue is not that they're "espousing the right views" but rather that they have the constitutional right as a private institution to espouse whatever views their students and faculty want under the first amendment.
right, freedom of speech is free as long as it agrees with the viewpoint of who's in power. similar to how history is written by victors but this part is conveniently ignored. it's just facts in the open marketplace of ideas yay!
I mean, while this is the only correct response, it could still cost Harvard around $9 billion, which isn't chump change, even for Harvard.
And while I agree and have been disgusted with Harvard's slow slide to demanding ideological conformity over the past decade plus (e.g. https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...), I believe they have made some belated changes in the right direction over the past year.
The Federal government making funding to a university contingent on them "reforming" specifically named departments whose foreign policy views the executive branch disagrees with (Israel/Palestine policy) seems like a clear violation of the First Amendment.
They are deporting permanent residents for op-eds.
One permanent resident was sent to a concentration camp in El Salvator without due process, none over speech yet that I know of but his was for being spuriously labeled a terrorist.
Good. I think Harvard has faltered a bit recently with academic integrity scandals, but they are still well-respected overall. Them standing up for students is an important signal to other less high-profile schools that they can do the same.
We are well past the point where in a future history class a student will raise their hand and ask 'Why didn't anyone stop them?' followed by 'Why were so many people members of that party?'
All of the information is saved, it's going to be interesting to study, the first "class" of people to leave are the ones from tech, you know, the backbone of USA services, it's going to be interesting, it's going to be an economy fall that didn't happen in Nazi Germany
No mention of anti-Asian discrimination? It made big rounds in all the American media circles a few years back, and if memory serves, MAGA boarded that train too.
MAGA loves to say how universities screw over poor hard-working Asian students, and then they turn around and defund universities and fire researchers. Their pity on Asians is not sincere, because they detest higher education in the first place.
And I'm saying this as an Asian father whose kid is going to a US college this year.
Harvard was one of the universities "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students", so I'm not sure the criticism holds, especially when the government's letter is asking for merit based admissions reform.
Are there other universities that weren't discriminating against Asians that the government has or has moved to defund?
> Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What came out of the documents in that court case was used as research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was published[2], so we can see very well how they were screwing over poor, hard-working Asian students.
> Data on admissions—particularly at elite universities—is tightly guarded, making it challenging to identify both the students who benefit from racial preferences and the importance of race in admissions decisions… The data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC lawsuits are important because they make it possible to look behind the admissions veil to see how racial preferences operate.
It wasn't just Harvard, the University of North Carolina was included. The poor part is handled right there in the abstract:
> Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs [under-represented minorities] from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Echoed later on:
> Those who benefit the most from racial preferences (at least in terms of advantages in admissions) are those who come from higher socioeconomic status homes.
Asians weren't and probably still aren't benefitting from this, as:
> Looking first at the applicant columns, African Americans are most likely to be labeled disadvantaged followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites.
So not only do these "diversity" policies hurt Asians, they don't even help black Americans from lower socioeconomic classes, which seems to me to make all of it racist, including against black Americans - the ones most purported to be helped by this - and even against disadvantaged whites, who lose a whopping 25% of their chance to be admitted:
> a white, male, disadvantaged applicant with a 5% chance of admissions would only see his admissions probability rise to 32.1% if he were instead treated as an African American applicant
But the easiest misdeed to see is that done against Asians, hence the lawsuit.
These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. Once they got the SCOTUS win and affirmative action was toast, they quickly moved on from fighting anti-Asian hate to a new fig-leaf/tool to useful for fighting the next ideological battle, which was prominent protests against government policy, which happened to be pro-Palestine, so this is the best tool for the job.
The messaging is very similar too, conflating pro-diversity with anti-whiteness, or anti-asian when needed, and now redefining being pro-Palestine as anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas. It's dumb, lacks nuance, but effective when the Fifth estate is pliant, co-opted or otherwise ineffective.
Asians are not a uniform block. They forget, often, just like every other ethnicity. Or they convince themselves that the values are actually still being held.
Good points. But they did open themselves up to this by blatantly discriminating against Asian students. I mean, "you have an ulterior motive in arguing against our hugely racist policies" is not a great defense.
Harvard, as an institution capable of sustaining itself without relying on federal funding, bears a heightened responsibility to champion academic freedom and intellectual independence. Its financial independence positions it to defend these principles more vigorously than universities with fewer resources, which may face similar pressures but lack comparable institutional stability to resist government overreach.
I predict a surge of alumni donations in the weeks and months to come, not just at Harvard but also at other institutions that are showing their willingness to stand up against the creeping fascism of the current administration.
I think people who value education, academic freedom, and understand the economic and societal role that universities play, were hoping to see one or more of the major institutions stand up for these principles.
I found harvard’s letter a poor attempt to articulate just how authoritarian the demands are, and how they undermine the very idea of a university. How leaders of such a prestigious university refuse to place what’s going on in historical context is sad. But it’s educational: now I have a better understanding of how the nazis came to power.
not a perfect comparison, but a useful starting point.
If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
Well one thing is for sure: it's not a coincidence that after they determined that it was impossible to get him back, they've changed the narrative to "no mistake was made" (and begun throwing around the magic word "terrorist" which justifies all sorts of things).
> after they determined that it was impossible to get him back
This phrasing buys into the Trump admin's narrative.
They did not determine that it was impossible to get him back. They have chosen to not pursue it. They refuse to define the agreement between the US and El Salvador sufficiently for anyone to know what is or is not possible through that path. They also seem to refuse to use political or financial influence to go beyond whatever that agreement may define.
If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
No society is free where government makes one person's liberty depend upon the arbitrary will of another. Dictatorships have done this since time immemorial. They do now. Russian laws of 1934 authorized the People's Commissariat to imprison, banish and exile Russian citizens as well as "foreign subjects who are socially dangerous."' Hitler's secret police were given like powers. German courts were forbidden to make any inquiry whatever as to the information on which the police acted. Our Bill of Rights was written to prevent such oppressive practices. Under it this Nation has fostered and protected individual freedom.
The Founders abhorred arbitrary one-man imprisonments. Their belief was--our constitutional principles are-that no person of any faith, rich or poor, high or low, native or foreigner, white or colored, can have his life, liberty or property taken "without due process of law." This means to me that neither the federal police nor federal prosecutors nor any other governmental official, whatever his title, can put or keep people in prison without accountability to courts of justice. It means that individual liberty is too highly prized in this country to allow executive officials to imprison and hold people on the basis of information kept secret from courts. It means that Mezei should not be deprived of his liberty indefinitely except as the result of a fair open court hearing in which evidence is appraised by the court, not by the prosecutor
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.
Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.
Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
Respect for rule of law and democratic norms. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
And University of Washington and University of California on the west coast, although he's not directly threatening them. Rather, his HHS appointment has just quietly pulled all of the funding for their medical and biological research programs.
> How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling LLP, and Elias Law Group are fighting Trump's executive order. Those are 3 of the biggest law firms in the US. As far as I know only two major firms have made deals with Trump while many are sitting quiet but not everyone is cowering.
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
It would have been water under the bridge if him and his cronies all got perpetuity starting jan 7th and we never heard of them ever again. Instead the dems chose a demonstration of weakness, and showed that an attempt on our democracy would be punished by a strong worded reprimand, at best.
Plenty of blame to go around including for the Democrats.
Responsibility for Merrick Garland's failure to adequately pursue Trump lies at Joe Biden's feet and will likely be the thing he is remembered for most in the history books* despite the fact that he had some decent domestic policy (and some horrific foreign policy).
* (assuming we work our way out of the current mess, if we don't he will be remembered for far worse things given that he's Trump's reflexive whipping boy despite the fact that it makes Trump look weak to keep droning on about Biden)
> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
I think people frequently forget that the North didn't actually have the firepower to stamp out the ideology.
Like any ideology, you can't actually destroy it with force any other way than burning books and, eventually, men.
And whether or not that would have been wise: the war was extremely costly for the North and there was a non-zero chance that if they started dropping every third Southerner from the gallows the federal government would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the survivors on both sides of the Mason-Dixon and that'd be it.
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
I get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.
You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.
You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.
Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.
I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.
Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.
Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.
I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.
I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.
The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.
Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.
In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
> universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds
Agree. I don’t think they should accept federal funds to the extent that they do. Maybe it’s time for elite institutions to get past the 70s camp era and start behaving (and wielding the power of) being elite.
It’s current year. They might hobble along for a few years without federal funding but they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions.
> they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions
Why? The funding chased their reputations during the world wars. There are plenty of ways of collaborating on expensive research facilities with the federal government while keeping a boundary between church and state within the elite halls.
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
> there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population
Not in any meaningful way. And not in a way that would have mattered.
The elite universities got into this hole by trying to court pedestrian approval. Trump is at war with the professional managerial class, not the elites. Harvard’s brand remains unimpeached among the latter. Return to serving that group and ignore the broader population.
$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
Is there any evidence that we've been "blindly" pumping money into academia? Funding agencies are part of the federal budget and don't just get everything they ask for. Then those agencies have all sorts of review procedures for choosing grant awardees.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa
edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument isn't good
When the guy lifting your TV starts quoting Marx at you, it's not actually an invitation to engage in philosophical discourse, and no amount of sound economic reasoning is getting your TV back.
The Trump administration is not, has not, and will not be arguing in good faith. Stop pretending we're working collaboratively towards a shared future - they're either stealing your television or stealing your neighbor's television, and attempts to interrogate the merits of their television relocation policy aren't shedding any actual light to the situation.
@TimorousBestie (I can't reply inline due to comment depth)
I didn't say fund harvard xor fund local schools, I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets. The comment I'm replying to is who implies I must support harvard funding xor I must support trump, "the people who want to hurt harvard", I don't think that's true. I'm allowed to think federal funds for academia are too high and also think Trump is bad for the country
A place that has all the facilities, faculty and pedigree to pull some of the best researchers from all over the world. It's in fact crazy that Harvard, or any R1 university, wouldn't get a large amount of research dollars from the federal government.
Sure, but you can understand the perspective of someone growing up with zero access to those resources and lives in a rural part of the country hearing your argument and then voting for someone like trump, I would argue that sentiment is one of the forces driving regular people away from democrats and lost them the election in 2024, it is an "ivory tower" perspective and regular americans don't buy it (even if it's true that harvard is a great investment for public money)
I agree the democrats have terrible messaging, but what would really help 'regular' Americans is universal healthcare, free education, and maybe even UBI. As departments get DOGE'd a lot of 'regular' Americans are starting to find out where a lot of federal money goes, to those rural parts of the country.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.
The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
> More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
1) Granting that giving more power to tenured professors would be a good thing, in what way is it legal, wise, or good for the executive branch to achieve this in the absence of any law by strong arming individual private institutions that it has decided to target on ad hoc basis?
2) You are reading selectively, it says "fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter" [emphasis mine]. So in other words, it is a requirement that the university give power to those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration. This is a very clear and alarming violation of the first amendment.
In toto, the letter is an attempt to impose ideological reform in a private institution, and is part of a wider attempt by the current administration to browbeat or subvert every institution that might act to curtail (or even speak out against) its actions.
I read "the changes indicated in this letter" to mean "removing power from non academic activists"
While I kinda agree that can also be taken to mean "those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration", it still means those calling the shots are the non academic activists not aligned with an ideology of promoting academic merit....
That sentence (from the letter) makes no sense. An activist isn't someone with power to do something. If they had that power, they wouldn't be advocating it, they would do it.
What that insisting the University do is shut down people talking and protesting with viewpoints they disagree with. They list those viewpoints in their letter: "..., Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild". The pro Israeli protests that happened aren't mentioned. If they get away with this, I'm sure a lot more viewpoints will follow.
This isn't about powers. It's about controlling what people can and can not say on a University campus.
>An activist isn't someone with power to do something
Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
> Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
Nope. They literally spell out the activity they want banned in their letter. Have you read it? LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
Yes, discontinuation of DEI is one thing they are asking for. But they aren't (yet) the calling for banning "hispanic homosexuals" or any other DEI group on campus. They aren't asking for discussions about them to be banned. That would be a little awkward, as I'm sure they warn to encourage discussions disparaging them. Nowhere in the section on dismantling DEI do they use the term activists.
Kicking out activists is another thing they are asking for, in a different section. They list the sorts of activists they want kicked out. Right now it's a short list that boils down to protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza. DEI is not mentioned anywhere in the section, nor are any of the groups DEI typically encompasses. I have no doubt that if Harvard did acquiesce the list will be expanded to everything the administration disagrees with - for example protesting about abolishing DEI. But that's for the future.
It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues they want dealt with in different ways. One is a policy they want dropped, the other is a group they want shut down. What is not so clear is why you are so keen to conflate the two issues. Are you keen to get "hispanic homosexuals", and any other sub-group you don't like banned from campuses?
Just for clarity, do I have this right: You think people who protest Israel’s handing of Gaza are mostly people favoured by DEI, you think "hispanic homosexuals" are favoured by DEI at Harvard, and you think someone who is a "hispanic homosexual" and others that fall under DEI invariably have zero academic credibility?
I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class are mostly the same racist dumbasses that think being black or hispanic or sexually deviant automatically qualifies you for additional tax payer funds.
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
> I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class
Again for clarity: blocking those students have been ruled illegal: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/14/ucla... so no invention from the Whitehouse was needed. Unlike the Whitehouse, the university involved feels compelled to follow the law, so that's the end of the matter. It also wasn't necessary at Harvard as it didn't happen at Harvard, so that can't be the reason it was included in their letter of demand.
The government is giving them money, the letter is informing them they will stop funding them if those committing crimes (racism is the crime here) are not removed from offices of power within the institution.
So Harvards response is to vigorously defend their right to hire racist criminals. They of course have that right.
But the US Government is also well within their rights to no longer fund them anymore in that situation. Which I'm pretty sure will be the only hard outcome from Harvards response.
They absolutely have the right to not cooperate, the US govt has no obligation to fund racist crayon munching idiots.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
that's 10 cents per american (still crazy!), but not $30, and $30 is only for Harvard much less how much federal funds go to other schools
Obviously I'd rather that 10 cents go to something productive, but on the national stage trump golfing feels like just a distraction from much more important topics
> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
Small towns overwhelmingly get more federal dollars than they put in. Big cities subsidize small towns.
>it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Because Americans in small towns overwhelmingly vote for people who lower taxes for rich people and promise not reduce the scope of government. Instead of blaming Harvard, why don't you ask your neighbors why they like to vote for people who refuse to help them?
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Are there world-class research facilities in your small town? Why would it be hard for you to see it makes sense for billions to be spent on research at world-class facilities with world-class scientists?
FWIW, chances are whatever local state university nearby also receives quite a bit from federal grants as well. But it probably scales based on the research facilities and staff actually there. Do you think it would be better management of federal resources to instead spend the same amount at facilities that don't do nearly as impactful or nearly as much research?
These are grants for specific research. Researchers put together proposals to study things, the federal government decides that's something worth looking into, and funding gets cut (simplified). Harvard has a lot of people doing pretty fancy research, so it makes sense they'd have a lot of grant proposals requiring fancy and expensive things. Complain to your state legislature for not focusing on making your local university a research university if you feel your area should be getting more of these grants. But let me guess, you probably voted for people who argued for lower taxes. Gee, I wonder what they found to cut...
And FWIW the federal government spends a bunch on a lot of small-town America. FEMA grants for emergency preparedness comes to mind. A higher percentage of populations of small-town America live off federal aid programs. Small-town America also sees more of its school funding from federal sources and grants.
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
The democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare and free higher education it feels like forever. UBI has even come up a few times. Nothing that Trump is doing is for anyone but himself and his rich friends.
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.
Even if Harvard wanted to comply with the government letter, it's full of so many non-sequiturs and self-conflictions that it reads more like a piece of satire:
> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity
> In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023
> Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming
The letter is a complete joke. Giving it any sort of compliance would be giving validation to a set of rules that are literally impossible to follow by design. There is literally nothing Harvard could do to not be in trouble later.
Also buried in the letter is this gem:
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
This is Maoist-style social reform through and through.
Ah yes I've heard of that, it's one of the "Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias" which most fuels antisemitic harassment and reflects ideological capture!
It seems like the government has a soft Monopsony. There are many universities willing to sell research, but the government is the biggest buyer and controls the research grant market
Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.
When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.
Research is often (usually?) the property of the host university, though. Yeah labs are independently managed but the university is in at least one sense, and imo many more, still the institution both doing and selling the work
By default, research belongs to the researchers. That's an essential part of academic freedom. The main exceptions are research funded by grants and contracts that specify otherwise, and when you start looking for patents and other commercialization opportunities.
In other words, the university may have some property rights to your work if you deal too closely with for-profit businesses or national security interests. But if you are just doing normal research with normal grants, you'll probably never see those exceptions in your career.
This isn't close to a monopsony but it's more directionally correct than it is wrong. Keep in mind research institutes can be funded by private foundations, state and local governments, industry (e.g. pharma), venture, or even foreign governments. The federal government is undoubtedly the largest buyer though. I do think there are other motivations to rely primarily on federal grants beyond number of dollars. In particular, funding sources other than federal grant money is often looked down on from an academic prestige perspective. Until now federal money came with very few strings attached compared to the perceived loss of objectivity that could occur when receiving money from other sources. The current situation may alter or relax the prevailing view on which sources of research money are perceived of as potentially compromising.
It's not a very good analogy because federally-funded research is a public investment, a public good like roads. The research is supported by the public (the government) and becomes available for anyone to use, learn from, and build off of. And in fact most successful U.S. business are built on the backs of technological innovation that was originally funded by the government, or at the very least, innovation from PhD's whose educations were largely federally funded. (Disclaimer: federally funded researcher)
You couldn't replace that with a private company "buying" research and expect the same societal benefits.
Anyone whose research is profitable is free to work for a private entity. The government is a "monopsony" in "buying" unprofitable research the same way it's a "monopsony" subsidizing any industry that would otherwise fail in a free market. That is not typically how the concept of monopsony is meant.
Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.
This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.
I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.
However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.
> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.
According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.
Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.
Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.
It’ll be nice if an institution finally decides to oppose some of the recent government overreach.
It’s really shocking to see an institution in our country take action that is not in its immediate financial best interest (assuming this letter translates to an action)
and they've been painting political enemies as criminals. It's pretty much the same situation as Russia/Putin but at an earlier stage of its development, and people want to avoid being the tallest grass that gets mowed.
It's good that some institutions are standing up but I don't expect it to go well for them.
He also said Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor may have committed treason for criticizing him as president after signing an executive order to investigate them.
These people (not only MAGA) perverted the very meaning of antisemitism to the point that it means nothing today. I am saying that as someone who's lost a family member to Holocaust. When I hear someone mention antisemitism today, 90% of the time it is to punish someone's views critical of Israel.
Which is, of course, deeply antisemitic of the people claiming antisemitism when they are talking about only criticism of Israel, to equate all Jewish people with the Israeli state.
When I was active on the Politics Stack Exchange site years ago I was "reported to the ADL" for merging the [jews] and [judaism] tags. Right out of the gate after I casually mentioned it in another discussion: not even a big fight about it. But the same person outright ignored the Trump-supporting holocaust denying user who harrassed a Jewish user with antisemitic slurs such (e.g. [1]).
Sadly antisemitism obviously exists, and sadly some pro-Palestinian activists have veered off into antisemitism. But the selective outrage is hard to take serious.
Remember, Caesar subjugated Gaul and killed or enslaved about a quarter of all Gauls in the process, to "protect" them from invading Germanic tribes. "Top kek", as I believe the old Latin saying goes.
Governments have a monopoly on violence in exchange for protected and upholding our privileged rights. When any government start disregarding that contract, so too can the populous.
Can someone confirm that if Harvard turned down Pell Grants and Federal student support, they could admit whoever they want?
>Private clubs are generally exempt from anti-discrimination laws under certain conditions. For example, being genuinely private and not engaging in business with non-members. However, there are exceptions to these exemptions. For instance, when a club receives significant government benefits or operates as a commercial enterprise.
They could. Look up Bob Jones College or Hillsdale College, both of which operate without any federal funding. It appears that the elite universities are going to find out the same thing that the small Christian universities found out in the 1970s, which is that the federal government Can control you if they fund you. I believe Bob Jones in particular won a case in front of the Supreme Court giving them the right to racially discriminate in their admissions if they refuse to take any federal funding.
They recently closed their Middle Eastern studies department. Absolutely insane tbh. Imagine closing a center of Asian or African studies because the president wants to make his Jewish daughter and some rich donors of his happy. How can we be okay with any of this. They caved there. The only reasoning for this response is it infringes on their sovereignty. But make no mistake, every institution rolled back DEI and other initiatives for this admin. Hoping Alan will do what is right. Reinstate that department. Double down on fighting the admin in court. America will not be held hostage by a wanna-be autocrat, a foreign power or those who swear allegiance to Isra-el over American ideals and education in these United States. Silencing dissent in institutions of learning is tyrannical.
>It’s more like a patchwork of locked treasure chests, each with its own key and its own label: this one funds scholarships, that one supports cancer research, another pays for upkeep on a library.
Explain why direct donations cannot accomplish the same. I suspect that universities want endowment donations because they grow tax free.
My understanding is that a large part of endowments comes from large (really, huge) donations.
If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
It's not entirely about what the organization wants, but also what the donators/sponsors want.
>If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
You can make that restricted donation outside of the endowment. I thought endowments were for the support of students, not research.
As information, the current administration is doing similar demands to foreign universities, trying to impose the point of view of the world in a president we didn't vote for.
Here is an article about the Trump administration demands to our universities.
Wasn't Harvard's president a woman who wrote her PhD thesis on DEI? I vaguely remember the news about this (fraud or something). If this is what Harvard considers that the person for the job, I think the sense making apparatus of Harvard personnel is specifically tuned to not bend the knee in this case. The instrument would likely fail at the input validation step and not proceed to the sense making portion.
There really is no incentive to compromise with the Trump Admin on anything. Even if you cave, they just go for more. You need to act like a cornered animal and not expect honest negotiation.
OTOH if Trump admin WAS at all rational partners they could be extracting historic changes from these institutions. But they won’t.
> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.
While I am not a friend of a mask ban, universities should absolutely teach their students to stay home when sick. Going to work sick is an abomination that should be rooted out. And it is a nice liberal cause too.
If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.
What if they have pollen or other allergies that masks help mitigate? What if there’s a huge forest fire that’s polluting the outside air with acrid smoke?
There are so many possible scenarios. What if the campus is infested with face-huggers from the award-winning movie Alien? What if there are still Jewish students and faculty members who need to be harassed anonymously?
I'll leave those to people more familiar with the subject. And as for the pneumonia scenario, I reiterate that the only sane course of action is to seek treatment, not to walk around public spaces, masked or not.
This is a larger idea, just tangentially related to this particular case.
In 2011 there was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement that argued that many of the financial problems we saw in 2008 were a result of a 1% of wealthy business people who were prioritizing their own wealth over the needs of the populations of the countries they operated within. I mean, they created a financial crisis by inventing obviously risky financial assets based on peoples housing. They knew it was a house of cards that would fall in time but they did it anyway with callous disregard to the inevitable human cost.
It was in the wake of that the "wokeness" became a buzzword, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, corporate policies were amended, management teams were upended, advertising campaigns were aligned to this new focus. Women, minorities and marginalized groups were championed and ushered in to key public positions. In a brief 14 years, then entire garbage dump of modern capitalism was placed like a hot potato into the hands of a new naively optimistic crew. This coincided with huge money printing and zero percent interest rate, the likes of which we haven't seen. That new elite grew in wealth, stature and public focus. They became the face of the "system" as if they had created it instead of inheriting it.
And now that the zero interest rates are done and suddenly everyone believes in the scary size of the deficit and the ballooning debt, the people sitting in power as we are about to actually feel the crash instead of just kicking it down the road yet again, those people are the target of public ire. I actually see people in these very comments acting as if the looming crash was caused by the DEI departments which formed just a little over a decade ago.
And guess who is coming back to claim they will save us from these DEI monsters? The people who created the actual mess in the first place. Yet now, instead of calling for their heads on spikes like the public was in 2011, we are literally begging them to save us from these DEI proponents.
Our anger has been redirected away from the wealthy and towards the minorities with such skill I almost admire it. The collective anger at DEI is at such a level that we are willing to cede core rights just to damage them.
This is spot on. The US has enjoyed enormous wealth and prosperity, but it's been mostly captured by the top 1% of private individuals. The GOP has done a masterful job redirecting the blame to China, DEI, immigration, etc... when the real problem is that we have not spread around the prosperity through programs like universal healthcare, free college, and heck, even UBI.
Ooh, I am jealous. A close family member has been branded egregious by various acting members of the current administration. I guess I am going to need to up my game if I want to be able to hold my head high at family gatherings.
> For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities
yep. stop doing that. your university is nearly half a millennium old, and everything from the last century will be a footnote. you are a networking ground for upper class society, not an upwards mobility machine for the plebians. just go back to your roots and you won't have any of these issues.
> These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history.
privately fund it now that its a proven method. this obviously won't be controversial in the future. if its economically impossible then it won't happen, the end.
My father works for a big pharma company, which means they have to listen to the federal government or risk being shut down by the FDA (which would be easy for Trump to do).
He uses this an excuse for the company's complacency, and by extension, his own. I'm glad to see some institutions take a stand.
I think the only way for the universities to escape this blackmail trap is to bind together in their response, refuting the Trump's claims that they're not doing enough to "stop antisemitism" (obviously a cover chosen by the WH because it immediately gathers public sympathy), and reject Trump's demands. If they cave in now, it will be used against them again.
Take the haircut and wait for either the next presidential elections, or maybe midterms if the GOP gets pummeled because of this and starts standing up to Trump. One thing we've seen about Trump is that he fairly easily reverses course when the right pressure is applied.
Granted Harvard's in an easier place than most, but I predict Columbia will come to seriously regret their decision.
What jumps out at me is the paragraph: "Governance and leadership reforms." in the original letter sent by the government to the university.
The other stuff is hard to make sense of, but this part is crystal clear: The authoritarian government is asking the university to restructure itself along more authoritarian lines. ...essentially Trump wants continuity of reporting lines ultimately leading up to him, and going down to the individual faculty member, student, and foreign collaborating partner. That sort of thing could come in handy for all kinds of things in the future, not just the silly demands of the present.
The current administration have interrupted the pipeline of students to research - current research funded or partially funded by federal government is stopping or will be curtailed and future students will question whether is a rational decision to go into any sort of path that leads to research because it would only be stable for maybe two to three years, assuming a sane, science respecting House, Senate and President were in office and used the regular norms to pass bills and implement programs. I do not see a recovery path from this unless American public gets a similar thrashing like the Great Depression and decides to not elect nut jobs for 50 years. I keep seeing interviews with those who vote for Trump and are hurt by his tariffs or immigration changes and insisting they still support Trump. Those (mostly older) people are going to have to die of natural causes and be replaced by demographic shifts before things change, but the last election showing young men shifting to Trump and this administration trying to suppress the vote of women does not point to this.
> As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”
This is already a shift on Harvard's part. When the ruling first came out, they announced they'd be finding ways around the ruling so they could keep doing what they'd been doing (i.e. discriminate against Asians by systematically scoring them low on "personality.")
I think it's also important to point out the auditing and spying the government is asking the universities to comply with including the whistle blower section and things like - "report all requested immigration and related
information to the United States Department of Homeland Security".
It appears that because it's easier to bully, punish and disappear individuals than an institution the Trump administration is doing everything it can to find out who these individuals are so they can be targeted.
The preponderance of academic and philosophical disingenuity — which could only be equally well explained by immensely subpar raw intellect (doubtful on HN) — in this very comment section perfectly illustrates why DJT was elected POTUS.
General strike when >50% of those who voted wanted this? What world are you living in?
Edit: I stand corrected, 49.81%. It doesn't change the point much. Especially when that ~49% includes many "working class"[1] voters. Who's going to participate in this general strike? A bunch of office workers?
> Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
You're describing a coup or revolution. Isn't that highly anti-democratic considering this president just won an election? Why should the 50% be under the thumb of the 3.5%?
If the 50% can't or won't promise me that they won't ship me to El Salvador in a few years, I don't much care about abstract political principles until their power is broken.
It's a weak response, in that it accepts the Trump Administration's position on antisemitism. This is tied to the broad definition of antisemitism which includes acts by the State of Israel.[1] That definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. There's a more balanced definition called the Jerusalem Declaration here.[2][3]
This will lead to a controversial discussion, so I'll stop here, with the comment that getting involved in religious wars of other countries hasn't gone well for the US. The US has constitutional freedom of religion partly because the drafters of the constitution knew how that had gone in Europe.
"Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson
It's bad rhetoric. Using stronger, more direct language would have been much more effective at making their point and having their point reach a broader audience. We need leaders who refuse to comply with an authoritarian government and do so with proud defiance. This message was meandering and weak.
Harvard has "fuck you money". They should go ahead and make it clear that they know they have this power and are expressing it (not necessarily with the vulgarity, yet)
This is welcome change, to they defend admisions discrimination on race, sex is beyond me.
They will fold, if federal funding is not enough, they will find other pressure points.
Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.
There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.
The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.
Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.
Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?
Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.
Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.
Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.
The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.
It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.
Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.
As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.
I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.
It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).
Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]
Do you have money in the bank? Do you have income? If so, you don't really need any help from the government. If you value your personal independence so much, then cut the cord.
Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.
Sure, that's the narrative to manufacture consent from the naive, but I don't buy it at all. Perhaps for very small fledgling universities that makes partial sense; even then I am skeptical. For Harvard, definitely not.
At very least, if your endowment is growing on an inflation-adjusted basis, it does not appear to me that you need further subsidies; your primary business is to be an hedge fund and the treasury of an empire, not education for the masses. Gains should be taxed like a hedge fund at that point.
If you want to subsidize education as a society, there are much better ways: fund research directly and cut through the indirect cost crap (which was popular among academics up until the moment the current administration started advocating for it).
> Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
I agree. Gulf monarchies will probably come in a give even more billions to these institutions anyway to make up for the losses. No strings attached of course...
Harvard probably already secured some more funding from Qatar and what not.
So, many of these universities were taken over in positions of power by people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries. They did this while describing themselves as open-minded institutions commited to everyone's success.
In the degree programs, they forced these beliefs on students in "diversity" classes, rewarded those on their side, and canceled or limited people with differing views. Those who make it through the process are more likely to force it on others in government and business, which they often do. Worse, being federally funded means taxpayers are paying for students' indoctrination in intersectionality and systematically discrimination it claimed to oppose.
Yeah, I want their funding cut entirely since theyre already rich as can be. I also would like to see those running it take it back to what it used to be. That's a Christian school balancing character and intellectual education. Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture. That is worth federal funding.
On top of it, how about these schools with billions in endowments put their money where their mouth is on social issues and start funding high-quality, community colleges and trade schools and Udemy-like programs everywhere? Why do they talk so much and take in so much money but do so little? (Credit to MIT for EdX and Harvard for its open courses.)
> people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries
Just like all people connecting to "Kevin Bacon", and all Wikipedia pages first links connecting to "Philosophy", every idea can be connected to mass murder if you're willing to manufacture enough links.
"Intersectionality" is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, idea. It promotes nothing.
More like it's two philosophies with similar elements originating from places where both were taught. In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
There's also large groups pushing this stuff in businesses, forcing it on all employees, under the banner of ESG. That includes Blackrock and World Economic Forum. There's billions of dollars behind forcing thus stuff on America. Yet, we still see voters rebelling against it, like by electing Trump, because they don't want our country to keep being ruined.
> In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
I think it is speculative. I haven't seen this happen beyond a small number of isolated cases, that generally are met poorly within the organization where it happens.
To my observation the association between "believing that intersectionality accurately describes the world today" and "attempting to force others to believe similarly", is about as strong as the association between "frequently voting Republican in the US since 2016", and "attempting to carry out a mass shooting".
Could you describe what you believe "intersectionality" to mean, as a philosophy?
"Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture."
...before "that is worth federal funding."
Such cherry picking in ways that misrepresent what is said, also common in liberal media, is one reason distrust in liberal politics is at an all-time high. Put the truth of what others said side by side with your own position, like I mentioned intersectionality with my counterpoint. See if your ideas stand up to scrutiny.
It's really not necessary since you had already invoked the notion that separation of Church and State isn't particularly important to your evaluation of what the government should fund. Everything else sort of falls by the wayside.
Trump is about making money for himself so he can boast. He doesn't care about this. I wonder who's really calling the shots, because, this is just the beginning.
At the same time, he feels he can (or he's testing) ignoring court orders. Where this meets in the middle will not be a good place.
The world should never forgive Americans for what they let the man they call their president get away with. Sending people to concentration camps, among many other despicable acts. "Wir haben es nicht gewußt".
Soooo you want freedom of speech but if you don't like what someone else is doing, you want to censor them?
And even the reps don't mind this?
How hypocratic do you have to be to want to get rid of the 'Wokeshit' which is freespeech while also advocating for free speech?
Btw. the real term for what type of speech radicals and nazis is abusive speech and yes there are good reasons why abusive speech should lead to consequences
> 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.
So alongside antisemitism, The other demand is for changes in intellect. For some reason this reeks of Christian evangelical movement to purge wokism and anti-Zionism, both of which have run counter to evangelical dogma.
I guess that Harvard probably does not need the Feds as much as the Feds need Harvard but I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists. I'm going to have to see what NYU is doing now.
The thing to remember is that these grants are their research budget. The endowment is largely earmarked for educational projects. Your average university professor is there because they want to do research, not because they want to teach - so the research budget is critical for educating as well.
I assume Harvard has a plan for dealing with this dynamic. They have some extremely smart people there, so I don't doubt they've found a way.
Its not clear what the effect no Harvard would be on those metrics. And all of those are necessarily in Harvards best interest to maintain too.
This is compared to a direct payment to sustain operations which the government is saying they may not be in favor of. But its not like Harvard would say ”it may not be in our interest to produce successful people anymore.”
Harvard isn't the first to be targeted, nor will they be the last.
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
> What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
Amongst others, legacy admissions and discrimination against Jews, Catholics and non-whites. Let’s not pretend that Harvard’s admissions process, or American society more generally, was some kind of perfect meritocracy in 1925.
Don't confuse the credential factory with the skills and quality of the underlying students. Harvard is little more than a toll booth for students who were already smart and over-achieving. It's not like the teaching is extraordinary.
A university research lab is controlled by usually one professor or a very small number of professors. They can decide to move to another university and take the lab with them.
Until recently, the US brand was where exceptional people wanted to go study and work. If you want to send the world's best and brightest to other countries that's fine, but it will have negative long term impacts on the US.
Most if not all of his cabinet (surprisingly) have an Ivy League background. Not sure if that's an endorsement on them, or an indictment on Ivy League schools
The GOP / Trump administration shows no real focus on employing experts, Trump shows no curiosity about anything. They're slashing research and science across the board department by department. They employ anti science people as heads of departments that require science.
I don't think the GOP & Trump thinks they need anything from Harvard other than agreeing to impose first amendment violations on others on behalf of the GOP and Trump.
Genuinely curious: what part of the federal government's letter to Harvard seems fascist to you?
Is the government asking a university to shift their bias away from skin color diversity to viewpoint diversity fascist?
Is there a historical parallel?
Or is it just the fact that the government is asking for reform, and any reform request would be considered fascist? If so, do you also consider the DEI reform requests fascist?
The section on "Student Discipline Reform and Accountability" is explicitly fascist. Harvard police must prevent/crush serious protests that cause disruption. Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy. Masking (even for valid medical reasons) is banned. (This lets you know that this has nothing to do with facts or diversity of viewpoints and everything to do with the supremacy of theirs.) The "Whistleblower Reporting and Protections" section is basically a demand for a hotline, direct to the government, to inform on anyone not toeing the line. The "Transparency and Monitoring" section makes it clear the government intends to monitor foreign students at Harvard closely.
This isn't quite 1930's Germany yet, but it's getting there. The next step to watch for would be any laws passed that regulate who can serve as faculty in universities or attempts to impose different leadership on universities that don't comply with demands.
You made several good points. While I am struggling to validate "Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy", it may be because I am unfamiliar with the actions of the student bodies listed at the end of the section, or maybe subtleties in the wording that I am missing that could be exploited later.
Also I find the mask-ban strange and alarming. That example alone was probably enough of a red flag for me to more carefully scrutinize the good-faith of the rest of the letter.
Thank you for taking the time to actually engage with me constructively. Unfortunately many others decided to just downvote my questions.
I find it so disappointing that on a forum like Hacker News I am being downvoted for asking a question in good faith in an attempt to better understand a complex and nuanced topic.
When I ask ChatGPT to explain Facism to me, two aspects it pointed out were:
- Suppression of political opposition, dissent, and individual freedoms.
- Use of state power to enforce conformity.
I can see how the letter from the government to Harvard would be considered use of state power to enforce conformity. As someone who is open minded trying to understand the truth, the letter on first pass reads like they are using state power to unwind enforced ideological conformity. This is confusing, because on its surface it seems anti-fascist, so when people label it fascist (with charged emotions), it's hard for me to take them at their word without further explanation.
When the people who are concerned about the current actions of the government attack me for asking questions in an effort to actually understand their concerns rather than just accepting them, it makes me more suspicious of their viewpoints, not less.
Also, ChatGPT's thorough explanation of Fascism indicated to me that both administrations have been showing signs of increasing fascism, almost complimenting each other in their policies as they rock the cultural and institutional trunk of the united states back and forth with ever increasing momentum until it tips over into catastrophe. If such is the case, then maybe the only hope is for people to engage in these thorny issues with curiosity and nuance, to carefully sift out the bad from the good instead of assuming that everything the other side is doing is evil.
I have no control over what other people do, all I have control over is my own actions. I don't see a good way out of this mess that doesn't involve curiosity, empathy, understanding and reconciliation. So I will continue engage in the conversation with these intentions, and if people attack me for that then I suppose to will just have to accept what's inevitable.
Universities and colleges are hotbeds of political protest. Take young people with poor impulse control, expose them to education and political literature, and let them freely associate (e.g. form student groups). They're going to question authority and government policy, often in an unruly manner. That's just how it goes. The thing is, when students are right, protests often spread to the rest of the population. That's why the letter makes explicit a concern about non-students being invited onto campus. The last thing any administration wants is for student groups to spark a big protest that sticks around for a bit and pulls in protesters from off-campus. That stuff will make the news every time!
Most governments recognize that large protests can influence public opinion against them. If you let such a protest occur and do nothing to satisfy the demands of the protesters, then things can get ugly quick. Freedom of speech and association are powerful things! There's not much an open, democratic government can do except respond to protests by addressing the underlying issues or crush the protest and hope that the public decides the protesters were wrong. What the Trump administration is trying to do here is reduce their risk by infringing on freedom of speech and association. It's fascist or totalitarian. Take your pick.
As for their claims that they're trying to "unwind enforced ideological conformity"... You can't do that by enforcing conformity to a different ideology, as they are attempting here. This is a case where you should pay less attention to words and more to actions.
Let's set aside specific terms like "fascist" for now. Below is one of the demands from the government:
> the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for
viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually
viewpoint diverse.
Do you feel this is ok for the government to demand of an educational institution? This isn't about specific political ideologies. If the Biden administration had threatened to withhold funding from a university because, for example, their hiring policies weren't left-leaning enough or something, it would be equally outrageous.
Let me start by saying that I am not American and I am not your enemy. Also, I am genuinely trying to understand the truth about these matters, with an open mind to the possibility that it's messy and complicated and I might not be capable of understanding it. I hope that provides context for what follows.
Honestly, I am not sure if it's okay. It reminds me of the anti-racist movement, in that the action almost feels like it's anti-fascist. It's using a fascist action (use of state power to enforce conformity), to undo a fascist policy (suppression of political opposition and dissent). This reminds me of anti-racism, which uses one type of racism to compensate for a different type of past-racism.
What I find interesting is the very last statement in your post. I am not aware of anything Biden did, but it does seem like Obama did something very similar with the DEI policies forced on universities which came with funding implications for non-compliance. It was a different time, everyone was upset about the great financial crisis of 2008, and on their surface I am sure these policies sounded like a good thing. In the end though these policies were very much a form of facism in that it was a state sponsored effort to suppress political opposition. This probably sounds like I am defending the political views of racists, but really I am defending the political views of people who believe leadership roles should be filled based on the merit of the individual and their ability to take care of those in their charge, and not based on the color of their skin, their gender or sexual preferences.
As I have tried to unpack all this, the perspective that is growing for me is that for the last 20 or so years both administrations have been taking steps towards fascism while hiding their fascist actions behind intentions that sound anti-fascist. If this perspective is even partially correct, it would explain why so much of this has been so confusing for me.
We can debate about specific requests from the Trump administration, but it is pretty clear that Harvard has been horrible. The previous administrations completely failed to fix it.
- Harvard has been discriminating against Whites and Asians in admissions for decades.
- Harvard deliberately refused to protect Jewish students against intimidation and harassment. Students camped in school property for weeks against Harvard's official rules. They chanted that they would bring islamic terrorism to America ("intifada, intifada, coming to America"), established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews, and remained there for almost a month while the school simply refused to remove them. [1]
- Harvard's president stated that calling for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily constitute harassment. This is particularly bizarre when contrasted to Harvard's approach to other groups, like when it considers "misgendering" of trans individuals to be harassment.
Being anti-Israel should not be conflated with being antisemitic. After all, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for a reason.
Trump is using “antisemitism” as cover for the imposition of authoritarianism. This comes from Putin's playbook. Putin used denazification as an excuse for invading Ukraine.
Trump himself has espoused antisemitism from time to time, see below.
An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” are still on the shelves but “Memorializing the Holocaust” was removed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/naval-academy...
Good. Trump is simply trying to see what he can get away with and the answer as it turns out is a lot. Everyone need to stop capitulating to this nonsense. People, universities, companies, all of them.
I initially engaged in these comments by asking questions in good faith in an attempt to better understand what was going on. I was trying to address my own ignorance by asking questions, and I was mostly attacked for it (mass downvoting).
I had more luck copying the scenario over to LLMs and asking them the questions.
It's disappointing to me, because I come to HN instead of other social media for intellectual discussion and nuanced perspectives. To be attacked for asking questions is frustrating and disheartening.
That said, after significant back and forth with the LLMs in an attempt to untangle several key issues, this is the summary I was left with. Somehow I suspect this will be downvoted like the rest of my comments, but I will share it here just in case it helps someone better understand why some right-leaning people may condone the governments letter and also why the letter is so concerning....
Good-Faith Policy Concerns Potentially Addressed in the Letter
Title VI Compliance:
Seeks to ensure that race, gender, or national origin are not used as explicit criteria in hiring, admissions, or funding decisions.
Merit-Based Standards:
Advocates for transparent and non-discriminatory evaluation of faculty and students (e.g. ending race-based preferences, enforcing plagiarism rules).
Viewpoint Diversity (In Theory):
Attempts to correct ideological homogeneity that may stifle academic freedom or lead to one-sided discourse.
Antisemitism Response:
Responds to documented or alleged incidents of antisemitic harassment post-October 7th, which could fall under Title VI protections if based on shared ethnicity or national origin.
Governance Reform:
Calls for clearer lines of authority and accountability in complex academic institutions, which is a reasonable administrative concern.
Key Issues and Overreaches in the Letter
State-Enforced Ideological Engineering:
Viewpoint diversity audits and mandated ideological balancing per department move into compelled intellectual conformity, which risks violating academic freedom and free speech.
Suspension of Institutional Autonomy:
Replaces university-led decision-making with federal oversight, annual audits, and direct hiring/admissions intervention—a level of control inconsistent with
traditional norms for private institutions.
Targeting of Specific Programs:
Selective audits of programs like Middle Eastern Studies or Human Rights centers signal ideological targeting, not neutral application of anti-discrimination principles.
Guilt by Association / Collective Punishment:
Calls for discipline and de-recognition of entire student groups (e.g., Palestine Solidarity Committee) based on political stances, even absent direct policy violations.
Mask Ban and Protest Crackdown:
Mandated suspension for mask-wearing and harsh punishments for past protests go beyond civil rights compliance and verge into authoritarian control of student expression.
Foreign Student Loyalty Screening:
Requiring ideological screening for “American values” and reporting foreign students to DHS raises civil liberties and due process concerns.
DEI Abolition Blanket Order:
Calls for total shutdown of all DEI offices and functions, regardless of their form or function, eliminating even neutral or inclusive programs not tied to race-based quotas.
Summary Judgment
The letter does address real legal and policy issues—especially around race- and gender-based preferences, antisemitism, and bureaucratic governance. But it leverages these issues to justify a comprehensive, ideologically driven restructuring of a university. The result is a state-imposed orthodoxy enforced through threats of defunding, loyalty tests, and discipline, extending well beyond what’s required for civil rights compliance.
I'm a scientist and I've spent a lot of time at Harvard, including working there for years.
These demands seem on point to me. I see a lot of uninformed opposition in this thread, but I think most of you all don't have any idea how it actually is at elite universities.
- Political tests for employment, or continued employment. The UC system (a public system!) is one of the worst offenders here, but Harvard is really, really bad.
- Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof). The number of academics who aren't even aware that this sort of discrimination is illegal is mind-boggling. I would say 9 months ago it was 80% or more. The number of emails I've received either indicating a candidate isn't viable because of his genitalia or skin color, or telling me this is the reason I didn't get the job is crazy. They literally don't know and don't care.
- Compelled speech. This is a bright line we have so far, as a society, successfully succeeded in not crossing. Harvard and other elite universities were crossing it, and the Biden admin's Title IX rules overtly crossed it. A bad look, to put it mildly.
- Widespread censorship, to the point where we (social scientists) have developed code to talk about certain things "nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus" hahaha...dear lord.
And these aren't small effects. It's not 55% / 45% type scenarios. You have to view the Administration's requests in the light of: Harvard is 95+% Blue Team, and that's largely because they actively filter. There are plenty of people who aren't willing to bend the knee who don't have jobs because of it. Harvard has created an intellectual monoculture. They want "diversity" in the sense that they want people who look different on the outside, but who are all the same on the inside.
Asking for monitoring to make sure they're no longer illegally and immorally discriminating in hiring and admission is warranted, indeed it would be kind of crazy to not monitor. They'll just continue racist and sexist hiring otherwise.
What's in this letter is a reasonable set of asks in response to a situation that is so off the rails it's hard to describe.
Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed.
I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine.
I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding.
Trade schools cater to the lower income, are much more effective dollar for dollar, and get a lot less federal funds. If that money were to be poured into trade schools instead of universities, it would help create a better middle class.
Why should Harvard be so entitled?
EDIT: IMO, The reason youth go to college is to have fun. The real reason the parents are willing to pay, is because their children will forge connections with other wealthy families that is worth the money. It may be good for the wealthy that the money stays in their circle, but IMO this is not something the Gov should subsidize.
Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.
Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.
If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.
Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.
They are already are spending billions a year from their endowment, which covers nearly 40% of their operating revenue, which is around the maximum they can sustainably spend.
Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.
Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.
Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.
Whats the problem.. just get your pal Soros to give you the money instead..
With $36T debt, Federal Government cannot continue splashing out money like there is no tomorrow
Trump is increasing the debt tho and did in his first term.
Republicans only care about debt when it can be used to either bash Democrats or used as a talking point to eliminate something they don't like. Lookup "Starve The Beast".
Republicans do not care about the debt. They care that it can be used as a tool. That's it.
They run up the debt when they want and then turn around to blame Democrats for the debt they ran up.
Nobody is really concerned with the US debt outside of silly wanna-be patriots and the politicians who use it to scare them. Now, one way to make the US debt a much bigger deal is to cause a recession...hmm...wonder if anyone is trying to do that...
Almost every economist believes there is no serious and immediate problem with our current debt level (which is actually increasing under both Trump administrations, despite their fake expressions of concern). Why do you believe you are right and they are all collectively wrong?
Unless you're speaking about the high overhead rates, that's really the wrong framing. The public funds at issue are buying things like research, or hospital services.
One framework I like to use is, “If this thing didn’t exist today, and someone proposed it, how would people react to it?”
I think it’s fair to say that if none of this existed today, and someone proposed that the federal government simply give universities like Harvard seemingly endless billions, it would be laughed out of existence by republicans and democrats alike. All of this is the product of inertia at best, corruption at worst. It’s a different world today and we don’t need our tax dollars going to these places.
The law in the immigration act to disallow people who espouse support for terrorism is a good one.
We protect freedom of speech for citizens because we have to. They are part of our country.
I don’t believe this extends to foreigners. We should allow only immigrants who do not support terrorism and want to be productive members of society. This isn’t too much to ask.
This is not a right or left issue. This is a pro-America vs con-America issue.
"Congress shall make no law" is not unclear, nor is the idea from the declaration that " all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". There is no spot in the founding philosophy of this nation that makes a home for "rights of citizens" only, and there was copious space to fill that in if they wanted. You made that shit up.
What you're doing is scriptural prestidigitation. It's the equivalent of christians deciding that Satan and the serpent in the garden are the same entity, even though it's very clear that they aren't[1]. You're doing it because it makes your world view seem like less of an incoherent mess, not because it's true.
The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang. Also, the government of El Salvador confirmed this.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
I believe that setting Teslas on fire is domestic terrorism. They were politically motivated to specifically target a political figure to intimidate other citizens. I think setting ballot boxes on fire is also domestic terrorism.
The evidence presented to the judge that allowed the deportation was that he specifically supported Hamas. He wasn't just pro-Palestinian. This is why he is being deported.
The government's list of requests is reasonable, moral and necessary. It's the taxpayers' prerogative to demand a merit based system that, in
conjunction, upholds the values and freedoms they hold dear.
The elitist and morally detached Harvard and its fellow privileged, largely useless, institutions can exercise their right to refuse the demands and the money.
The university, as a private institution, has every right to hold whatever views and enforce whatever policies it sees fit within itself.
The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It's best when the bargaining about such conditions happens with mutual respect and without overreach, but respect and sobriety are in very short supply in the current administration. Even better it is when a university does not need to receive the government money and can run off the gigantic endowment it already has, thus having no need to comply with any such conditions.
(It's additionally unfun how the antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem, in a very muffed way, and any other kind of discrimination based on ethnicity, culture, or religion is not mentioned at all. Is fighting discrimination out of fashion now?..)
> The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It really doesn't. There are both normal laws and Constitutional restrictions on how the government can make decisions, and the reasons it can have for making those decisions.
I'm very much not an expert here, but this includes restrictions on viewpoint discrimination in funding.
I agree! The government is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions. But it's entitled to set some. I suspect that some acts of Congress require the government to set some conditions on providing governmental funding, as the Constitution prescribes: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46827
Indeed, but most of these conditions _are_ arbitrary and often mutually-conflicting. Mask ban? What is the scientific basis for this?
The government already set numerous conditions on research funding relating to accounting, ethical conduct and so forth. Attaching conditions that are only tangentially related to the purpose of the funding is almost arbitrary by definition.
I think this administration never had the intent to be "reasonable".
If they were concerned about out of control diversity efforts, I might even semi agree with them.
But this administration and the GOP doesn't value free speech. Despite their complaints they're not the least bit opposed to the government enforcing their viewpoints on people, in fact they just want to do it in spades.
Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning? I'm sorry but the continuously faithless positioning of the Trump administration right now makes me believe the antisemitic accusations are a pretext.
Because it's very obviously being used as a cover to exert control over universities which are deemed to be too "woke" (which has nothing to do with anti-semitism).
Yes, antisemitism exists, like many other social ills. But is it a major problem at Harvard and these elite institutions? No, it is not.
The government does not have all that right tho. First amendment and all.
I would invite you to read the government letter if you have not, but look at each demand and put yourself in the position of the recently affected but also try to see if you can hold a "controversial" view of the world that should be fine but would be put in danger by these demands: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Civil rights, suffrage, they were all the controversial opinion at some point. Some people still argue that they are but anyone against those can go pound sand.
I don't think that the government's demands are all reasonable, or even permissible. Some things read like they were written in the height of the civil rights movement in 1960s:
> By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement
merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices
Some though read as if they were written in an advent to a totalitarian dystopia:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the
Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including
those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
To my mind Harvard is right in bringing this to the public attention. It's also free to walk away from governmental financing programs that stipulate such conditions (if they are even found legitimate), and is even in a position to do so.
Harvard received the "worst score ever" clamped at 0.0 in 2023. By the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The actual score was -10.69.
They were particularly oppressive on anyone espousing opinions on the political right...Both leaning toward Individual liberty & stateist inclined.
While I believe that freedom of speech is a right not to be infringed on. Their current stance is selective. They have a massive endowment. So Harvard doesn't need subsidies. Since their endowment benefits private parties, Harvard can be funded by private parties.
Related ongoing thread: Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684386
The aggregate demands of the administration are confusing and contradictory. They seem to be simultaneously asking for:
- an end to diversity initiatives
- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
- a new policy of not admitting international students with certain points of view
- ending speech-control policies
- auditing the speech of certain departments and programs
- ending discipline of students who violate policies related to inclusion
- disciplining particular students who violated policies related to inclusion
It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they want and don't need to think about the other.
The end to current diversity policies and the start of others combined is a demand for u-turn: stop allowing the things we don't like, start allowing the things you were stopping.
Same for speech: stop auditing the speech we want to say, start auditing the speech you were previously allowing.
And so on.
In the minds of the administration it makes sense, because they think of each item separately where there is conflict and together where there is not. Such cognitive dissonance seems to be their natural state of mind, the seem to seek it.
Much like their cries of “but what about tolerance?!”¹ when you mention punching nazis. They want the complete about-turn: LBTQ out, racism/sexism/phobias in. You are supposed to tolerate what they want you to tolerate, and little or nothing else.
--------
[1] My answer there has often become “you didn't want tolerance, you specifically voted against continued tolerance, what you voted for won, intolerance is your democratically chosen desire, who am I to deny the will of your people?”.
The quotes seem to be from the famous book "1984" by George Orwell. We had it in English literature class in high school.
There are some other famous quotes from that book or one of his other famous books, "Animal Farm".
Writing from memory and googling, so may be wrong:
"Some people are more equal than others."
The society that Winston finds himself in puts forth the slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The meaning of this phrase is to force confusion upon the members of the Party. It is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party.
According to the article, the original version with "2 + 2 = 5" suggests complete submission to the oppressive regime, with the protagonist's mind being irreversibly altered.
Technically part of the Ministry of Love, Room 101 is the most feared place in all of Oceania and Winston learns far too well that it is here that the …
What is the final message of 1984? … a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the ability of a repressive regime to manipulate and control individuals to the point where they betray ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
Animal Farm is even more creepy than 1984, going by my memory, which may be wrong, since it is quite some years since I read both those books.
I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.
Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.
Sadly America was founded on principles that too 200 years to try and undo. And given the last year alone, they are still stripping rights as we speak. I don't know which fork we turned on that made us so reliable on racism and sexism to function and band together as a country that much of the EU seems to have navigated better. Maybe reconstruction should have had an actual Nuremburg trial instead of "forgiveness" (aka pushing the can down the street until someone could assassinate the one trying to compromise).
the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.
Hello, 55 day old account that's definitely not a troll
It literally is this way. America has ignored the plight of poor working class whites by grouping them with elite whites and treating them as one privileged group.
Then they focused on elevating nonwhites non Christians and homosexuals to higher social and economic standing not realizing or simply choosing to ignore that most white people really arent that much better off than non whites if you remove elites from the statistics.
So to poor white Americans this seems like a free pass or line jump for everybody else and we are now living through the political reaction to this injustice.
You can't tell 65% of your population to step aside without some repercussions.
Enjoy the madness.
Authoritarian governments are arbitrary governments, all decisions are made arbitrarily. Consistency is unnecessary. That's the trouble with choosing power as a guiding principle over reason or consent.
Consistency is undesirable, because if everyone is breaking a law, you apply the hammer of justice only if they aren't a friend.
It's one of the best ways to look good to certain people as well,because you can claim to be just following the law.
This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.
No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.
> No, it's still stupid.
It doesn't serve the goals you think it should, that's not necessarily stupid.
> High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states).
Yes, but the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance" and, to the extent that it related to economic performance, doesn't have any necessary relation to a broad aggregate, its more concerned with very specific aspects of relative distribution.
> It doesn't serve the goals you think it should
I maen, what are their goals? To make more money? Yes, stupid to crash the economy just to insider trade. Power and influence? Yes, it's stupid to overextend too fast. Ask 99% of regines from human history (Rome, Soviet Union, Great Britian). Ideaological warfare? Yes, it's stupid to outright declare constitutional war on day 9x out of 1400.
What are their goals?
> the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance"
well they should have. Again, Bread and circuses. Mess with people's money and they get neither.
Again, stupid move. This could have been an easy, silent, calculated takeover in the course of two years. Instead they just swung a hammer at the house and are frustrated that people are yelling at them.
Who is "others"? Who is "aggregate"? You're being vague because your idea doesn't make any sense.
Let's be clear:
1) Trump very clearly - very obviously - cares a lot about broad US economic performance compared to China.
2) This is at odds with his desire for unlimited power within the US, because corruption and oppression doesn't do very well economically.
That's why it's stupid - it doesn't serve its own goals. One of those two has to give.
He and his voters don't understand "Woke" is great for the modern economy. You want everyone working at their absolute full potential. Slaves don't invent chips, corruption drives away business investment, etc. It's very simple to understand if you're not a racist, but the South has been stuck on this point for generations.
Right, this is why fascist governments tend to fail. In the meantime, though, normal folks will be hurt.
And in the meantime, the people in power in these fascist governments tend to make out like (literal) bandits.
This is fine if it ends by being subjected to that convenient device they developed in France somewhere in the 1800s.
Very unlikely in the first place, but second, that way lies far worse chaos.
Similarly, when Julius Caesar turned the republic into an empire, and was subsequently assassinated: it did not mean the empire reverted back to being a republic - rather that centuries of increasingly despotic emperors lay ahead.
Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.
Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
It's iterative republic development. Release a republic, test it in the field, make improvements. Makes sense to me.
:D I don't know why, but something about this made me giggle.
Nazis again? We did Nazis remember? End of the Third Republic, all of that? Everybody agreed Nazis were a bad idea, why the fuck are there more Nazis?
> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)
Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)
And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.
French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.
The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.
Based on this thread I'm starting to believe that any static governmental system is a failure and it's the iterations that bring about prosperity.
You also have to consider that the guillotine ended up killing more revolutionaries than nobles though.
There are also historical examples of nations where nothing was done to reign in the chaos and that led to far worse long term consequences for the people.
That is a divisive issue.
By “divisive” you mean dividing heads from bodies, right?
Yeah. Also called "air gapping".
Looks to me like a legitimate and democratically elected regime. There are many unsolved issues in the world, having sympathy for people getting exactly what they want seems like a waste of a finite resource.
It is not a waste.
(1) It is still an interesting topic, because in this case, it has world-wide consequences.
(2) Many of the problems of the world can only be solved if people are convinced that those are important problems. You need to fix people's closest problems first, like their bread and perceived security. Each individual has just one life, I wouldn't say it's selfish to want an OKish life, and only then think about what's best for the human race.
(3) Most of the right voters were convinced (and might still be) that they were doing what is good for them. But it isn't. They voted wrong, they were tricked against their actual will.
(4) This is not a singular event. The same may happen somewhere near or around you maybe sooner than later, so analysig how it happened, which groups exactly voted against their own advantage, and how to make the consequences clear and understandable beforehand, and how to prevent it in general -- all this is important.
Not wasted resources at all. The opposite. We need to remember that this is not a boring news topic.
Until america experiences the full consequences for their stupidity they will continue being stupid. Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, with a responsible person nearby and then never again.
The sooner that happens the better for everyone it is.
OK, burning is happening right now, so mission accomplished, I guess? Are you sure people will learn from it? And who is the responsible person nearby in this reality?
> Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, ...
That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove.
Also, this is not an individual Darwin problem like the stove example -- this has consequences for many bystanders who did know better, and many more bystanders who had no say in this.
> OK, burning is happening right now
Nowhere near it, the hand is hovering near the fire - people are shouting "don't put your hand in the fire" and the kid is saying its nice and warm and see nothing bad has happened, I am going to put my hand right into the fire and it will be great.
Trump term 1 they bailed out the Farmers for 20bn when they messed around on tarrifs and blew it up. They learn't that there are only two outcomes to fucking around 1) you win, 2) you find out and they give you 20bn.
If those are your outcomes the only rational choice is to vote for Trump and cheer him on in fucking around as much as possible.
Let them burn their hand.
12 hours later: White House is considering a tariffs bailout for farmers
beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."<
So you really have no idea! Sad!
I suppose you have also never been hungry and bitten into a wonderful-smelling and -tasting hamburger only to find that a finger (yours, to be clear) is in the bite, and thus you become at one moment both ravenous attacker and fearful prey struggling to escape?
Such experiences are part of life, to be embraced only afterward.
> beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."< > So you really have no idea! Sad!
Is this like "you're not a strong man unless you've been this stupid at least once"?
Strong vs. weak does not seem like a desirable way to structure society. It's no fun. Yes, I also find football competitions really boring.
It isn't strong vs weak. But the lack of such experiences sets you apart from others and marks you as literally inexperienced. It does not mark you as smarter or stronger, but as one who simply "has no idea!" You'll never know (until you do!8-))
I revisited the "stove experience" several weeks ago. While at a convenience store I entered the restroom to find the sink water running full blast. This only increased my urgency and aided the process (as flowing, dripping, or running water often does). Once relieved, I walked over to the sink and plunged both hands into the cold whirling water in the basin. At once I was caught between my (vividly-imagined) thought of cool swirling relief and the sensory reality of boiling hot water - the former wished to enjoy the pleasant ice-cold flowing water in the sink and the latter could not withdraw fast enough.
Life provides you with a sequence of such experiences:
- a pre-adolescent viewing with puzzlement his older siblings as they mature and begin to participate in courtship,
- falling in love,
- making love, etc.
Some people never have certain experiences. We're all different to some degree b/c of that.
Go ahead, put your hand on the stove. But be careful about touching that woman!8-))
P.S. Yes, I turned the sink off, depriving the next poor soul of my worldly experience.
Dismantling the current world hegemony might have a few unanticipated impacts. When little Timmy responds to burning his hand by evaporating the world economy we might not be so smug.
The smug little so-and-so here is the USA. Dismantling their hegemony and releasing the 95% of the world that are not Americans, I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm as MAGA chants "lock her up".
The problem is that dismantling their hegemony in too fast of a fashion will cause the rest of the world _a lot_ of trouble.
Normal folks vote for the fascists.
How many Americans despise the liberal universities and their students? How many Americans think the US should be a Christian nation?
Fascism is popular. Many people will fall for it. Time and time again. The US is not special- it happened in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal. It can happen in America.
...has happen3d. <-FTFY
They're not selecting to maximize performance, they're selecting to maximize their own control. Pete Hegseth isn't SecDef because he's good at it. He leaks war plans and can't get through a press conference without being seen with a drink in his hand. He's SecDef because he'll do what Trump tells him to do regardless of whether it's legal or a good idea. The tariffs aren't meant to bring manufacturing back. They'd have gradual and consistent and the money raised would be earmarked for developing that industry at home if they were. They're arbitrary because they're the way the people in charge punish countries and companies that don't bend the knee. Everything they're doing is about removing the institution of government with its pesky rules and procedures and bringing everything under the control of one guy who can reward and punish arbitrarily as he sees fit. Overall economic performance simply isn't a factor.
It's changed my outlook a lot to make an arbitrary decision to stop assuming people are stupid when their stated goals don't line up with their actions, and to start assuming the easily predictable results of their actions are their actual goals regardless of what their stated goals are. Once I did that, I started being able to understand and even predict what these previously inscrutable people would do next.
?
I look forward to your article about Americans obviously being pro-obesity, and finding heart disease super attractive.
their stated goals (avoiding obesity) don't line up with their actions (food choices that promote obesity), so they must have different goals (enjoying food regardless of whether it promotes obesity). not the opposite of their stated goal, just a different one.
Then I can agree with that: short-sighted decision-making on both obesity and Trump's tariffs.
I think you're equivocating between the value of the actual goal itself and the value of the actions they're taking in the context of fulfilling that goal. Blowing up the economy to maximize your personal power is short-sighted, I agree, but once you accept that as Trump's goal you'll see that arbitrary tariffs (and other financial manipulation, look at how he's using federal funding to thought police universities and punish dissident state governors) is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to [federal funding]. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
>is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
He really screwed up the "people beneath you" part with his "effective strategy" . The people beneath him wanted at best lower prices and at worst stronger deportation. As it is, they are the ones suffering the most from these economic policies (because blue states tend to have more funding to weather this BS) and he decided to go full mask off on the idea of deporting US citizens. These aren't popular actions nor views, outside of the most fringe supporters (who aren't enough to carry such a narrative).
The people beneath him aren't just not part of his plan, they're the lever he's pulling to get the powerful in line behind him.
Ok so you're a fan of aggressive stupidity. That's certainly on-brand American. Not relevant to this discussion though, you do you.
You're taking everything I discuss and projecting my moral approval on it. I've purposely expressed no opinion either way, but you can't fathom the idea that Trump might be good at something. You have to live in a world where he's just a flailing idiot, and I'd caution you to take some time with the fact that that flailing idiot is currently batting a very prescient .666 against those of us who'd like the USA to at least last out their own lifetimes.
lol you think .666 is a lot? The entire South has been stuck on this point for generations. They keep voting for tribalism/racism/nepotism, and the poorer they get the angrier and more aggressive they get.
Voting is just one big popularity contest, and 54% of American adults read at or below 6th grade levels.
I'm just not a good bootlicker. I call stupidity wherever I see it. You can keep your "caution", I'm moving on from this conversation.
It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.
They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.
It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.
“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”
Not stupid, just careless. Trump has fuck-you money, he doesn't care about the rest of the country. He wants means of extortion so people have to lick his boots to get a reprieve.
For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".
> Is there any political tool
It's a social problem. Smaller democratic political arenas work closer to the ideal. Larger political arenas have more noise and less concise agendas, because of the disparate groups being appealed to. The US is too big. Large societies, across time trend toward authoritarianism (sometimes leading to full-fledged) until revolution and dissolution. Then the remaining states fight amongst themselves within a region, assembling into a singular organization due to practical and political factors, until it starts over again. Eventually you get something like europe and most of southeast asia. States tend to be more stable if they roughly match their regional terrain boundaries and aren't too large.
The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.
The normative government continues to shrink while the prerogative government grows.
It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online.
The goal is white supremacy and antifeminism.
The goal is power. Suppressing DEI, etc is just a simple way to find a group of people that have different values and eliminate them from the power structure.
An important part about targeting DEI and trans communities is that these two groups stand for immutable properties: I can’t change my race. I can’t stop being my gender identity.
When you “other” people based on immutable properties, it becomes very dangerous. If you can’t force someone to be white and straight, what do you do with them? The government stops funding programs to help these groups, they spread lies and fear about them, and then they sit back. When the people in power tell their supporters that the “other” are the enemy, what recourse is left for one’s safety other than violence. Authoritarian regimes always trend towards genocide, and they always target groups with immutable traits.
When these people use "freedom of speech" all they mean is they want to say their vile Nazi stuff without people complaining.
Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.
The demands of the administration are the demands of a bully who doesn't want your lunch money, he just wants you to know he can take it away at any time.
"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
Any organization is probably in violation of any number of rules and regulations due to the sheer number of them.
Just wait till the sniffling Marc Andreessen shows up to explain why this will save his small town brethren.
It’s a good strategy. Even if Harvard had attempted to satisfy every bullet point, the govt could still retort that their demands were not satisfied.
Like the whole initial excuse for the tariffs on imports from Canada "because of fentanyl" despite <1% of fentanyl coming into the US arriving via the Canadian border https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...
If you don't measure you can just assume all valies are 0.
But assuming it's a large number is not possible, of course.
I assume it's a large number because the fentanyl superlative the Canadian police raided had literal tons of precursors.
so you understand how much "tons" is with regards to a population of 330m Americans? Now consider that China probably has gigatons and is where all of NA gets most of its supply.
Hmmm, is this akin to what Russia means, when it says "we do not negotiate with terrorists"?
Typical mafia technique ensuring perpetual extorsion.
They want to have the old system (deliberate bias and vehement denials of there being any "bias,") but working for them, and the way to demand that without describing it is to require all of the results and "forbid," by name only, the necessary methods.
It all makes sense with a fascist power logic. The goal isn't to implement consistent policy to reach rational targets. The goal is to wield power and slowly errode any opposition with divisive actions that support anybody that is loyal to you. Importantly being loyal doesn't guarantee you will be spared. In these goals consistency is irrelevant, in fact being inconsistent and acting with arbitrary despotism is a feature since it produces more fear.
If you ever find any fascist critique of their enemies you will quickly realize that all of which they accuse their enemies of doing, they will do themselves. Decry freedom of speech as no one is "allowed" to say sexist/racist things anymore? Be sure they will go in and ban books, political thoughts and literal words. Hillarys emails? We literally operate our foreign policy in signal groups.
Quite frankly I am a bit puzzled by the neutrality with which some Americans try to analyze this absolutely crazy political situation. It is like pondering over the gas mixture in the smoke while your house is on fire, absolutely unhinged.
I’d like to get out while I can, but to what country? Any suggestions?
By the way the answer to your question is simple: the American people are fascists, not just the president.
First I think people who recognize there are problems is what is needed now. You leaving makes things worse.
Then again, it is understandable not everybody has the luxury to be in circumstances that allow adequate forms of resistance.
If you ask about which country, I'd say it depends. It depends on who youaare, what your skills are, which climate zones and cultures you prefer, whether you're willing to learn a new language and so on.
Canada.
Nothing they do makes sense until you accept that hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, for them and their base. They know that what they're asking for is impossible to meaningfully comply with...
because they can use as excuse to stop the funding nonetheless, it's impossible to 100% comply with contradictory requests
It could be a feature not a bug. Inventible violations can be used as leverage for future requests/mandates.
You see the establishment of separate, unwritten classes of things here, right? It will be a case-by-case basis which of these rules is invoked, that way no matter what happens they're "just following the rules we all agreed to" but they get to hand-select which thoughts are compulsory and which are forbidden.
What the demand is, is institutional fealty to Donald Trump. Trying to interpret it as anything else is going to lead these institutions into poor decision making. Harvard is doing the right thing.
and the irony at the beginning of the demanding government letter:
"But an investment is not an entitlement."
>>- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
I'm sure we both know what this one means though. Forcing the university to hire people who think the earth is flat and that climate change isn't real - for the sake of diversity of course.
But also diversity is banned.
On that point they mean anyone who isn't white, male, cis, straight, and currently able-bodied.
I don't think it's confusing. It's classic "my way or the highway" stance. "Free speech for everyone! (except for things I don't like...)".
It makes sense when you realize that their true position is "free speech for me but not for thee". The contradictions are about censoring speech they disagree with and promoting speech they like.
They go after their enemies (liberals, trans, pro palestinians, brown migrants) and help their friends (right wing white people).
To the fascist regime, "diversity" means "hiring black or gay people". Likewise "diverse points of view" means "viewpoints that think it's okay for black and gay people to be hired and for transgender people to pee". And "speech control" means "kicking out people who shout Hitler did nothing wrong in the middle of the library". And "inclusion" means "letting black or gay people study". It's all newspeak.
The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it.
In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-whites or non-christian.
What's interesting is that this is not necessarily a struggle between the top of a hierarchy vs the bottom of one, but between two different hierarchies. The democrats support cultural non racial and economic hierarchies, while the republicans support racial international and the same economic hierarchies. So while they both support the rich over the working class, there is a struggle over whether to support racial and international hierarchies. Democrats tend to support globalization, i.e unifying of the power of the top of the economic hierarchy across international boundaries, while eliminating racial and sexual hierarchies as they are seen as "inefficient" from a neoliberal perspective. Republicans are more focused on the "national elite", the rich people that depend on america being a global hegemon specifically, energy industry, military industira-complex, etc..
Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.
The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.
Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.
Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.
Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.
The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.
It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.
Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.
it's pretty clear. it's twitter's policy. neo-Nazi rhetoric must be allowed, empathy must be banned.
Cowards are now saying it was a mistake: "Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard" - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-le...
The demands are simple and not confusing at all.
- Stop promoting Democrats' agendas as the ultimate truth; stop bullying people for non-Democratic views - Allow Republicans' agendas to be equally represented
Is it really so difficult to understand?
Out of many bad things Trump has done, this isn't really bad for anyone except core Democrats voters.
The US academia has become hostile to anyone except one particular culture. This should stop.
Conservatives should start their own universities, if they aren't happy with the existing ones. The federal government has no business enforcing conformity to certain ideological demands in private institutions. It's right there in the very first amendment.
If the university was founded by the government, it should represent Americans. All of them. Half of Americans are conservative. Approx. half of academia should be conservative.
Harvard is older than both parties. There is no good reason why it should cater to only one half of Americans.
It was founded by a government, not the federal government, let alone this government. It was founded before this government existed.
And it's been a private institution for hundreds of years.
Why should any university go out of its way to "cater to" conservatives and liberals in equal measure if those ideologies don't equally value things like reason and truth? The mission should be providing education and facilitating research, not keeping political partisans happy.
So, we should have merit-based hiring with respect to race and gender, but then have a quota-based system for political affiliation? How do you even measure this? Who counts as a "conservative"? MAGA-only, or do we get to count RINOs? Won't people just lie about their political beliefs to get a job? Do you detect any irony in the way your agenda exactly parallels that of structural racists who see racism in any job where the racial distribution doesn't match that of the general population?
The reason that academia is overwhelming left-leaning is that those are the people that choose to go to grad school and pursue academic careers. For whatever reason (whether ability or inclination) conservatives do so in much smaller numbers. You want conservatives in academia, go get a Ph.D.
Are you arguing that _all_ universities that receive government funding should cater equally to conservatives and liberals? Given that Texas Christian University receives funding from the government, would you argue that it too should stop receiving federal funding until represents America equally?
If they receive federal funding, they should represent Americans. If 100% of Americans will be Democrats, then it can be this monoculture. If more people shift to Green politics, or Libertarian, it should represent those more too.
If there is a Christian university, it should either be sponsored by Christians only, or similar funding should go to other universities representing other major American groups (for example Jews).
Discrimination based on political views should be treated the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation or race.
So you do think that Texas Christian University should lose all federal funding until it proportionally represents all Americans' political beliefs?
I have answered that already.
Either lose funding, or comparable other universities should be funded so all relevant spectrum is covered.
Federally funded institutions should cater for all Americans. The army, police, schools, hospitals... shouldn't be there only for one half of people.
Conservatives have started their own Universities. No one likes going to those schools, and they end up bankrupt, with students who are functionally uneducated.
So, there you go, the market has spoken.
So the existing ones don't need government money, then, right?
Stanford for example.
> Conservatives should start their own universities
They did. Remember Trump University? It got shut down for fraud.
I don't think Trump University was ever indented to be a real university. Wasn't it basically the Trump-branded version of those late night infomercials promising to teach you how to get rich in real estate? You know, the ones where ultimately they basically just sell you a bunch of tapes for $5000?
If you're looking for an actual conservative university, a better example would be a place like Liberty University. I think the problem is starting an institution is hard, it'll only really hit its stride like 100 years after being founded, and it's hard to keep an ideological project on track for such a long period of time.
With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.
If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.
That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.
Republicans Are Floating Plans To Raise the Endowment Tax. Here’s What You Need To Know : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/11/increasing-endo...
Proposed College Endowment Tax Hike: What to Know : https://thecollegeinvestor.com/52851/proposed-college-endowm...
Other article: When hacking the government rules is used against you.>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.
But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.
There are several proposed bills, including one that raises the tax to 21 percent.
https://nehls.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/nehls.house.gov/f...
>But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Taxing donations is really thorny. If people realize that the government is taking money they want to give away... they stop giving away money. It's a self-terminating cliche in action. So you either leave it alone if you want to encourage people stimulating charities, or you make the tax very small.
>Same goes for religious organizations,
I don't fully know. Some attempt at separattion of church and state. The government tries to maintain that except when other boundaries are crossed.
It does sort of fall into the same umbrella though, when regarding tithes.
because then those churches and schools will just leave the US! /s
if your argument is "but they're not getting screwed equally" then its a completely flawed argument benefiting the government
you should be questioning why you are getting screwed at all. it doesn't solve the government's revenue problems or even make a dent.
People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education. You and I are not chartered as an educational endowment; things like Roth IRAs exist for us.
> People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education
That's not true, the donations are tax exempt (deductible).
I think the point is that money for many was taxed before the paycheck ever came in. And you have no control over it. Part of your W-2 goes to fund social security, part of it to fund the federal, part of it to fund the state.
Taxing donations is just double dipping on your money. That's how you discourage donating.
holy shit dog, you make over $533,000???
Expletive aside, I think they’re talking about their total investment rather than their income.
"funded by my already taxed earnings"
Why did you even try that? Blew your whole argument.
why do you disagree? Most people working a job do have taxes taken out. That's why you get a "return" when the IRS realizes they took too much or you provide other means to deduct your taxes.
The comment attempts to suggest that something is being taxed twice. It is not. The original income that funds some investment is taxed. After that, only further income is taxed. The existing principle is not.
Nothing that was taxed was "already taxed".
Eh, colleges were originally religious institutions. (Harvard was founded to train clergy [1].)
Converting the Corporation to Harvard Church is about the least shenanigany thing I could think of in this tale.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Harvard_University
This is genius. Next up, Apple could easily convert into a church with its many disciples.
And this is why I believe governments should tax nonprofit organizations!
In France, we ran an NGO whose music festival got a bit big… a million or two of beer sales. Tax office came in and put that part of the NGO under the business rules, ie we paid and received VAT, paid the corporate tax at the normal rate, etc. We ended up putting the entire charity under the business rule because it was more profitable (saving VAT on all providers, while our donations were exempt of VAT).
I’m surprised USA doesn’t have a rule that industrial/commercial sections of any org is liable to all corporate tax laws.
we "sorta" do. It's an all in or all out matter with 501c3's. You declare a non-profit and essentially all your money needs to be funneled back to the company. There's many other regulations to prevent the most obvious means of fraud.
Well, a nonprofit cannot have owners. Apple has owners.
OpenApple, a privately owned public benefit corporation.
Public benefit corporations have to pay tax.
If they become a church they will have to buy private jets for the faculty.
No skin in the game, but curious to know why any Republican would want to raise taxes. Is this some sort of power play like the tariffs? Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz.
They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
> They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
A very large portion of the country vote Republican, and I would be surprised if they are by and large the most well-off part of the American public.
The voters are not the party and the party is not the party leadership. The actual policies that end up being supported have little-to-nothing to do with the stuff that gets talked about while campaigning, and this only gets more true the further away from the actual voter the position is.
Yeah. You can implement any policy you want if you can always blame the other party for it (and have your voters eat it up).
These voters were scammed. Many still don't realize or believe this, and they avoid real news for the purpose of keeping faith in the easter bunny they voted for.
And you are right... that's why "The Party" instead appeals to "the party" with various single issues (you know all the hot topics) and implement (or perhaps, pretend to implement) those while the real bills "The Party" want are passed under their nosess. "The Party" spends a dollar on "the party" while grabbing hundreds from the vault they all pitched into.
Worked for decades. Not so well when Trump so publicly tanked the economy and snatched one of the 3 untouchable things.
It's about punishing their enemies.
> Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz
Yes. The abstract of "the economy" doesn't matter. The priorities are "owning the libs" on Twitter and other media, and their own personal bank accounts which can benefit from insider trading the tariffs, state-sponsored memecoins and so on.
Easy, Harvard is essentially a training center for their ideological enemies on top of providing an actual education. They're just putting the boot down and saying stick to teaching instead of implementing and advancing a specific ideology. If taxes are the tools, so be it.
Harvard is a private instutution. If they want to teach underwater basket weaving, there's not much you can do to stop that. Anymore than Trump can raid apple and tell them to start making Androids. I thought a billionaire businessman would understand that much; imagine if Clinton back in the day tried to seize Trump Towers.
And while we long forgotten: don't forget that all of this is illegal. to retract congressionally appropriated funds that were already budgeted. The time to yoink this stuff legally was a month ago.
LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
The current admin is openly anti-intellectual.
Edit:
"We need to attack the universities in this country"
"The professors are the enemy"
Specific clip https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1ichg58/ya...
If you want the full speech it's on YT so if you reply with "context" you should back that up
I'd agree with you that the current admin is anti-intellectual, but this speech is not a smoking gun.
For those who need spoonfed, here is the full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw
It's JD Vance's keynote speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference. The speech, which I've just skimread, is mostly well-worn US conservative complaints about US higher education. He also talks about red-pilling because he's down with the kids, and he adds Jesus sprinkles in case you forgot he's Christian.
The speech is dull but it's bookended with two spicy statements, both of which you mostly quoted. The latter statement is not his words but a quote from Nixon.
Opening statement: «So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement in this country, I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country and so I'm excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.»
Closing statement: «I really want to end this on an inspirational note [...] and the person whose quote I ultimately had to land on was the great prophet and statesman Richard Milhous Nixon [...] there is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom, and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40-50 years ago. He said, and I quote: "the professors are the enemy".»
EDIT: And for the context of the Nixon quote, it comes from a private conversation Nixon had with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on December 14, 1972, recordings of which were released in 2008: «Henry remember... we're gonna be around and outlive our enemies. And also, never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.». It's worth noting that Nixon was already keeping an "enemies list": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List
It doesn't matter what Nixon's context was Vance was quoting him literally by proclaiming it a piece of wisdom.
Posting the entire speech only bolsters my view. For example
"[To accomplish goals].. I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities..."
I'm confused about your argument. I don't consider it a smoking gun just a concise example of what Vance and MAGA Republicans belive. There's no context confusion, it's on video, and it being dull only shows how comfortable he is exposing insane views.
The spicy soundbites on their own are scary and do suggest the state wants to destroy intellectuals.
The speech they're from doesn't.
The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society. Vance even claims some academics prefer to ignore evidence that refutes their positions, and he's against that; that would be a valid pro-intellectual position if true (but it's completely nebulous and unsourced)
The thesis of his speech was he doesn't like the content of what academics profess and he thinks they ought to teach his political views (and his audience's political views) instead. That's not anti-intellectualism, i.e. "don't trust those book-learning types, look to the common man for answers". This guy still wants ivory towers provided his cronies are in them.
Also it's interesting to see where his quote came from. He clearly picked an on-theme Nixon quote just to appeal to his audience, and he seems to miss the context of the Nixon quote in that Nixon is a paranoid nutter saying it, not coming from a rational place like Vance thought he just did.
>The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society
Which part ?
Current universities are openly anti intellectual.
What evidence do you have of this?
What evidence does the parent comment provide?
Just edited my comment. How many quotes do you need? I can supply many
if you hate universities it makes obvious sense
I’m not half the country, but I can explain it to you. Billionaires already pay tax on investment income. Universities are exempt but now the proposal is that they pay as well, just like individuals (including billionaires) and other profit-making groups.
… or churches
Politics of resentment where elite colleges and universities are unjust scams and billionaires are just the pinnacle of self actualization.
Why do you expect a billionaire to steal from billionaires? a portion of non-essential stealing comes from respct, and of course these billionaires are all a part of the same club.
The other lens is simple as well: big fish don't go after the other big fish. That just ends in two hurt fish and no food. Trump thought he was going after a small fry and underestimated the response. just because Columbia folded doesn't mean all universities will.
lens #3: this clip explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU
He's a bully but if everyone realizes they outnumber (and outmatch him) he loses his power).
Doesn't this tax only apply to "net investment income"/realized gains? Billionaires technically already have to pay it at a higher rate. And well they generally do? I mean when they personally actually sell stock and or receive dividends and interest.
Most of the wealth being in stock is really tricky. You can't really tax stock ownership, but at the same time stock can be leveraged against business deals (Musk for example bought Twitter with largely stock, without having to sell it first and therefore being subject to tax), and you can take out loans with stock as collateral.
It's not that tricky. All you have to do is make it a taxable event to collateralize stock.
Should we similarly tax collateralizing real estate as in home equity loans?
Sure, if you exclude primary residence. We aren't trying to fuck with the middle class, just the uberwealthy. I'd be fine with only taxing collateralized stock on people with over $20M in net worth too. We just don't need to provide tax breaks to the rich to make them more rich.
Now, rigorously define "net worth".
It's such an odd argument - the wealthy always seem to know what their net worth is. We could just make them declare it. If they lie, straight to jail.
Do they? I think exactly the opposite is true - if you ask any sufficiently wealthy person, they’d need a team of people working for a bit to arrive at a very hazy net worth number. Private stock is extremely illiquid and doesn’t usually have a good mark to market, ditto most artwork. My impression is that even most public stock doesn’t generally have the depth of liquidity to absorb a founder selling any significant fraction in a short timeframe without cratering in value.
> If they lie, straight to jail.
How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
I'm not defending billionaires and I believe they should be heavily taxed, and huge inheritances should be outlawed, but what's Elon Musk's net worth, for example? He surely doesn't have $369 billion in cash. Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year? It's tricky.
> How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
They get to tell us what they are worth. Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud. There are some areas that are tricky, like pre-market startups, but we have things like 409A valuations that help with that. Penalties should have no statute of limitations - if you lie about it, you get to look over your shoulder forever. It's not perfect, but as you have clearly recognized, there is no perfect system that allows for a reasonable degree of freedom.
> Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year?
Not really tricky! He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2. If the value goes down 99%, you pay way less tax (or none if he's no longer wealthy enough to qualify). He can sell his shares to pay it, and I honestly do not care if he is not liquid enough to do that - that's a situation he put himself into. No he doesn't get a tax break on the loss - the rich have a sense of entitlement that their wealth belongs to them free of charge, and I think they should have to pay maintenance. Without public utilities (roads, electricity, air and sea traffic control, etc) and social stability, most of these billionaires would lose their wealth to warlords very quickly.
> He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have $8B worth of shares and I have $2B in cash, and if the wealth tax is 20% I will have to pay all my cash this year. If my shares goes down to zero next year I'm broke. I couldn't just sell $2B worth of shares in the first year either because that would have affected the value of the shares. This is not how taxes should work.
Everyone agrees on income tax or capital gains tax because they are both cash, and the tax is also in the same currency. If we can find a way to tax wealth in the same "currency" (for example 20% of your share portfolio, plus 20% of your cash) then it might work. Obviously the state may not always be able to use shares to fund infrastructure, and cashing out those shares would diminish the value. Also it's still hard to do that for, say, real estate investments.
What doesn't make sense? He'd owe $1.6B the first year, and then he'd be shit out of luck because he drove the stock to 0. Not my problem. And you should stop putting yourself in his shoes - you will never be a billionaire, and you probably won't be a mega-millionaire either. Start worrying about your own situation.
In any case, the whole thread about "net worth" is really besides my original point, which is that collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event. The only reason we got into net worth was because I said I'd only apply it to high net worth individuals, since they have almost exclusively benefitted from the economy over the last 10-20 years. This is also super achievable because to get the bank to loan you money, you have to declare the value of the assets and the bank has to agree with the valuation - super easy to determine tax on that number.
I don't feel that strongly about it if he is just sitting on the assets, but if he's leveraging them to buy Twitter, OpenAI or to donate money toward overthrowing the Democratic order, then yes, he should absolutely pay taxes for the privilege.
I'm not worrying about billionaires. I'm discussing about hypothetical ways we can tax them. They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
> collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event
I fully agree with this.
> They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
Disagree. We've been negotiating from the middle. We got the New Deal because the alternative for the wealthy was facing a socialist revolution.
I'm all for threatining them with a socialist revolution if possible. However, I'm afraid they are better prepared this time. In today's world a (metaphorical) guerilla war that targets one small win at a time might be more prudent. The wealthy is not necessarily smart. Not all will see it coming.
> Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud.
Funnily enough there is (was?) legal activity about exactly this with our current POTUS.
Real estate assets when being accounted for tax purposes: "Worth: $x"
Same real estate assets when being accounted for loan collateral: "Worth: $10x".
But of course like most legal activity against POTUS, it's just been "abandoned".
When the amount of equity pulled out from the loan exceeds the cost basis, why not?
How? That makes little sense to me from an implementation standpoint.
When I bought my home I had to sell $XXX,XXX of stock to make the down payment. If Jeff Bezos wants to buy the same house, he would use a line of credit from the bank, collateralized by his Amazon shares (or whatever source of wealth) and pay with that. I paid 15% in long-term capital gains, he pays 0%. Under my plan, he would pay 15% LTCG for collateralizing his stock,. If I had to pay it, then it's entirely fair and reasonable that we expect him to pay his fair share too.
You could have done the same thing with a margin-enabled brokerage account, e.g. Interactive Brokers or Fidelity.
It's not particularly hard. Just have enough collateral to not get margin called. And, like the margin interest rate better than the tax hit. Shop around for rates. Notice, you don't have to pay the entire down payment this way.
If you have amassed 6 figures of stock and are buying a house, you're qualified to educate yourself on these topics. It's usually worth reading up anytime you incur that sizable a taxable event.
I am not saying this is a great idea, BTW. Just, it's an idea within many people's reach.
If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument - why would you suggest it? The tax laws shouldn't favor the gross accumulation of wealth, nor the starvation of the treasury, so the laws need to change to force the rich to pay their fair share.
> If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument
I believe the GP is just cautioning rando HN readers that they should not rush out and make their down payment in the manner described, as opposed to liquidating some of their stock options for "real cash" like the GGP had to do.
They are just explaining a reasonable method that the (above) average HN reader could use to be in the same situation as Bezos of having a 0% tax on their down payment.
In the US, there's a pretty massive exemption (well, deferral) for capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence, so once you have one home to work with, the down payment is (kind of?) tax-free anyway.
They definitely shouldn't. It's absurd to suggest that because a middle-class homebuyer can get a margin loan through iBroker means that we should let the richest people in history dodge taxes in this way. If no one would actually do that, then it really doesn't matter that they technically can. The obvious solution is to take away the privilege from the wealthy and make them abide the same rules as the rest of us.
> They definitely shouldn't.
Never give absolute financial advice to anyone who's situation you don't fully understand.
Nah, I’m pretty comfortable that 99.99999% of people should not take a margin loan to buy a house. Close enough for me.
A fair number of people do use margin for down payments until they can sell assets to cover the margin.
It's not uncommon when people buy deals while traveling or in hot markets.
See also Mr Money Mustache's articles on this topic. He assuredly is not Bezosesque.
Here's the Mr. Money Mustache article I referenced: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan-ibkr-...
Another very rational reason for such a margin loan for a home down payment is if the stock you wanted to sell hadn't been held for a year and therefore its sale would not yet qualify for long-term capital gains rates.
You might choose to pay margin interest for up to a year so that the stock sales become taxed at the much lower long-term capital gains rates instead of like income.
That might make sense for someone in the 24% federal bracket which ends at just under $200K of annual income, depending upon how much longer one needs to hold the position to achieve the more favorable taxation. Certainly far below the yacht-owning bracket.
Bezos gets a much better margin rate than you or I would ever get on IBKR. And IBKR doesn't margin call, they straight up auto liquidate. Bezos's lender would never do that to him.
And withdrawals from margin accounts should cause taxable events too. Honestly it is up to the industry to justify and propose a workable tax scheme that makes margin accounts feasible. Withdrawals triggering taxable events seems fair to me, though.
If I get something of worth, non-related to the stock/ownership, for the current value on my stock/ownership, I should pay taxes on that amount. I am using the stocks value to gain something. If I take out a loan for businesses needs, that is in the interest of the thing I own. If I take out a loan to buy a separate thing, I have leveraged the current value and have therefor realized the current value and should pay accordingly.
Lenders would have to report loan origination for secured loans where some specific asset classes are acting as the collateral.
Why does it matter? It eventually gets taxed through estate tax and at a higher rate than income. This obsession with taxing them _now_ only makes sense if the point is to punish the the rich.
Agreed. For the revenue tax activists want from billionaires, it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional. The non-profit tax exemption fight is about "income taxes" which billionaires already have to pay (but avoid). So it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
> it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional
I take it you haven't heard of property taxes.
I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.
If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).
> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.
It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.
> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes
It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.
The federal government is free to assess property taxes too, except that it must apportion them between the states: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1/...
> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]
What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.
Recommend James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" to learn more about the evolution of property valuation and rights. The systems of land rights in up to the 1500s-1800s were quite complex. The modern state imposed a uniform system of free-hold tenure which shifted the complexity to the downstream consequences.
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...
I was making a comment about radical change in the meaning of "renting" and "ownership". Did you have anything specific in mind?
(I've read the book; it didn't strike me as related to this topic.)
The concept of freehold tenure is pretty central to the book. Not sure you could get any more on-point for the general reader looking for a book recommendation.
But since you ask: the peasant's rights to land were exquisitely bespoke. No tax collector could figure out how much one family owed versus another in another county. The rules in one prefecture of one county may have been completely unresolvable with the rules of a county a hundred miles north. Everything was negotiated family to family over generations, with rights in one place having no corollary whatsoever with the rights in another area, making the tax man's duty a fool's errand.
So, I don't your first statement "European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today." is really meaningful. Because no generalization can be made about the rights of a European peasant. That problem is the whole reason for the systems of freehold tenure that prevail today: making the territory "seeable" by the state.
You're talking about something entirely different. The typical case for the renting medieval peasant is that the rent on a given plot of land is set by custom, the nominal amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason. No administrative task could ever be simpler than collecting the rent.
Landowners responded to that by adjusting the size of the units in which land rents were due, which is why a major demand of peasant movements was for standardized units.
The fact that rents were absolutely nonnegotiable led to other developments, such as the lord being so indifferent as to exactly who was renting from him that the renter was free to leave his status to whoever he chose in his will.
> amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason
That's only true in a narrow and a relatively obtuse way. For starters that varied to a huge degree between regions and types of contracts.
e.g. in England freeholds were indeterminate and or more or less worked the way you are saying.
However most peasants didn't have those, before the plague the overwhelming majority of peasants were villeins (i.e. serfs), inheritance was customary and lords were not legally obliged to pass it to the serf's descendants (also there were all kinds of fees, fines and stuff besides the fact that they weren't legally free and there was no legal system to protect your rights).
Leaseholds and copyholds became much more common due to labour shortages after the plague. leaseholds were not inherited and market price based. Copyholds were inherited and rents customary fixes (but again lords could and would impose all kinds of arbitrary fees to get their cut).
Then you had the enclosures starting the 1400s (a lot of the land peasants relied on was common)
Again, you're generalizing. To say that doesn't work in medieval Europe is probably itself a generalization. But if you read the book, I don't think this would be a point you'd be arguing.
The Supreme Court explicitly allowed property taxes in Pollock decision. They haven’t for wealth taxes (they still might allow it but they also might not).
A federal property tax is also unconstitutional.
what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?
>> what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?
Article I, Section 9, Clause 4:
"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"
A wealth tax is generally considered to be a direct tax. If you wanted to enact one at the federal level, my understanding is that it would have to be done in proportion to the census. So, given that Mississippi is around 1% of the total US population, Mississippi would have to pay 1% of the wealth tax. Mississippi is the poorest US state, so that would be a very regressive tax.
An income tax is also considered to be a direct tax, that's why it took an amendment to the Constitution to enact one.
The Constitution applies to taxes at the federal level, not state. States could enact a wealth tax the same way they enact property taxes now (depending on their state Constitutions). The problem for them is that wealth is a bit more mobile than property.
And yes there are arguments about what a direct tax really meant in the language at the time the Constitution was written, there are arguments that the income tax should have been legal without an amendment. But that's not how it went down.
It’s not totally clear if it would be but here’s a summary: https://city-countyobserver.com/the-constitutionality-of-a-w...
I'm not a lawyer but my reasoning is this:
- as far as I know, double taxation by any given entity (Federal Gov) is unconstitutional
- a given dollar is taxed once as income. A federal wealth tax on the remainder of that dollar would be double taxation.
That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
There are other arguments about "direct taxation" I don't fully understand.
"Double taxation" is absolutely constitutional. Tons of things are double, triple, quadruple and more taxed.
I make a W2 salary. I pay federal income taxes on it. I pay FICA taxes on it. My employer pays payroll taxes on it. I might pay state income taxes on it. One event, tons of taxes. I take that quadruple taxed money and buy a dinner with a beer. Sales taxes on the overall sale, additional taxes on the alcohol, additional sales tax riders because I bought it in the touristy night life area. Triple taxes on my quadruple taxes, good lord! Unconstitutional!
Worthless phrase, "double taxation".
> That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
Once again, the several different taxes applied to my salary income. Then on that I go buy a gallon of gasoline, uh oh, federal gas taxes on that. Or I buy a plane ticket and that gets Federal Excise Tax (7.5% of the base fare), the Federal Segment Fee (currently $5.20 per segment), the TSA Security Fee ($5.60 per passenger), and more. Oof, "double taxation"! Even at the federal level!
Billionaires do pay income tax on investment income.
If they sell and incur capital gains. But they have so many better alternatives than you or me. And if they do incur capital gains they pay the same tax rate (or maybe 5 basis points higher, depending on your income) as you or me.
What alternatives are those, that enable realizing income without incurring income tax?
Borrowing against assets. Wealthy people get low, low rates, much lower than the hoi polloi would get on a HELOC or brokerage account margin loan. Banks like having them as clients.
Not only they get low rates, but if they have friends in the palace, they tend to be beneficiaries of large governmental contracts; during times of economic upset, they are the beneficiaries of large “monetary injections” that later cause inflation and prices to rise for all of us. During 2008, COVID, and the Mango recession the wealthy got much much wealthier, and all we got was expensive eggs and higher costs of living.
And how do you pay back the loan without realising a gain?
You don't pay back the loan. You die, your assets pass to your heirs, and their cost basis is stepped up. The heirs sell some of the assets to pay the loan back. They don't have capital gains because of the stepped-up cost basis.
That's the gist I got from reading https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
There are finer points I don't understand such as:
1. Is the stepped-up cost basis available to the estate or only to the heirs? If it's to the estate, it's easier for the bank to trust they'll be paid back.
2. If the heir gets the stepped up cost basis, what legal guarantees does the bank have that the heir will pay the loan back?
And probably a lot else. I assume there's expensive lawyering and accounting involved in setting it up, so it isn't cost-effective unless you have a certain amount to shield from taxes in the first place.
Really? They're not going to get below prime. Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns. It's going to be above prime.
Usually about the lowest rate you can get is a mortgage on your house.
Of course, if your credit is bad, you're not going to get a good rate.
First of all, prime can be pretty good vs being taxed. Secondly, who knows what kind of sweetheart deal can be pulled for a small (in the big scheme of things) "loan" when banking of billions is at stake.
> Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns
Not to you or me. Giving powerful people who can send more business the bank's way a freebie on their personal accounts might make sense as a loss leader.
An ELOC for a HNWI can be significantly lower interest than a mortgage. They can often get "fed funds rate/LIBOR + 0.5%" or so. This is because they can accept a floating rate, while mortgage rates get locked in for 10-30 years.
Adam Neumann and several others in that era famously got very large zero interest personal loans because the bank wanted their corporate business.
Only short term gains are taxed as income. Long term capital gains tax caps at 20%, wildly lower than the top income tax bracket of 37%. And it's always possible to defer short term gains (e.g. put your trading money in an IRA).
IRA contributions are drastically limited to a $7000 cap per year under 50. Whether they should be is another question, and one worth exploring.
Long-term investment is rightly seen as something to be encouraged hence the lower tax rates. You can make the argument that the rate should be more like 0% since the money invested and risked was already taxed most likely...20% is a reasonable value for the market regulating infrastructure provided by gov't entities.
IRA caps are low, but loads of people earning enough that they'd reasonably save more than 7k annually have access to 401ks or similar accounts that raise the annual cap to >30k, vastly more than the typical person is saving.
The middle class isn't taking advantage of low capital gains rates to earn more from their taxable brokerage accounts because they haven't even filled up their tax-advantaged accounts.
There are loopholes to roll all sorts of nonsense into an IRA though. There was a whole news cycle in the 2012 election about Mitt Romney's $4M "IRA" or somesuch. And IRAs are hardly the only shelter from income tax, they're just the most obvious.
The simple truth is that wealth beyond the ~$10M level in the US pays essentially zero "income tax". It just doesn't happen, no one does it. Short term gains are only taxed for small investors who don't know any better.
According to Google:
"Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on social networks that this year he will pay 11 billion dollars, thus becoming the largest taxpayer in the history of the USA."
Certainly someone we can take at his word, which is why my self driving Roadster flies me to work every day
That was on a sale of Tesla stock that he'd held for much longer than the long term rate threshold. He paid 20% on it, or plausibly less. I, personally pay a higher rate than that. Big numbers notwithstanding, Elon Musk shouldn't be paying less tax than I do, sorry.
If you hold stock long term, you will pay the same or less tax.
From Google: "For the 2025 tax year, individual filers won't pay any capital gains tax if their total taxable income is $48,350 or less"
If you've got a smart phone and a credit card, you can buy stock. See robinhood.com
You're dodging, and I know you're smart enough to know how this goes. I don't make money with long term stock, I make salary. I pay >>20% tax on that salary. Billionaries make, statistically, zero salary. All their income is on long term gains. All of it. So billionaires pay 20%, and that only if they're dumb enough not to find other shelters.
You're just saying "Well, that's the way the tax code works". I'm saying "The tax code sucks", and your point is non-responsive.
You can invest in stocks, too. Over time, it will pay more than your salary.
If you bought a house, and it goes up in value, that increase will be a capital gain taxed at capital gains rates.
So how "over time" do I need to wait until I start paying the same tax rate as a billionaire? Seems like your solution to "the rich pay less tax" is "well, everyone should just be rich then"?
"Let them eat cake" makes for extremely poor federal revenue policy.
Not at rates anywhere near tax rates on wages of a middle class worker.
Because investment income is not the same as wage income. Nor should they be.
Why not? Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar. Why should investment dollars be taxed less than those earned through the sweat of one's brow?
Mainly to encourage people to save their money. You know, "work smarter, not harder"...
Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money though - that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists. Spending and borrowing is heavily encouraged at all levels, while investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income to prevent the poor from being able to "work smarter".
> investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income
Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
> Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money
No, it isn't. People who save money are terrified of risk. There's nothing stopping anyone from investing the money.
> that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists
That's the excuse the government makes to inflate the money. You'll never see a politician point out the real reason for inflation. It's so they can spend it without raising taxes, but it does cause inflation, and inflation has to be blamed on something else. Anything but the truth.
> Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
Buying a few stocks on an app is not anywhere near the same thing as being an accredited investor. Access to the most lucrative investment opportunities are not available to the average person, and that's almost entirely due to rules intentionally created to block anyone but the already wealthy.
The methods that institutional investors have, like market making or delta one strategies, aren't available because of the rules, it's because individual investors literally don't have the scale, flow and networks to do it.
Second of all, at the end of the day it's other people money's they're using, and are entrusted to manage. You can't demand people to just lend money to anyone, any sort of free market of loans will quickly coalesce into a few capital allocators.
Please, this thread is about the average wage-grade worker (money earned via the "sweat of one's brow"), not an "accredited investor". In this example, almost anyone in the US can open up a Robin Hood, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc account with probably $25. You don't need access to the most lucrative investment opportunities to make money; simply buy a standard S&P 500 ETF and call it a day. Over time, the chances of you making money with your investments are high, and the tax burden is lower, meaning you get to make and keep more money in your pocket. That is a win for everyone - not just the magical "billionaire".
The average worker in the US needs these sorts of opportunities to be self reliant. You don't need to be a billionaire to make money on the market, you just need a few dollars, some time, and the will to take a little risk. Stop hating on the average worker...
To say nothing of insider trading for those connected to folks setting policies that affect the economy
Right, because the average worker has insider connections that set policies that affect the economy. /s
What are the examples?
Sorry, nothing prevents the poor from working smarter. Just because you are poor does not mean you are uneducated. And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income. Literally anyone in the US can open an investment account and get started. The lack of desire is the real issue.
> And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income.
What? There is literally a class of people considered accredited or sophisticated investors.
To be considered an accredited investor by the SEC you must have a net worth of over $1M -not including- your primary residence, and you must have an annual household income of over $300K.
It is quite literally a wealth and income gate.
We have tax-advantaged retirement accounts to enable the middle class to save a reasonable amount in order to retire without being a burden on society. A typical saver doesn't have additional extra money leftover for a taxable brokerage account that exposes them to capital gains taxes.
Low capital gains taxes aren't meaningfully encouraging somebody making 75k and saving 10k annually to continue with their saving plan.
So you tax the person extra who needs to eat their money, and let the person who is swimming in money keep more of it?
And you earnestly can't understand why the poor want to increase taxes on the rich?
So we can tax it at a higher rate? Couldn't agree more.
Short term dividend income is taxed at the same rates as wage income.
Thanks, I should have been more clear.
When i needed money for a house, without a good security i had to pay 1.6 and with 0.8.
Rich get richer, poor never see this advantage.
Billionaires do not get a tax exemption
No but their earnings are mainly in their companies, and those can hire fleets of tax attorneys and accountants to crush their tax burden.
Once the money is in stocks, it doesn't get taxed unless you draw on it, but the billionaires can use strategies like buy, borrow, die (which last I checked only really works if you're north of ~ $300M) to avoid personal taxes.
Billionaires benefit most from the largest tax exceptions. No tricky accounting needed it’s baked blatantly into the tax code. Long term capital gains are specifically lower than short term capital gains. Further gains are only taxed on sale allowing a lifetime of growth to pass to the next generation tax free.
They also operate at a scale where many tax breaks become viable. CEO owners aren’t paying themselves nominal salaries because they are actually working for free. Creating a shell company to own your 50k car isn’t useful but it’s damn well worth it if you’re buying a 50+m dollar yacht for personal use. Turning depreciation into a nominal loss offsetting capital gains etc.
Meanwhile people of lesser means get stuck with all kinds of crap like a 10% early withdrawal penalty on 401k plans.
>> College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.
> LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
Because they already do it for billionaires: unlike university endowments, billionaire investment income is not tax-exempt by default, it's already subject to income tax [1].
[1] At least theoretically, ignoring the loopholes and tax-dodges billionaires can take advantage of with literal armies of accountants.
Billionaires pay 37% or 20% on their investment gains, can't really explain it to a 5 year old because congress and the IRS make it complex.
They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes.
Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)
40% of Federal income tax revenue comes from the top 1%.
Imagine how much federal revenue would increase if that 1% paid the same effective rate as say a typical plumber, rather than the <10% they currently pay. That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt.
shrug
I hear that sentiment a lot, but it doesn't seem right to me. My salary is pretty close to the median plumber's income, and my family's effective tax rate last year came in at... 1.6%. And that's with all retirement account contributions going toward Roth accounts. If we'd chosen to contribute to traditional IRA/401k accounts instead, the EITC and child tax credit would easily turn our tax bill negative.
A quick search tells me the median plumber salary is ~$60k. Your telling me your entire tax burden is ~1k? I find that hard to believe, and if true is pretty darn atypical. That's closer to what I was paying when I was making ~10/hr.
Yes. We had $50k of taxable W2 income ($63k including pre-tax insurance premiums and HSA contributions), $13k of taxable family leave benefits, $4k of interest/dividends (mostly qualified dividends, taxed at 0%), and $9k of long-term capital gains (taxed at 0%), making our pre-tax gross income about $89k. Only $66k of that is subject to taxes; the standard deduction brings that down to $37k, on which the tax is $4k. With a $2,000 child tax credit, $400 saver's credit, and $200 foreign tax credit, our tax liability is reduced to $1400, which is 1.6% of $89k.
"That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt."
It might also result in even more spending. I don't think that there is any "natural ceiling" when it comes to willingness of politicians to spend other people's money. The only ceiling is external - how much will the system bear.
> rather than the <10% they currently pay
I suspect you're using a different definition of "income" than the IRS. What is it?
The amount they report on their tax returns.
There's no case where that's true.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-...
For one thing, many plumbers do make it to the 1%: Trades are a profitable line of work for the industrious.
But the median 1%’er is paying 3-4X the effective rate of the overall median earner.
So if they're earning 50x as much, why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?
>> is paying 3-4X the effective rate > why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?
You have conflated the tax rate with the tax amount.
What percent of all income do they make?
Edit: it's an honest question. Maybe the top 1% paying 40% of all income taxes is too much tax. Maybe it's not enough. Without knowing how much of all the income they make it's a meaningless number.
According to the Tax Foundation[1], for tax year 2021, the top 1% of U.S. earners—those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $682,577 or more—accounted for 26.3% of total AGI and paid 45.8% of all federal income taxes.
My personal opinion is that income tax should be more progressive, but I know that plenty of smart people disagree on that.
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
Your source leans right-center, so probably good reason to suspect their reported top 1% AGI is low and their reported federal income tax estimate is high.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/tax-foundation/
It’s IRS data. You can download it from the IRS website and replicate the analysis and prove them wrong if you’d like.
https://fee.org/articles/5-reasons-to-avoid-ad-hominem-argum...
1. Does not follow. Just because you don't like someone's politics doesn't mean they're dishonest.
2. Your own link contradicts you. It says explicitly that that site hasn't failed any of their fact checks and doesn't use loaded words that they say are typical of that category. It says the categorization is because the site promotes libertarian policies.
There are a lot more taxes than the federal income tax. It happens to be one of the most progressive taxes. Anyone focusing on that and ignoring all the others is trying to scam you.
This is true for ultra high net worth individuals. They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
It is also true for many “normal” one percenters. For example there is a service for incorporated anesthesiologists where you tell them where you plan to go on vacation and what dates, and they create a bullshit anesthesiology conference, including the brochure and other artifacts, that meet the letter of the law IRS definitions for a valid business expense. None of this stuff ever hits AGI.
A simpler example: social security taxes hit a cap at a bit under $200,000/year. Somebody working fast food at minimum wage is paying 6.2% on every dollar they earn, while with my fancy tech job I’m paying a substantially lower percentage.
The social security "tax" should really be conceptualized as an investment, not a tax. The typical fast food worker has probably not passed the first bend point in the Social Security PIA formula, meaning that social security is giving them 90 cents on the dollar*. You, with your fancy tech job, are likely well past the second bend point: social security is only giving you 15 cents on the dollar* (and nothing, obviously, for earnings beyond the payroll tax ceiling).
It's a progressive system overall - but it wasn't designed for the purpose of wealth redistribution, hence the payroll tax ceiling.
* More precisely, their monthly benefit at full retirement age increases by 90 cents for each additional dollar of pre-retirement average monthly earnings, whereas yours only increases by 15 cents.
That's wild. I searched, though, and this is the closest I found: https://www.cerebraltaxadvisors.com/blog/vacation-business-t.... Is there a link you could share for the actual fake conference approach?
> This is true for ultra high net worth individuals.
Anyone can borrow money against their stocks, house, or credit card. It's tax-free as well.
> They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
Um, borrowing money is not "income". You have to pay it back, with interest.
If the asset appreciates faster than the interest rate there's never a need to sell. If the interest rate is lower than the capital gains tax rate, paying the interest is cheaper than paying taxes.
UHNW individuals can borrow until they die. Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis. The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
Normal people can't do this. If I die owing money, my creditors will take it out of my estate before it passes to my heirs. UHNW estates can be structured differently and creditors can accommodate different payment terms (get paid second) because they know the money's there, and it saves taxes.
You can also read: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
I might have gotten some things wrong. Or maybe the poster has.
> Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis
LOL, the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
> The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
The loan and the interest payments and dont forget the inheritance tax.
> Normal people can't do this.
Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
> LOL,
I assumed you asked a question to learn something. If you're not interested in learning, please continue believing that everyone gets the same tax system. Otherwise keep reading.
> the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
If you read the link I posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
it has a fairly detailed explanation of how it's a completely different ballgame above a net worth of $300m. Grantor trusts allow sidestepping estate tax and...
> The loan and the interest payments
"The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was. Income that would normally have been derived by selling assets. Obviously it has to be paid back. No one said it's free money. Only that it's (largely) tax-free money.
The interest payments are lower than the income tax would've been on the same amount of income.
> and dont forget the inheritance tax.
You mean estate tax. Explained above.
> Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
Not in the same way, and not nearly as effectively.
If there are specific inaccuracies with https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... I'm open to learning.
> There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
> "The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was
Borrowed money is not "income" in any sense of the word. When I was on summer vacation, I decided to take a class in accounting. One of the most productive uses of my time. I recommend it. P.S. if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income", that's called fraud.
> If you read the link I posted
I rely on my CPA for tax advice, not the internet, nor do I care much for misusing accounting terms. I've read too many articles that confuse income with revenue, wealth with income, and so on.
> They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
The estate's value is reduced by what it owes.
> if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income"
sigh C'mon man, engage in good faith here. Stop saying things I didn't say.
If you can borrow cash against assets, don't have to pay principle until you die, and only pay low interest payments then it's functionally the same as selling those assets at a low tax rate. That's the principle.
And if you can use trusts to avoid estate taxes then there are no (or very low) taxes due ever.
> I rely on my CPA for tax advice
Ok ask your CPA what they know about using trusts to avoid estate taxes. Maybe it's BS but maybe it's true. Without some curiosity, how will you ever know?
> not the internet
More reputable sources than Reddit indicate it may be possible to use trusts to greatly reduce or eliminate estate tax:
https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/wealth-plan...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grat.asp
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/wh...
I don't think anyone is arguing that a loan is income in a legal sense. I am going to generously assume you misunderstood.
20%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before...
The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.
Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.
So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
> Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two?
Sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828
Not sure any of these companies have really appreciably made the lives of people better. Sure seem to have funnelled more money to Elon though.
No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.
Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.
> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Tell us how that works.
> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?
> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
No he didn't.
> Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
So is meth.
So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
I am alarmed by how quickly Americans leap from the suggestion that we tax the super-wealthy more, to this idea of full communism.
Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?
I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?
I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
So you'd rather have someone unelected with that money. Don't y'all live in a democracy?
We live in a Constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights and the right to own property.
So, no?
Correct. Look up "Constitutional republic".
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...
> when in fact it appears they pay double
They very obviously don't make only twice as much money as the bottom 80%, so how is that equal in the slightest?
You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:
There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.
This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.
[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
The top 1% aren't the billionaires. It's also not most of the millionaires. It's people earning a tiny bit less than 700k a year.
The suggestion is simply that the top 0.1% pay more - as they will be little affected by it.
It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.
Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).
> as they will be little affected by it
Everything you tax away from wealthy people is removed from their investments.
For example, if all of Musk's income above $1m were taxed away, the following companies would never have existed:
1. Tesla
2. SpaceX
3. Starlink
4. Neuralink
You didn't have to sweeten the pot, I was already on board
Its still less than the fines most of those companies have incurred in the space of a year.
Do you think they were arguing for taxing away all wealth over $1 million?
If they were taxed $1, that's $1 taken away from investments.
Ok, but how does that prevent the existence of what you mentioned?
Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?
Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.
If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.
I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.
There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.
I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.
If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.
People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.
Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not
If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.
> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.
Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.
> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.
How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?
What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?
> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.
Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.
Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.
In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
What is the right percentage for the 1% to pay? State a percent.
I keep here this “the rich should pay more”, but rarely do I hear a number.
Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.
By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.
You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
> why is the 1960’s the right target?
Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.
> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax
Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.
Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)
Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.
--
While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?
Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
Tax every dollar over $999,000,000 at 100%.
50% tax.
For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1...
That seems excessive.
Corporations are persons, right? Why is their tax rate just half that of real people?
Why aren't all persons taxed equally?
The top 1% own 39% of everything in the U.S. You are not in the top 1%. Why are you complaining again?
The city claims to own my house, as they charge me rent every year, and have a long list of things I'm not allowed to do with it.
That rent went up over 10% last year. For contrast, the rent control people want to cap rent increases to 7%.
My heart bleeds for you.
I appreciate your concern.
If they don't wanna pay so much in taxes, they should stop having so much money. Taxes function to raise revenue and thus have to go where the money is.
This conversation is about billionaires, not the top 1%.
There are no loopholes for investment gains. If you are talking about offsetting losses and delaying gains, those options would likely be available to endowment funds.
I think the 9 billion is very misleading. More than half goes to hospitals affiliated with Harvard. I am not sure but I don't think they get anything from the endowment. The impact of loosing this money would be very uneven across different parts of the university and hospitals affiliated with it.
The faculty of arts and science would be fine. Yes, some cuts, a hiring freeze etc. The med school and public health school would feel a big impact. They employ so many people on "soft money" through grants including many faculty members.
The hospitals are a different story and I am not sure why they are even lumped together.
Yeah this isn't purely a question of Harvard's P&L being dependent on subsidies. The money in question is grants attached to specific practices or research. The money isn't just gratuity for Harvard being so great, it's awarded for specific objectives that Harvard was deemed capable of delivering. Cutting off the money isn't going to hurt Harvard, it's going to stop all the programs the grants were funding.
Stopping those research programs is a choice. They could also choose to pay for them out of the endowment.
People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad things do happen, you will probably see mass layoffs of researchers in particular in life sciences and biomedical research.
I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.
That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.
I guess Harvard saw the decision at Columbia made the situation worse [1], so they decided to make a different one.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-rese...
Some universities should make sacrifices for academic freedom, yes. That's what they are there for!
I wouldn't say this easily if I were the sacrifice, especially as a visa holder.
With $50B in the endowment, how are they financially vulnerable? Honest question.
Much of the endowment is earmarked towards specific ends. It is not a slush fund for discretionary spending.
Earmarked implies discretionary so it is discretionary
That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.
Most of it is not discretionary, no matter what words random Internet commenters use to describe it.
I am replying to the GP. GP must be mistaken. It was Harvard’s choice to operate this way financially
I understand. I am saying they are correct that much of Harvard's endowment is not discretionary, even if they accidentally used a term that implies that it is.
This might be true for Harvard, but I don’t think free speech should only be for those who can afford it. I know my school couldn’t if the government came knocking.
Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.
This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.
That’s a very odd perspective.
Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?
If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?
My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.
> I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with.
There certainly is _no_ government spending supported by _all_ Americans, so your position isn't a very practical approach to governance.
Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).
1st Amendment is more important than you not liking a specific spending of government funds.
Somehow I doubt you would apply these same principles to someone who doesn't believe in police and objects to their taxes being used to fund them.
Republicans won the presidency and both branches of the legislature. The people voted for their money to no longer be spent foolishly.
So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.
Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.
I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.
> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.
I don't want the government to fund any of that. The government should be far far smaller. The bigger the government is, the less rights you have.
Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."
Stephen Miller made it clear this morning: "Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."
If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.
They're absolutely teeing up to be able to deport whoever they want. Reasonable people should be (and are) very afraid.
Irrelevant and without basis.
Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-citizens-prison-el-salvador...
Relevance is subjective.
That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.
The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?
Democracy doesn't mean that a plurality of voters in a single presidential election gets to overturn the Constitution and established law.
Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.
i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.
Okay, disband all of CBP and then we can talk.
They could also possibly fire some administrators. Not every vice-provost out there is strictly necessary.
Just a few years ago, Harvard Crimson carried an op-ed complaining about the bloat:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...
Cannot edit my original comment, because I wrote it 16 hours ago, but I am somewhat surprised by the fluctuating up/downvote count, going from 0 to 6 and back.
It seems that the very idea that some employees in academia might be superfluous is very disagreeable for some HNers.
Why? Institutional bloat is a well known problem, it happens in private sector, public sector, churches, military, wherever you can think of. It probably already happened in Ur and Nineveh. Why should academia be somehow immune from this problem?
And if it is not immune, shouldn't it try to do something with it?
There was a massive increase in tuition in the last generation or so. How much of that extra money goes to the core mission of the universities, and how much is spent on "nice to have extras", starting with opulent campuses and ending with "Standing Committees on Visual Culture and Signage"?
Everyone has to trim the fat down a bit from time to time. Even Google and Meta. Why not Harvard.
People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.
People in HN have been complaining about university admin bloat for many years. In this thread, the problem is it’s political and people struggle with the cognitive dissonance about that stuff.
This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.
>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.
>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.
More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:
>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.
https://archive.is/siUqm
if a $50,000,000,000 endowment can not be used to smooth things over in times of need or turbulence then the endowment managers need to make changes.
You can not possibly convince me that Harvard’s endowment doesn’t trivially have one year of liquidity in it.
I’m sure it’s not structured to handle a 7% annual draw down for the next 30 years. But it’s got plenty of time to restructure if needed.
The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
Spending a billion of it is not just spending a billion. It's spending the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest, over the next decades.
It's extraordinarily expensive to spend it directly, as opposed to spending the income it generates.
You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
I've seen arguments of this general shape and form many times about this, and yes, this is true. In general, Harvard should not spend down it's endowment when it has other sources of revenue.
I think the issue here is that this _is_ an emergency. Harvard should consider that Federal money gone for the near future and spend and plan to spend as if they will not have it. There is no point in them continuing to exist as an institution if they accede to these absurd demands.
> You can certainly do it, in a true emergency.
This seems to qualify for many people though. Less pain than complying in many minds I am sure.
>You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% last year, growing the total by $2.5 billion. In the previous year, the endowment returned 2.9%, though the total endowment decreased as the gain was offset by contributions to operating expenses. [0]
In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/10/financial-report-fis...
>In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something. The argument is that they shouldn't raid endowments by doing additional withdraws to fund the current shortfall.
>The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something
The argument I was replying to was actually of exactly this form.
That argument also implied that any endowment spending to cover shortfalls would necessarily be of the principal, but that is also incorrect.
In fact, the White House just responded with a $2.2B funding freeze—an amount that would have been covered by last year's endowment return.
> the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest
THATS WHAT WHAT THE FIFTY BILLION IS
It’s a war chest that has been carefully cultivated over decades. The fifty billion is the result of a hundred years of investment and management.
If it can’t be spent now then when the fuck exactly can it be spent? In 200 years you’d still be saying “this is the seed corn for tomorrow!!”
I’m not saying burn it down to zero. But the whole fucking point of an endowment is to provide stability during trying times. If you can’t use the interest that has been accumulated now then when the fuck can you??
No. You misunderstand endowments.
Their principal is not intended to be spent, ever. The point of an endowment is not to "provide stability during trying times".
The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity. Which Harvard already does and has always done. Interest from their endowment is already a large part of their revenue. That's what the endowment is for.
How much is the principle? Because I bet you $3.50 it’s multiple billion less than the current balance.
Returns fluctuate wildly, while expenses are roughly constant. So obviously expenses are drawn conservatively. And if investment works well, you can grow the endowment too. Obviously it is up to the university to strike the right balance.
The more it grows, the less risk there is in the future. But if you start spending it more than the levels of its average returns, that's high risk. And the point is it's supposed to last forever.
You also need to grow it simply to account for inflation and other rising costs.
Sounds like they have significant buffer to scratch the surface of their dragon hoard for one, perhaps even two, years.
They’d probably want to reduce spending and hit up donors if they felt they need to power through a four year stretch.
> The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity.
Yes, but these are not normal times.
> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
How much is “enough” money to hoard in an endowment though? We hear lots of arguments about how the concept of a billionaire is itself obscene, why can’t we apply to same logic to institutions? E.g. much like people say “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, perhaps endowments over some similarly arbitrary value shouldn’t exist either.
Well, it's proportional to their spending to some degree. It takes a world-class endowment to fund a world-class university. And it's all from private donations.
Harvard doesn't make a profit. It educates students and does research. It sounds like you're arguing Harvard should be broken up or something? But based on what? Is it abusing its power or something?
> it's eating your seed corn
Paraphrasing J. P. Morgan, the man, in the midst of the Panic of 1907 reassuring a banker concerned about dipping into reserves to pay out depositors: "what are reserves for if not times like these."
Eat the seed corn. Fight. Then raise unencumbered donations from the billionaires whose balls haven't fallen off. If Harvard plays this correctly, they could become one of the flag bearers of the legal and financial resistance to Trump.
To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.
The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.
Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.
Endowments have come from people over the entire history of the institution. The vast majority of the endowers are likely deceased and won't be able to agree to change the terms of their endowment.
And yet some trust, estate, or descendant somewhere ultimately has the authority to change those agreements. These things are not immutable facts of the universe, they can be changed.
As for the minority where that is not the case, it also means nobody will have standing to sue if the school decides to stop letting someone who died 200 years ago decide exactly how Harvard's money will be spent.
They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized.
At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.
I don't know that making a bad investment makes them terrible fund managers, just as making a good one would not make them brilliant. Don't you need a string of data points?
If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.
>...much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose
I would assume that a tax on an endowment would be like a capital gains tax, i.e., taxed on the investment growth. Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's reserved because the donation was earmarked for a specific purpose (eg. a business program or whatever), not because they reserved 30% on tax owing.
>Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's probably safe to assume donors are competent enough that such glaring loopholes don't exist. After all, the concept of endowments being used as long term savings, rather than spent immediately, isn't exactly a new concept. Failing to take this into account would mean any earmarks are void after a few decades.
It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.
He's not gonna be happy they can operate financially without his assent
He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.
He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.
> ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs
Oh, those federal jobs he’s been DOGEing for the past weeks in an attempt to demotivate folks out of them?
This administration’s incoherence comes back to bite it in the ass again.
That is always a risk of working for the government. Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
>Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
Perhaps in theory, but not in practice as a historical norm. And, certainly not for "standard" non-appointed, bureaucratic roles.
It's important that we don't normalize what we're seeing here, in terms of quality or degree.
No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.
That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.
Or we didn't. Now we do. Kinda sucks.
Since ~1885 and the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Refo...
Submitted some historical breadcrumbs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686221
Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.
The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.
The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.
> he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts
Harvard (and most institutions and powerful individuals) would be smart to maintain liquid assets and a bank account outside America’s control.
Maybe their endowment is held in treasurys they should start selling off...
LOL
I like the way you think!
>a bank account outside America’s control
There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America. If you're in the US and doing business with a bank, the courts can order that bank to do things or face isolation from the entire financial system.
> There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America
There are to varying extents. You want a country that isn't aligned with or dependent on America, but also isn't its adversary. (And which has a good banking system.) That list was classically Turkey, the UAE and Switzerland. Today I'd add India, Qatar, Canada and Brazil and remove Switzerland.
Yeah I'm no expert in financial systems but since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S. or locked away overseas and can't be transferred in for the next ~4 years.
It's much more than that, foreign banks will comply with US court orders, it's not just a blockade.
US courts shut down a series of Swiss banks that were trying to hide American's assets behind the swiss banking secrecy laws while also doing business on American soil (just having bank employees in the country did it).
> since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S.
Of course it does. The hypothetical we're considering is the administration illegally freezing bank accounts. You don't need something legally impenetrable. Just complicated enough that it slows down the goons while you fight them in court.
This is true, and they have likely been accelerating the arrangements they already had for a while now. At the same time however, getting 50 billion in assets into various European jurisdictions is not at all easy. I'd estimate Trump could cut off 70-90 percent of what Harvard has to work with.
Alumni will need to come through for continuing operations if the worst does happen. And I'm certain Harvard has put some thought into that contingency as well.
Trump can make that illegal in no time. „No foreign funds” is a well known method of fighting opposition, tried and tested in many soft regimes (looking for a recent example, Hungary comes to mind).
Bitcoin!
I mean, it turns out the fed has the power to pull any money from any account they wish, at any time, like they recently did with NYC.
This is about lots more than money. Sure, Harvard can go without federal funds. Then comes federal tax breaks. Then Harvard's ability to recruit foreign students (no visas, no foreign students/professors). After that comes the really draconian stuff like the fed revoking clearances or not hiring/doing business with Harvard grads. Such things were once thought illegal but are now very much on the table. That is why Harvard needs to win the money fight no matter the numbers.
Right, money is just the first and most obvious cudgel. Does Harvard have any biomedical labs that require federal approval to handle hazardous materials? That could be delayed or revoked. Do they file taxes? They could face an audit. There's no shortage of painpoints an organization that large has exposed to an unethical government.
Harvard affiliated hospitals are dependent on NIH funding for survival. Wonder if they are included in the scope of this.
NIH falls under HHS, and the HHS acting general counsel was a signatory on the original letter.
That said, affiliated hospitals are not owned or operated by Harvard.
The affiliates could be pushed to drop their affiliation if NIH wanted to play hardball with Harvard.
According to NYT, “ of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”
80% of the endowment funds are heavily restricted as per donor requests and cannot be used unconditionally.
Could you give us some of these restrictions? This seems like a BS excuse to not support the students.
If I give a school 20 million yearly to research a specific form of cancer, and I find out that they instead used that money to upgrade the plumbing in their dormitories and spent nothing on cancer research, I would not give them 20 million ever again.
Sure, due to funding cuts students will suffer with slowly degrading infrastructure and will need to do plumbing fixes at some point. But that doesn't mean people who give them money for one purpose are happy with it being used for another purpose.
You might even form a contract with the institution obligating them do certain things with your gift
This is absolutely par for the course for university endowments. They're not big pots of money, they're thousands of small pots of money with various restrictions on their investment, disbursement, etc.
Not asking for the breakdown, wondering what some of those restrictions look like and whether they support the students with those restrictions.
For a quick institution specific overview, see “with donor restrictions” on page 20-21 (pdf page 21-22) of their most recent annual report[0].
I’d imagine “maintain and invest the original contribution in perpetuity” covers majority of the restricted funds, with use-specific restrictions in a distant but comfortable second. Since it’s Harvard, they probably also have more funky restrictions than the average bear (gifts of stock in kind with restrictions on timing of sale, voting, etc.).
[0]: https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy24_harvard_fin...
thx
those endowments, especially for the Ivy League schools, aren't liquid at all. They'd take a massive haircut if they had to start pulling funds from it
Presumably they could go to a large bank and make a deal so that they only have to take a relatively small haircut by getting a loan to be paid back from endowment interest.
If this is the case then they really are not for the benefit of students?
Harvard is probably thinking they just need to draw the $1 billion extra for another 4 years. Unless, Trump runs for a 3rd time which he has floated. If that happens then I think everyone's just screwed.
With an overbearingly powerful executive like the federal US executive you can come up with so many ways to fuck with companies or institutions like this one beyond not giving them money.
It's very dangerous to assume "oh, this will only last four years". The rights currently being eroded (free speech, habeas corpus and voting rights themselves) are required for free and fair elections. Even if the term of the current Shitstain In Chief ends when it's supposed to, his replacement will be from the same cloth.
I'm sure he's got plans to issue an executive order declaring all of the votes against him null and void because they weren't cast and counted within 4 hours of each other on election day.
I agree. Also, the quality and independence of the research will improve when it is funded outside of government influence.
Which is, of course, why the internet is a spectacular failure and SpaceX is our best chance to ever put a man on the moon, and polio is still ravaging the country. Great point.
From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)
This is how we know that the Republican party has no interest in freedom as the word is conventionally defined.
They want freedom for themselves. They're free to impose their will on others without judgement. That's the purpose.
I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here:
Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.
This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.
Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1].
We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to inform themselves either, which makes things much worse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_effect
A large part of the population struggles to even entertain a hypothetical scenario. I’m active in several agricultural forums, and it’s clear that many participants lack fundamental knowledge across the board. They’re generally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussion. Almost every comment they post seems aimed at shutting down the conversation rather than continuing it. There is no curiosity. The world is already way too complex.
I think that's a function of the internet combined with a new flavor of individual exceptionalism. It is shockingly easy to engage only in echo chambers, even without knowing it. You're just on a site for people with similar interests, nevermind that those people all agree with you entirely.
Combine that with the lessons kids are learning that they are legitimately unique and special, and anyone who makes them feel bad is just wrong, and here we are.
Or maybe I'm just the old man shouting at clouds now. Who knows.
The “unique and special” kids are mostly Americans, I think. At least I don’t recognize that parenting style anywhere around me.
I really think the world is too complex for most people and they outsource their critical thinking to the group they chose to join or even were born into.
I don’t think it’s a modern problem. Religion formed enormous safe spaces for incurious people before they ran into new peers via the internet.
There's a whole Radiolab or this American life episode on this.
Basically, young people haven't lived through anything and are very willing to give up democracy.
Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.
ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.
Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.
Yeah, for about a century or two. This is not the first time all of this has happened. Read your history.
The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.
A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc.
Steelman, don't straw man.
"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality
Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.
>how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications?
I got at least one: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-doctor-maggie-carpenter-...
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/texas-abortion-doctor-...
it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.
>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?
As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.
That's exactly my point: all three articles says nothing about any doctor's responsibility for abortion with the goal to prevent harm to pregnant woman. No arrests, no charges, no fines, nothing, not even single case (as far as I know; your links also describes zero such cases).
And still women are bleeding out. What else could it be other than doctors' political stunts at the cost of women's lives?
That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.
I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.
> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point
ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".
Morals ostensibly drive logic for some (not most, most are boring tax stuff) laws, but what's really going on is some group of people thinks the law will advantage them and so pushes it. Blue Team doesn't inherently care about black people, they care about getting black Americans' votes. You'd hope the moral and the instrumental would align, but not always.
It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.
Columbia's administration obviously has no issues silencing free speech and dissent based on their actions though.
Seems like it could mean death for Columbia as a desirable college honestly
Probably not, they'll just pump up international student numbers to recoup and basically gut the domestic student experience. There's near infinite demand for American universities overseas even now.
I think you're wrong. I know several bright students that have decided to not go to the US now given the persecution and targeting of international students.
You can't expect the brightest minds to study in an authoritarian country.
Intl students are not mad. Who is going to pay the US intl student premium, to add the Columbia tag. Intl students are paying for very specific future life paths.
Really? That demand is rapidly dropping, for all kinds of terrifying reasons
they probably don't have a $50 billion endowment to weather Dump's petulance.
> all I can think is what a fucking lay-up
I am nervous about the US right now. So many cases are going to end up at the Supreme Court that is controlled by conservatives. It may not be the lay-up you think it is.
Also what happens if Trump just decides to ignore a court loss as he did with the recent deportation of Kilmar Garcia?
I don’t agree with Roberts but he isn’t a hack. For what it’s worth, he also went to Harvard.
I think conservative Harvard graduates are among the most eager to impose their will on Harvard. Look at Harvard grad Elise Stefanik, for example.
It will take a majority of states, and their military backing, forcefully overthrowing Trump.
I really hate to be alarmist, but it does feel more and more that we're headed to massive, coordinated state against state violence.
Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
> Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
> I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
I can sort of theorize that human society does have the ability to cycle that is partially based on human life spans / human memory. It is like a LLM that runs out of context and then starts forgetting what it learned in the earliest part of the context. For humans it is related to our lifespans as we culturally forgot what we have learned, and thus have to relearn it.
That said, I think that periods of peace are punctuated with war. War resets the pressures that build during peace. This is similar to how refactors or rewrites are needed every once in a while as the technical debt builds up as requirements and use cases change over time, especially if no one was paying down the techn debt as you went.
Cultural ouroboros. Eventually we become so distant from our past selves culturally that we identify once normal, helpful, natural things as foreign. I'm seeing this with the new wave of mental illness in my generation.
Or you could find illegal conduct for congress people, have them sued in criminal courts, and then hold elections to elect people (republican or democrat) who will make congress function as it is meant to.
Perhaps someone can provide security services to republican congress people who are threatened with violence if they dont toe the line, so that they are safe enough to stand up to trump. (This is an actual reason given for their cowardice)
The core fundamental problem from my viewpoint in the US political system is unlimited campaign contributions which empowered the ultra wealthy. This means that elections are fought between ultra wealthy people and politicians have to first appeal to the rich people to get them on their sides, rather than the majority of the people.
You need to fix this, otherwise you have muted the impact of the majority of people in your democracy.
Perhaps. The Courts and the Legislature have yet to defend their powers, but the crunch point to do so is approaching. When we get past the stage that they have fully capitulated to Trump then it'll get truly ugly.
From a geographic standpoint, the conflict isn’t state vs. state this time around, though, it’s rural vs. urban. Blue cities in red states. Red counties in blue states. Not very conducive to conventional military conflict.
The biggest irony here is that after Roberts, the justices Trump appointed are the conservatives most likely to do the right thing. Gorsuch and Barrett are fine justices (even if they have opposing views to mine), Kavanaugh could be worse. Hopefully he doesn't get to choose another one or we'll get another Alito or Thomas.
So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring".
I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.
Never mistake a man's rhetoric for his principles.
If you genuinely cannot distinguish the two then that's about equally as bad as cognitive dissonance:
Phenotype diversity != Viewpoint diversity
The former is what current academia and DEI focus on, the latter is what the administration demands.
Does this simple logic need to be expressed in Rust for HN folks to wrap their mind around it?
the contradiction is that "viewpoint hiring" =/= "merit based hiring".
I think you should give better faith to the community instead of breaking the guidelines here trying to prove a point.
I have never been a "woke" person, but Trump really makes me doubt the meritocracy argument. If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now
If Trump were a black woman (or man), he would have never survived the release of the Hollywood Access tape and therefore would have never gotten elected.
Yes a black man can only (politically) get away with something less risque like smoking crack cocaine on video during an FBI sting:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/fbi-video-of-unde...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry
Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
> Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
Nope. Though you also missed the part where the manufacturing of "felony" charges was so novel they had never been attempted before. The closest parallel is probably the case of John Edwards who was acquitted: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/us/edwards-jury-returns-n... But you probably think it's because he was also a white man and not because there was no criminal act.
I'm curious if you can even sum up what exactly was the felony that Trump was convicted, or even better, who's the victim? Because all I saw was an overzealous DA in NY with utter disregard for the actual law.
> You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
Yes. And clearly people of DC would rather elect a Democrat crackhead over any Republican.
You're on to a different argument now.
My point was about surviving scandals as a candidate. Trump survived the Hollywood Access tape, where it would have buried most candidates. Your example was "whatabout Barry" -- but they're not comparable (and Barry did not survive his scandal, but went to jail).
Why would you expect Trump to go to jail for a manufactured felony charge? Even if it was a legitimate case, the sentencing guidelines would not have recommended jail time.
>manufactured felony charge?
Pretty sure sedition was around since Shay's rebellion.
And yes, welcome to privileged. They made up new laws to arrest black men without saying it's targeting black men. Hence the metaphor in this chain.
As others have pointed out to you, "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Leadbelly used it at the end of his "Scottsboro Boys" [1] in 1938, and it likely was in use many years before that. Erykah Badu's "Master Teacher" also uses it prominently, which probably helped bring it out of AAVE into more mainstream use [2].
Anyway, that's all to say I find it sad and funny that people are all up in arms about being "woke" these days. It's like stating "I'd prefer to be ignorant".
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrXfkPViFIE&t=249s
[2] whole song is great, but I forgot about this second section of the song: https://youtu.be/Dieo6bp4zQw?si=fCPJpWIbQV_g5yx3&t=203
> "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world.
Yes, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy that serves the people of Korea.
Sometimes expressions have meaning beyond what advocates for the related concepts claim. For example, as I’m sure you are aware, ‘woke’ viewpoints repeatedly advocate for racial discrimination in American universities.
Lately it feels like "woke" in political discourse just means "anything Republicans don't like".
What a waste of an otherwise useful term.
I’m liberal and I also find wokeness to be irritating, so it’s not just things Republicans don’t like. Like the above person says, it’s not just awareness of structural discrimination and the like, which I believe are real and ought to be addressed, but also a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
>I also find wokeness to be irritating
This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with. Hence, the GP comment. If we can't agree on meanings of words, we talk past each other instead of to each other.
You see your two meanings and you realize how arguing about the term without aligning isn't a discussion, right?
----
as an aside:
>a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
I'll be "woke" here and note the discminination in when a demanding male tends to be thought of as "leadership material", whereas a demanding female in the same role is called "bossy". These kinds of internal disciminations is exactly what "woke" people try to address (and ironically enough, are dismissed as "militant" over. Because it talks about topics people want to shut down).
>This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with.
It is worth noting that it is a right-wing tactic to capture the meaning of words. "Woke" used to mean "being aware of social and political issues and injustices," but right-wing usage of the term has diluted it to the point where it can't be used for its original meaning anymore.
I think the thing to consider is that the right-wing is focusing on the things that are the most likely to produce outrage amongst a certain part of the population when they talk about being woke. They'll hyper focus on one protest gone violent rather than thousands of peaceful gatherings in town squares, for example. They've always been very successful at creating this division through their rhetoric and selective focus.
If you're aware that structural discrimination and social injustice exists, then you already are woke. The expression of it might be different for you -- more MLK than Malcolm X, say -- but that doesn't mean you're not woke. We shouldn't let them muddy things when the goal is helping all beings be awake to reality.
I don't recall the term "woke" being all that useful. I really only started noticing it as a right-wing pejorative, often times being used by straight up racists, and to lesser extent by people pointing out performative solidarity, and this is not a recent thing either.
The meaning of "woke" changes depending on the person saying it, and the one listening, which makes it hard to tell what the person is _really_ trying to say.
Edit: Apparently it was recently popularized by BLM activists, but then took on a different meaning [1]. So it seems ambiguous, which to me makes it not that useful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
Just as black people have claimed the "n" word, white racists have now claimed the "w" word.
Still not sure it was a fair trade though.
>Still not sure it was a fair trade though.
It's never a fair trade. But at least one is a singular word you never have to use in a discussion. The other was a term that de-humanized people.
People of all backgrounds, which hate Asians, Jewish people and white Americans use the term. Including some members of those groups.
You have come to the realization that systemic racism exists, and it grants privileges to the dominant socioeconomic groups. Congratulations, you are now "woke"!
That's what the term originally meant, before it was turned into a strawman for "anything I don't like" by the conservative media machine and weaponized to divide people.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
It sounds like you're aware of the present reality of race and how it impacts how one is treated in America just for being who they are.
> I have never been a "woke" person
I have news for you!
Edit: to be clear, I'm certain you don't match the the adversarially bastardized caricature of what a "woke person" is, but it sounds like match the original, well-meaning definition.
It's not cognitive dissonance, or bad faith. Of course.
If you let Harvard do "merit-based hiring", they'll move a little in the direction of actually complying with employment law, but not much. If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades (i.e., if you don't have "enough" black people, you need to show how your recruitment pipeline means that's necessarily the case, like not enough get the required type of degree), you'll get much better compliance.
>If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades
Do you really think this administration is doing anything close to that?
Frankly no. I don't think they actually care in the way that equal outcomes was baked into what it meant to be Blue Team for a while, and the bureaucracy ("deep state") is against them, especially in Massachusetts, and I don't think they're competent enough.
Harvard admitted it needs to "...broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community..."
This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/22/faculty-survey-...
How is this a no brainer? How many of their faculty identity as believers in a flat earth? Are we concerned about that viewpoint being underrepresented as well?
Well, 2.3% of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. I would bet that, say, the business school has a slightly different makeup…
We're talking about going from 2.3% to maybe 13%. And this isn't a reflection of attitudes among people who are potentially employed there, it's a reflection of overt, rigid filtering on the basis of political beliefs.
Typically, in order to be employed at a college, you have to be smart and aware of the world. This qualification disqualifies basically all conservatives.
That's not true. Painting the "other" as some sort of one-dimensional malevolent retard isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. I promise.
There are real people, even smart people, on the other team. They have thoughts, kids, impressive degrees, goals unrelated to politics. They enjoy sunshine and hiking. They think they're doing what they're doing for good reasons. They believe themselves to be good people. They might even believe you to be a good person.
> They believe themselves to be good people.
As should be more widely known, this is a bad start to actually being good people.
And I bet that the % of their faculty that identify as flat earthers is even more egregious!
So pick one or the other: having a broad representation from many walks of life is important or it's not. You can't mix or match depending on which group you like.
And that is what I'm commenting on. I'm not a fan of Trump's "war on DEI" but if it was applied with some consistency I could take it as a genuine difference in viewpoints. That would be okay. But the movement is railing hard and vitriolic against anything with even a whiff of "DEI" while applying wildly different standards to themselves. This is hard to take as a genuine difference in viewpoints.
Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.
"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally).
Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world.
Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
From my European pont of view, I think the definitions of left and right have shifted a lot.
Sure, in Europe left and right may be more closely matched in academia, but most "right"-leaning Europeans would not be anywhere near the "right" in US-terms, so your argument is comparing very different things
Depends. German Burschenschaften, though not massive, strike me as very far right. IIRC one of them had a big row over whether they can accept a member who was ethnically Chinese. (That guy was a full German citizen born in Dortmund, but of Asian ancestry.)
> Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
I agree generally, however you should be aware that American republicans are not referring to these people because they don't know anything about them. While the American left is typically extremely US-centric, the American right is even more so. So, while you have a point, you are giving them far too much credit. Their view of American education IS their view of education in general, because that's all they know. If they wanted to know more they would have to educate themselves, but they're ideologically opposed to education, so...
And, to be clear, it only takes a small look through Republican policy making to deduce they are ideologically opposed to education. They outright say it, usually.
And it makes complete sense when you think about conservatism as an ideology and education as a concept. Education is the processes of breaking down thought processes, destroying preconceived notions, and seeking truth through evidence. It denounces the idea that what is correct is what is common. It denounces the idea that wisdom is just a given, and not something to be worked towards. This is directly antithetical to conservatism. Conservatism values maintenance and blind belief, keeping stability for the sake of stability. It values faith in things working, and not evidence of why it's working. It denounces the notions of explanations and reasoning being required. It upholds the status quo because it is the status quo. It's naturally risk-averse, anti-creative, and small-minded.
This is the reason progressiveness, whether it be in Europe or anywhere else, thrives in education whereas conservatism struggles. It is, however, important to note that this does not perfectly line up with American politics. But, the American political system is associated with these underlying ideologies and thought patterns.
IDK how it is today, but last decade the US was considered to have many of the best educational institutions.
>Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities.
Yes, because EU "left" would be accused of socialism, whereas the EU "right" would mostly be the US's existing left wing. the US right wing was always on a far side and these days fell straight to the AfD levels of extremism.
It's not one sided, but the spectrum is completely different.
>And Asian universities are a completely different world.
I'm sure they are. a history fighting within the eastern continent and a rule of emporers will shape differently than from a land of conquerers puahing for conformity who eventually tried to make nice as their regimes fell and created this hybrid of individualism and trade amongst one another.
> This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative.
That's true now. It wasn't always true. From: https://www.aei.org/articles/are-colleges-and-universities-t...
- In 1989-1990, when HERI first fielded this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right.
- in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right
Now you say it's 2.3% conservative.
The universities argue they haven't changed, it's the politics of the right. I'd say they are correct as the right now to disavows and ridicules the output of universities on things like climate change, tariffs, vaccines, health, voter fraud in US elections ... well it's a long list. It wasn't like that 30 years ago.
The universities are supposed to be intellectual power houses fearlessly seeking out fundamental truths and relationships, regardless of what the people in power might think of their discoveries. Both sides of politics once celebrated that. Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate. They allow and encourage all types of thought, but insist they be exposed to a torrent of opposing thoughts so only the soundest survive.
Frankly, I'm amazed 2.3% still identify with a mob that clearly wants to undermine that. I'm guessing it will drop to near 0% now.
> Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate.
Seriously?
American conservatives are increasingly not grounded in facts and reality. This isn’t partisan, it’s just an observation of reality. I used to identify as a conservative, but they have become less and less grounded as a party.
that’s the faculty of arts and sciences—is this administration going to mandate university economics and business schools —which likely lean heavily capitalist—demand ideological diversity and bring in more communists?
Are conservatives a protected class now? We need DEI to make sure we hire enough conservatives in our company so we look super diverse
You make it sound like modern conservatives possess the intellectual rigor and career achievements required to meet Harvard’s hiring bar.
I am against admissions discrimination so I disagree. Conservatives should get into schools based on merit.
Do they ask for your political ideology on the Harvard application?
De facto yes. This is what essays, particularly "diversity statements" are for.
Also, if you're an academic seeking employment, your work and professional connections will make it clear.
No, which is why it’s so surprising so few are able to get in.
How can we know that without knowing how many apply? How many 18 year-olds even have a real ideology? I know mine shifted a lot during college.
If conservatives are applying at a more than 3% rate then either 1) Harvard is using some method besides directly asking for their ideology to discriminate against conservatives or 2) they are being rejected on non-ideological grounds e.g. merit.
If they are not applying at a rate of over 3% then there is no discrimination.
It sounds like you don't really know if they are being discriminated against, even though you are stating it as fact. The 3% number could be biased due to any number of reasons, conservatives may not apply to Harvard for ideological reasons, or student ideologies may shift during education.
It's possible that you can identify right-wing high schoolers based on their writing, but I don't really see a problem with rejecting students if they are touting unpopular and/or discriminatory ideas. Universities have the right to maintain a culture of openness and learning, and conservatism is often antithetical to that.
Yeah what Harvard definitely needs is more faculty who will defend sending people to Salvadoran prisons without due process. /s
The wildest thing I read was:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
Conduct violations at Universities are a pretty broad set of rules at universities and don't necessarily line up with what's legal or not but more with the university's cultural and social norms.
Another good one, "Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias .. The programs, schools, and centers of concern include:"
> Harvard Divinity School
> Graduate School of Education
> School of Public Health
> Medical School
> Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School
> Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic
(partial list)
I must have missed the time when the Medical School racked up a record of egregious antisematism.
The Crimson, among others, have reported on the allegations.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/8/hms-investigatio...
Some of those international students with their visas revoked apparently only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune. They are going after any level of law breaking in order to match their stated goal of kicking out criminals, since they are having trouble reaching the numbers promised in campaign speeches.
> only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune
I don't think that is true. Do you have any examples?
I misremembered - it was in the source for a sentence in the Texas Tribune article six days ago: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/educatio...
Those are just the ones where they think they have an answer about why. ICE just refused to respond to requests for specifics otherwise.
The article: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/09/texas-universities-i...
From what I can tell, it all boils down to one of two things:
- Criminal activity
- Support of Hamas
I’ve only seen one person expelled for support of Hamas with evidence - the doctor who went to a funeral in Lebanon of the Hamas leader assassinated in past year. The administration was super proud of that one. Show me evidence of anyone else that has any association with Israel/Palestine conflict protests that actually support Hamas. It does not have to be an either or proposition - one can be against Israel killing civilians and against Hamas. And for other arbitrary decisions there’s several examples of people expelled for gang activity who simply had tattoos.
From the feds documents they describe the federal government as thought police:
>Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.
Even ICE had a deleted tweet that makes it clear the thought police are active:
https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/0...
I prefer these thought police to the thought police we had previously.
The "diversity" thought police had very strong views about what the only acceptable thoughts were. These people are like, "if we could get it up to 30% that would be a huge victory". Actual diversity in thought at top American universities would be a boon.
Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?
Merit is not easily definable.
Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent.
Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up".
Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar".
Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed.
I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
Academic success isn’t what Harvard cares about. They want leaders, not kids who are great at “school”.
Put it this way they’d much rather have Roberts or Obama as alumni than your typical 1600 SAT quant.
Whats the best metric to find the people they are looking to educate?
If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university? Formal education that the government regulate has different goals from non-formal and informal education. If the goal is to be a primer for leaders, then they can be that without mixing it with formal education.
If we want the selection process of future leaders to be government regulated under formal education, then we should have a discussion on how such system should look like. The current system is a bit like the old fraternal groups, with the admission system being relocated to the university admission board. There should be better way to select future leaders.
> If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university?
There is no universal definition of what the goal of a university should be.
At the very top of Harvard's mission page it says, "Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world."
There is NOWHERE where they say anything even remotely like, "Our goal is to reward students who do well in high school coursework and testing." Nor do they say anything like, "The mission of Harvard is to teach as much academic material to students as possible."
In contrast Caltech says, "The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society."
It's much more focused on solving science and tech problems and a focus on educating outstanding students. There is very little here about leadership.
And so you tend to see that CalTech has some of the top scientists and professors in the world. At the same time, even in tech/science companies, they occupy a small percentage of CEOs. Those aren't the people they are intending to nurture.
There's room for different types of education with different goals and metrics, including admissions metrics.
And anyone can create a university and say,"We look at grades and test score. We don't ask for recs or essays. Don't care about what your goals are. We stack rank based on GPASATAPs and then select the top N." That's a perfectly valid approach. I wouldn't want to go to that school, but it sounds like there are some students who would, and I wouldn't object to it.
I am not that knowledgeable with US law, but to my understanding, U.S department of education has a policy for higher education, based on the Higher Education Act of 1965, as well as educational policies set forth by Congress. The higher education act references universities as part of what it regulate.
So if I would attempt with a universal definition of what the goal of a university, it would start by being an institution that complies with the standards set by the Higher Education Act and is accredited by the U.S department of education. As part of the formal education system, the goal of the regulations and laws will be enforced onto those classified under it.
Which returns me to my original question. What benefit is there to be classified as formal education if they don't share the intention (and goals) of the formal education system?
In reality though, Harvard actually educates perfectly ordinary physicians, engineers, etc., and I assume that the vast majority of their output consists of relatively ordinary people.
What people need isn't leaders, but the capacity for decentralised self-organisation.
Their decision to make education into finding or creating leaders is, I think, a terrible mistake and socially dangerous, and in a way exclusionary. If they are truly successful and are able to notice natural leaders and bring them into their institutions that might well channel the capacity of ordinary people away from decentralised self-organisation and into a pure elite society.
You can try, but I think it'll be hellish.
Then they'll fail. They have that right.
As so many people who hate the Ivies tell me, you can get just a good of an education at your local CC and state college. That option is available and they don't have the emphasis on leaders and they also tend to accept most people who are qualified.
The reasons people want to go to Harvard aren't simply because of the academics to be ordinary engineers.
Morally, I don't think they do have that right.
I'm a Swede. I don't care about Harvard myself. But here in Sweden we some historically excellent universities, and some places that were a little second rate as we viewed it.
But the Germans don't care. If they get to be called professor they're happy, so they come, and they become professors at these once second rate universities, and then they put out research that is as good as any, and they have PhD students and everything, and the end result is that it's basically transformed our old second rate institutions into places actually producing good research; and apparently this is the way it is Germany. All their universities produce good research.
I think the future here, in the long run, is it should be that it won't matter where you go, only what you do, and I think that's something which should be, not just embraced universally, but pushed for deliberately, in all countries. If Harvard is really successful in finding potential leaders, then they are dangerous to society.
Furthermore, most of Harvard's graduates will be ordinary engineers, or ordinary physicians or ordinary practitioners of some field, whether it's what they studied.
Your German story doesn’t parse to me.
And yea, most of Harvards grads will be ordinary. And they could’ve just have easily gone to UMass. But a higher percentage will be leaders. And that’s the reason they admit who they do.
Essentially, the Germans are turning all the schools that I would have dismissed as 'what even is this' into something respectable, churning out good research, churning out good PhD students, etc.
Because they don't dismiss the places that I had dismissed, they transformed them.
Got it. Maybe some people will transform local state U.
Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?
I don’t think most people are denied based on any specific thing. Asians attend these elite schools at much higher rates than their population. If there was a school that admitted based on grades and test scores only they’d probably be even more highly represented.
College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.
The thing is, acceptance at these elite universities is _highly_ correlated with academic performance. It’s just that different racial groups are admitted in different ranges. You won’t find a single Asian at Harvard at or below the median Black SAT score. The range to be accepted as an Asian is also higher than Whites, which is higher than Latinos, which is higher than Blacks. How can you possibly explain this if it’s not a quota system based on race?
I don't think this is true. First, I don't think the SAT data exists for Harvard broken down in this way (if you have it, please link it). Furthermore, there were Asian students accepted in the 2nd and 3rd decile -- this is below the average for African American students almost certainly. So, I find your claim very likely to be false.
Now if you said that admissions has favored African American students in the Affirmative Action era over Asian students then I'd agree. But Affirmative Action is also over per last year's Supreme Court decision.
It's not just Black students over Asians, it is the entire gradient I outlined, and they continue to use race in admissions, they just obfuscate the reasons now.
Again, the statement you made earlier seems almost surely false.
And how do you know they continue to use race? You have access to data that the rest of us don't? Again, if you have data to support your claims then post a link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
Compare the numbers for MIT who is somewhat complying vs the Ivy leagues who are mostly not complying.
I agree my original claim is likely not true. I should have said >95% of Asian's SAT scores are higher than the median Black SAT score.
How do you know MIT isn’t now discriminating against Black students? How do you know what MIT metrics? Maybe it only cares about test scores and not other aspects? Also MIT is a D3 school, or a D1 school.
You don’t seriously think that is a possibility.
> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
Are you saying these aren’t objective measures or that they’re “problematic”? The distinction is important.
They're objective measures (don't depend on the person applying them), created subjectively (people choosing criteria based on their preferences/ideas), and chosen subjectively (people deciding which ones they want to rely on more). I meant objective originally, as in many people claim the whole process is objective.
They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of:
1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success
2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success
3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2).
Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success.
They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1).
By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end.
The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.
If you think that Ivy League cares about academic success, you're out of touch of how US universities work.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable?
Also, bullshit on IQ tests. They do reliably predict a number of socioeconomic factors, so I suppose they’re a great way to keep the poors out. How very “enlightened” of you.
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard?
Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
Your question is, “even if IQ tests don’t show intelligence, how will someone who did poorly on one cope at Harvard”?
Seriously? That’s your question? And you think these low income students are why you didn’t get into your school of choice?
Just go sports.
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
It’s also not what they’re doing. Seems like you’re arguing against a strawman.
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
Do you have data to back this up?
Admissions data does not back it up. And based on my college recruiting data, recruiting doesn’t back it up either.
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
[Citation needed]
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
Sounds fine, test for those things and admit the best. Or do a random lottery.
Just dont pick and choose students to disqualify based on race.
> I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
That sounds like an excellent reason to remove government funds.
"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology"
Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.
“Merit definitions can be faulty, so completely abandon any attempt to measure merit and admit people based on vibes.”
This is why Harvard students now need remedial algebra classes.
When the "other side" is pretty much evil, yeah, you are the good guys. Like, by default. I would even go so far to say Harvard could do much, much worse and they would still be the good guys.
On a closely related note, you are legitimately out of touch with reality if you believe any part of this is done with the intention of "merit". This is done to strengthen allegiance to MAGA and conservative ideology.
Does that sound a bit scary and fascist-like? You decide. But it's explicitly stated as the goal of this constriction on higher education in Project 2025. So, take it up with them, not me.
Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
This administration has ZERO credibility to define what "merit" is.
> Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
Are you referring to the defense secretary Pete Hegseth? He also attended Harvard so clearly there's some intersection in how both Harvard and the Trump administration evaluate candidates.
Merit is what allowed women and non whites to attend university.
I don't believe for one second that conservatives care much for it.
because the answer for the racism against admissions from asians is deny admission and deport everyone that isn't us-american
Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.
Do you seriously believe MAGA has any interest in fair access to education? Or are you just saying that as a disingenuous talking point?
If the Trump admin could directly control admission, I truly believe future classes would consist of close to 100% far right leaning ("anti-woke") WASP types.
It really isn't. Harvard used to be a special cultural institution now it's just another research institute. Whoopee, nothing can be special, everything has to all be the same gray sludge cause otherwise it isn't """fair"""
Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
While I agree with this, if you read the letter of demands from the administration I don't think Harvard had any choice. I think the letter was much more egregious than what the Columbia demands were (at least from what I read about the Colombia demands). I think if Harvard had acquiesed it wouldn't have much reason to exist anymore, and I say this as a Harvard alum who took plenty of issue with the direction of the university in recent years.
In contrast, most of the demands I read for Columbia, except for the one about putting the Middle Eastern studies department under some sort of "conservatorship", seemed relatively reasonable to me if they hadn't come from the barrel of a gun and from an administration who has clearly defined any criticism of Israel and any support for Palestinians as anti-Semitism.
> Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
I'm not so sure. The Harvard endowment is huge. I might not be so much "moral fiber" as having enough fuck you money that risks don't matter as much as they do to others.
No. This fight will be much bigger than money. It’s true they have money, but this will be a literal fight of academic freedom against authoritarianism.
I guess the nice thing is, the bad guys picked a fight against Harvard Fucking Law.
Plus Quin Emanuel and King and Spalding are representing Harvard against the Trump Administration. These firms are among the best of the best.
More of that! When a mountain of old money is suddenly put at risk, it can easily be mistaken as moral fiber. We will see if Harvard suddenly decides to defend others, or just fend for itself.
> actual moral fiber.
Maybe? Or maybe they realize that they will lose all future credibility with students, government and NGO's if they bow to the conservative & Christian right?
There are two outcomes for the the current American government situation - a slide in to authoritarianism (it's right there in Project 2025), or these wackjobs get voted out because they are destroying global financial stability.
If it's the former, Harvard eventually has to cave because literal Nazi's.
If it's the latter, Harvard is screwed if they capitulate.
The thing is there's really no choice. The version of Harvard we get if they cave is the same as burning it all down. It would be dead as an educational institution and would only serve to foster the same kind of insane doublethink that leads people to ask for "diversity in viewpoints" at the same time they ask for the removal of the viewpoints they disagree with.
Edited:
Yes, I doubt they're cool with the ideas in the letter like the federal government auditing everyone's "viewpoint diversity" and mandating staffing changes to fit what the federal government wants.
I think.... you're agreeing with me?
I am, I misread your response, my bad.
I don't know, is it moral to give legitimacy and a platform to someone like J. Mark Ramseyer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mark_Ramseyer)? Less clear example would be keeping around Roland Fryer.
I find that very few people and even fewer institutions are consistently always on the right side of things morally, even in very clear-cut cases (never mind that what exactly the "moral thing" is, is a whole discussion in itself). It's probably better to look at the overall pattern rather than a incidents (either good or bad).
I have no opinion on Harvard myself by the way; I don't know enough about it. I'm just saying this is not an especially good criticism.
This is the only correct response, but I don't think I'm being overly cynical in thinking they're being opportunistic either.
They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to unfashionable political views being silenced, so there's a pinch of hypocrisy in making such a show of standing for openness.
All in all though, I'm happy to see this.
It's my understanding that the issue is not that they're "espousing the right views" but rather that they have the constitutional right as a private institution to espouse whatever views their students and faculty want under the first amendment.
right, freedom of speech is free as long as it agrees with the viewpoint of who's in power. similar to how history is written by victors but this part is conveniently ignored. it's just facts in the open marketplace of ideas yay!
I mean, while this is the only correct response, it could still cost Harvard around $9 billion, which isn't chump change, even for Harvard.
And while I agree and have been disgusted with Harvard's slow slide to demanding ideological conformity over the past decade plus (e.g. https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...), I believe they have made some belated changes in the right direction over the past year.
The Federal government making funding to a university contingent on them "reforming" specifically named departments whose foreign policy views the executive branch disagrees with (Israel/Palestine policy) seems like a clear violation of the First Amendment.
They are deporting permanent residents for op-eds.
One permanent resident was sent to a concentration camp in El Salvator without due process, none over speech yet that I know of but his was for being spuriously labeled a terrorist.
My understanding is that racial discrimination is forbidden under title nine at least.
Good. I think Harvard has faltered a bit recently with academic integrity scandals, but they are still well-respected overall. Them standing up for students is an important signal to other less high-profile schools that they can do the same.
We are well past the point where in a future history class a student will raise their hand and ask 'Why didn't anyone stop them?' followed by 'Why were so many people members of that party?'
All of the information is saved, it's going to be interesting to study, the first "class" of people to leave are the ones from tech, you know, the backbone of USA services, it's going to be interesting, it's going to be an economy fall that didn't happen in Nazi Germany
No mention of anti-Asian discrimination? It made big rounds in all the American media circles a few years back, and if memory serves, MAGA boarded that train too.
MAGA loves to say how universities screw over poor hard-working Asian students, and then they turn around and defund universities and fire researchers. Their pity on Asians is not sincere, because they detest higher education in the first place.
And I'm saying this as an Asian father whose kid is going to a US college this year.
> then they turn around and defund universities
Harvard was one of the universities "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students", so I'm not sure the criticism holds, especially when the government's letter is asking for merit based admissions reform.
Are there other universities that weren't discriminating against Asians that the government has or has moved to defund?
And exactly how were they "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students
From [1]:
> Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What came out of the documents in that court case was used as research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was published[2], so we can see very well how they were screwing over poor, hard-working Asian students.
> Data on admissions—particularly at elite universities—is tightly guarded, making it challenging to identify both the students who benefit from racial preferences and the importance of race in admissions decisions… The data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC lawsuits are important because they make it possible to look behind the admissions veil to see how racial preferences operate.
It wasn't just Harvard, the University of North Carolina was included. The poor part is handled right there in the abstract:
> Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs [under-represented minorities] from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Echoed later on:
> Those who benefit the most from racial preferences (at least in terms of advantages in admissions) are those who come from higher socioeconomic status homes.
Asians weren't and probably still aren't benefitting from this, as:
> Looking first at the applicant columns, African Americans are most likely to be labeled disadvantaged followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites.
So not only do these "diversity" policies hurt Asians, they don't even help black Americans from lower socioeconomic classes, which seems to me to make all of it racist, including against black Americans - the ones most purported to be helped by this - and even against disadvantaged whites, who lose a whopping 25% of their chance to be admitted:
> a white, male, disadvantaged applicant with a 5% chance of admissions would only see his admissions probability rise to 32.1% if he were instead treated as an African American applicant
But the easiest misdeed to see is that done against Asians, hence the lawsuit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w29964
Bruh, have you been sleeping under the rock throughout the whole Trump-defunding-NIH saga.
If I had been, how would I understand your comment?
“Bruh”
These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. Once they got the SCOTUS win and affirmative action was toast, they quickly moved on from fighting anti-Asian hate to a new fig-leaf/tool to useful for fighting the next ideological battle, which was prominent protests against government policy, which happened to be pro-Palestine, so this is the best tool for the job.
The messaging is very similar too, conflating pro-diversity with anti-whiteness, or anti-asian when needed, and now redefining being pro-Palestine as anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas. It's dumb, lacks nuance, but effective when the Fifth estate is pliant, co-opted or otherwise ineffective.
> "These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical."
By MAGA, yes. Asians themselves haven't forgotten about it nor will they forgive anytime soon.
Asians are not a uniform block. They forget, often, just like every other ethnicity. Or they convince themselves that the values are actually still being held.
Good points. But they did open themselves up to this by blatantly discriminating against Asian students. I mean, "you have an ulterior motive in arguing against our hugely racist policies" is not a great defense.
The page acknowledges that Harvard lost that case and will comply with the ruling.
> MAGA boarded that train too
More like they found some useful idiots
Harvard, as an institution capable of sustaining itself without relying on federal funding, bears a heightened responsibility to champion academic freedom and intellectual independence. Its financial independence positions it to defend these principles more vigorously than universities with fewer resources, which may face similar pressures but lack comparable institutional stability to resist government overreach.
"Zaporozhian Cossacks write to the Sultan of Turkey" by Ilya Repin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks#/media/Fi...
I predict a surge of alumni donations in the weeks and months to come, not just at Harvard but also at other institutions that are showing their willingness to stand up against the creeping fascism of the current administration.
I think people who value education, academic freedom, and understand the economic and societal role that universities play, were hoping to see one or more of the major institutions stand up for these principles.
But they’re not standing up for freedom. They are admitting and hiring people based on a monoculture.
the irony of the evil being perpetrated around the world in the name of "antisemitism" is mind boggling
In the name of "fighting antisemitism"?
It's true, though. It's a convenient tool. "What do you mean you don't want to cede control to us? Don't you want to fight antisemitism?!"
Smells awfully like Putin's trumped up (ayy) play in Ukraine to "de-nazify".
Funny how a foreign country got America to compromise on its core value of free speech that we used to lecture Europeans on.
Good. More organizations that have the resources should be putting their foot down.
I found harvard’s letter a poor attempt to articulate just how authoritarian the demands are, and how they undermine the very idea of a university. How leaders of such a prestigious university refuse to place what’s going on in historical context is sad. But it’s educational: now I have a better understanding of how the nazis came to power.
not a perfect comparison, but a useful starting point.
If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Habeas corpus - still in effect unless you're already in El Salvador.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
Unless you're Stephen Miller, who insists that no mistake was made: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrobxubic23
And, more recently, Bukele and Trump insisted that they would not return a "terrorist" to the United States: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
Well one thing is for sure: it's not a coincidence that after they determined that it was impossible to get him back, they've changed the narrative to "no mistake was made" (and begun throwing around the magic word "terrorist" which justifies all sorts of things).
> after they determined that it was impossible to get him back
This phrasing buys into the Trump admin's narrative.
They did not determine that it was impossible to get him back. They have chosen to not pursue it. They refuse to define the agreement between the US and El Salvador sufficiently for anyone to know what is or is not possible through that path. They also seem to refuse to use political or financial influence to go beyond whatever that agreement may define.
If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens.
He didn't get caught doing anything; he said it, openly, during an interview: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrx6b2gxy2f
Yeah, this is not going to end well for all y'all:
https://bsky.app/profile/pbump.com/post/3lmryeyuj6s2v
> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
"Bad" citizen can end up meaning anything Trump doesn't like, such as criticism. Even the most conservative person should be worried about this.
Especially the most conservative person.
Not caught, he held a press conference and announced that he was going to try to do it.
Actually I stand corrected--he was ALSO caught on tape with a much more chilling version of this statement.
It's not.
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.
Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
Unfortunately, those people have a lot of practice worshipping a text that they have not read.
>Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
Yet, US was systematically disenfranchising people for centuries
Within the lifetimes of some of us, lynchings were still common.
> The rubicon has already been crossed
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
Respect for rule of law and democratic norms. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
> The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
Distinction without a difference, but it’s 3/5.
Thank you! I had an emotional reaction to the founder worship.
the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
That judge was against the interment of Japanese Americans. He took a stand against anyone deprived of due process throughout his life.
The US came close to losing its democracy status with FDR, which is why after he died, the 22nd Amendment was quickly created - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the...
Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
What's your take on the government drone striking American citizens without any sort of trial?
the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
Habeas corpus doesn't seem to be working for Rümeysa Öztürk right now.
It's starting to like authoritarian is the wrong word.
Totalitarian? not yet, but....
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
Uh yeah, why wouldn't I?
I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.
FYI habeas corpus has been under attack by GOP administrations for nearly a quarter of a century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
It was very depressing (if financially understandable) to see other institutions immediately caving in.
What institutions other than Columbia are caving in?
A long list of extremely large, well-heeled law firms
They will once the administration revokes the visas of half their grad students and shit-can all the international undergrad tuition income.
Every law firm.
Every law firm is hyperbole but I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
> Every law firm is hyperbole
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
> I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
Trump has only really gone after Columbia and Harvard. (Institution is a broader word than university.)
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
WilerHale and Jenner & BLock are two: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/g-s1-56890/law-firms-sue-trum...
Susman Godfrey.
There's a lot going on and it's really hard to keep abreast of it all
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro...
Thank you.
And University of Washington and University of California on the west coast, although he's not directly threatening them. Rather, his HHS appointment has just quietly pulled all of the funding for their medical and biological research programs.
> How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling LLP, and Elias Law Group are fighting Trump's executive order. Those are 3 of the biggest law firms in the US. As far as I know only two major firms have made deals with Trump while many are sitting quiet but not everyone is cowering.
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
The point of no return was January 6th 2021!
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
It could have been water under the bridge if we simply did not re-elect him. But now we have a second term emboldened by de facto total immunity.
It would have been water under the bridge if him and his cronies all got perpetuity starting jan 7th and we never heard of them ever again. Instead the dems chose a demonstration of weakness, and showed that an attempt on our democracy would be punished by a strong worded reprimand, at best.
It wasn't up to dems but courts imho.
Plenty of blame to go around including for the Democrats.
Responsibility for Merrick Garland's failure to adequately pursue Trump lies at Joe Biden's feet and will likely be the thing he is remembered for most in the history books* despite the fact that he had some decent domestic policy (and some horrific foreign policy).
* (assuming we work our way out of the current mess, if we don't he will be remembered for far worse things given that he's Trump's reflexive whipping boy despite the fact that it makes Trump look weak to keep droning on about Biden)
Disagree. Polarisation existed long before Trump. America was going to face this sooner or later. The culture war was always coming.
> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
> By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War.
That may be true. The North won the war, but let the ideology that caused it fester.
I think people frequently forget that the North didn't actually have the firepower to stamp out the ideology.
Like any ideology, you can't actually destroy it with force any other way than burning books and, eventually, men.
And whether or not that would have been wise: the war was extremely costly for the North and there was a non-zero chance that if they started dropping every third Southerner from the gallows the federal government would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the survivors on both sides of the Mason-Dixon and that'd be it.
> who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Like a heart attack can be good for your health,perhaps this USA withdrawal will be good for Europe. (If Europe is what you mean)
What is your definition of "fascists"?
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
The opening passage of the Wikipedia article:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
Tell me how this doesn't fit?
I feel like most people that are using the term deliberately, are doing so based on reasoning close to Umberto Eco's "Ur-fascism" essay: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
If you want something more modern, someone made a tracker: https://www.realtimefascism.com/
The tracker uses "the 14 characteristics of fascism identified by Dr. Lawrence Britt" (which is slightly different): https://osbcontent.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/PC-00466.pdf
I get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
> historical fascism
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
How did that work the last 10 times we said the things trump wants to do aren't gonna happen. He's saying he will so we should believe him
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-t...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-going-run-third-term-ste...
None of the rest of the stuff happening was going to happen either, I’m sure.
Legal residents are being kidnapped and disappeared into foreign gulags but let’s turn down the temperature, right?
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
The number of times I've read people say "That's alarmist and will never happen", just to see that exact thing happen, is a lot.
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Serious question, when someone tells you what they want, why don't want you believe them?
It's openly being discussed and you think it's alarmist? No, we need to turn the temperature up and start taking people at their word.
We need to start turning the temperature up or this country will be completely lost
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
For context, this is exactly what was said of _literally everything_ that has happened in Trump's current term.
Is it alarmist, or is it just alarming? And, if it is alarming, shouldn't we be taking it seriously, instead of hand-waving it away?
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
Why do you consider it alarmist? Trump has repeatedly said he would do it, and that he's "not joking" about it.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
Did you read the letter sent from the government to Harvard?
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.
You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.
You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.
Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.
I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.
Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.
It's because you sounded like a sealion. That and whataboutism are just adding refuting noises without substance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.
I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.
I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.
The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.
Because you sound like a concern troll/sea lion. Ask your question better.
Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.
> Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Obama didn't need to demand it, the Universities went ahead and did it on their own.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...
So not a comparable situation.
In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.
Harvard can do whatever they want. They can also not get taxpayer funding for it.
> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
> At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
Not everyone.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
This rings true for much of South America at one point or another. Lots of African nations. Several in SE Asia as well.
Heck, just in the last few years we've seen several countries regress by a decade or more because of military coups or similar.
Really, if you look at many countries that haven't been a world power, this has happened once or twice in recent memory.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
Do you have a better example? Or is that it?
It can take a good long time though. It's Juche Year 114 in North Korea and the Kim dynasty remains firmly in control.
Everyone except those who died in the camps.
And under the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Everyone recovers from a sickness. Until they don't.
Sure... As a different government.
I assume parent is talking about the functional end of this iteration of the United States as a political entity.
> we've come back from it
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
> universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds
Agree. I don’t think they should accept federal funds to the extent that they do. Maybe it’s time for elite institutions to get past the 70s camp era and start behaving (and wielding the power of) being elite.
It’s current year. They might hobble along for a few years without federal funding but they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions.
> they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions
Why? The funding chased their reputations during the world wars. There are plenty of ways of collaborating on expensive research facilities with the federal government while keeping a boundary between church and state within the elite halls.
Top researchers prefer federal funding, it’s fairly predictable..till now. It’s messy now so I might be wrong.
> wrong about amyloid plaques
Sorry... you think that Trump is doing this because of suppression of dissent about amyloid plaques?
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
> there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population
Not in any meaningful way. And not in a way that would have mattered.
The elite universities got into this hole by trying to court pedestrian approval. Trump is at war with the professional managerial class, not the elites. Harvard’s brand remains unimpeached among the latter. Return to serving that group and ignore the broader population.
$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
The 9 billion isn’t specifically just for Harvard “the university”.
The lion’s share of it appears to be NIH programs for area hospitals - all of which are associated with Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
We all benefit from that research.
> $9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American…
Now do what it gets them.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
Is there any evidence that we've been "blindly" pumping money into academia? Funding agencies are part of the federal budget and don't just get everything they ask for. Then those agencies have all sorts of review procedures for choosing grant awardees.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
This is a logical fallacy of whataboutism. It is perfectly possible to say that the DOD gets too much money as does Harvard.
I would agree if it was not a response to a similar argument about pumping money into alternative. So its consistent to that.
The people who want to hurt Harvard also want to hurt the local schools.
this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa
edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument isn't good
It’s not identity politics to observe that the dilemma you presented (public funding for universities xor local schools) is false.
When the guy lifting your TV starts quoting Marx at you, it's not actually an invitation to engage in philosophical discourse, and no amount of sound economic reasoning is getting your TV back.
The Trump administration is not, has not, and will not be arguing in good faith. Stop pretending we're working collaboratively towards a shared future - they're either stealing your television or stealing your neighbor's television, and attempts to interrogate the merits of their television relocation policy aren't shedding any actual light to the situation.
@TimorousBestie (I can't reply inline due to comment depth)
I didn't say fund harvard xor fund local schools, I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets. The comment I'm replying to is who implies I must support harvard funding xor I must support trump, "the people who want to hurt harvard", I don't think that's true. I'm allowed to think federal funds for academia are too high and also think Trump is bad for the country
> I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets
A place that has all the facilities, faculty and pedigree to pull some of the best researchers from all over the world. It's in fact crazy that Harvard, or any R1 university, wouldn't get a large amount of research dollars from the federal government.
Sure, but you can understand the perspective of someone growing up with zero access to those resources and lives in a rural part of the country hearing your argument and then voting for someone like trump, I would argue that sentiment is one of the forces driving regular people away from democrats and lost them the election in 2024, it is an "ivory tower" perspective and regular americans don't buy it (even if it's true that harvard is a great investment for public money)
I agree the democrats have terrible messaging, but what would really help 'regular' Americans is universal healthcare, free education, and maybe even UBI. As departments get DOGE'd a lot of 'regular' Americans are starting to find out where a lot of federal money goes, to those rural parts of the country.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
First, it's not blind. These big universities are where a ton of research happens. It makes sense that research dollars will end up there.
Second, I agree that local schools (I guess you mean K-12?) should get more money. DOGE is busy cutting that also.
We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.
Massachusetts has some of the best public schools in the nation.
You seem to be missing the point that federal research grants are not gifts, but instead paying for a service.
If you are looking for someone to take this money and redirect it to local schools I have some bad news for you.
I invite you to write or read a proposal for a multi $M grant before saying that money is being blindly pumped.
I promise you right now that no one in the Trump administration is interested into providing more books to local schools. Quite the opposite
even partially agreeing with anything the trump administration does on this forum makes you a target for downvotes.
let me cred fall. idgaDANG
you say as your comment about downvotes gets downvoted, echo chambers are dangerous to democracy imo
The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
> More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
1) Granting that giving more power to tenured professors would be a good thing, in what way is it legal, wise, or good for the executive branch to achieve this in the absence of any law by strong arming individual private institutions that it has decided to target on ad hoc basis?
2) You are reading selectively, it says "fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter" [emphasis mine]. So in other words, it is a requirement that the university give power to those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration. This is a very clear and alarming violation of the first amendment.
In toto, the letter is an attempt to impose ideological reform in a private institution, and is part of a wider attempt by the current administration to browbeat or subvert every institution that might act to curtail (or even speak out against) its actions.
I read "the changes indicated in this letter" to mean "removing power from non academic activists"
While I kinda agree that can also be taken to mean "those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration", it still means those calling the shots are the non academic activists not aligned with an ideology of promoting academic merit....
Maybe.
> "removing power from non academic activists"
That sentence (from the letter) makes no sense. An activist isn't someone with power to do something. If they had that power, they wouldn't be advocating it, they would do it.
What that insisting the University do is shut down people talking and protesting with viewpoints they disagree with. They list those viewpoints in their letter: "..., Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild". The pro Israeli protests that happened aren't mentioned. If they get away with this, I'm sure a lot more viewpoints will follow.
This isn't about powers. It's about controlling what people can and can not say on a University campus.
>An activist isn't someone with power to do something
Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
> Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
Nope. They literally spell out the activity they want banned in their letter. Have you read it? LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
->LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
yes they are
"discontinuation of DEI"
aka not giving someone a position of power purely because they are e.g. a hispanic homosexual and a quota needs filling.
and kicking out the activists that push that policy over academic credentials.
Yes, discontinuation of DEI is one thing they are asking for. But they aren't (yet) the calling for banning "hispanic homosexuals" or any other DEI group on campus. They aren't asking for discussions about them to be banned. That would be a little awkward, as I'm sure they warn to encourage discussions disparaging them. Nowhere in the section on dismantling DEI do they use the term activists.
Kicking out activists is another thing they are asking for, in a different section. They list the sorts of activists they want kicked out. Right now it's a short list that boils down to protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza. DEI is not mentioned anywhere in the section, nor are any of the groups DEI typically encompasses. I have no doubt that if Harvard did acquiesce the list will be expanded to everything the administration disagrees with - for example protesting about abolishing DEI. But that's for the future.
It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues they want dealt with in different ways. One is a policy they want dropped, the other is a group they want shut down. What is not so clear is why you are so keen to conflate the two issues. Are you keen to get "hispanic homosexuals", and any other sub-group you don't like banned from campuses?
>It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues
Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
All of whom have exactly zero acedemic credibility.
Certainly non of whom should be funded by tax collected from a single mother living in a trailer park.
> Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
Just for clarity, do I have this right: You think people who protest Israel’s handing of Gaza are mostly people favoured by DEI, you think "hispanic homosexuals" are favoured by DEI at Harvard, and you think someone who is a "hispanic homosexual" and others that fall under DEI invariably have zero academic credibility?
I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class are mostly the same racist dumbasses that think being black or hispanic or sexually deviant automatically qualifies you for additional tax payer funds.
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
> I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class
Again for clarity: blocking those students have been ruled illegal: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/14/ucla... so no invention from the Whitehouse was needed. Unlike the Whitehouse, the university involved feels compelled to follow the law, so that's the end of the matter. It also wasn't necessary at Harvard as it didn't happen at Harvard, so that can't be the reason it was included in their letter of demand.
The government is giving them money, the letter is informing them they will stop funding them if those committing crimes (racism is the crime here) are not removed from offices of power within the institution.
So Harvards response is to vigorously defend their right to hire racist criminals. They of course have that right.
But the US Government is also well within their rights to no longer fund them anymore in that situation. Which I'm pretty sure will be the only hard outcome from Harvards response.
They absolutely have the right to not cooperate, the US govt has no obligation to fund racist crayon munching idiots.
Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about that but this isn’t it, this is attempted coercion, and yes, it is fascism.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
You forgot the cost of his golf excursions. (there are a surprising number of Trump golf trackers LOL)
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"
And the salaries for DOGE employees that are higher than the highest pay band.
You also forgot the birthday military parade he wants that's been estimated to cost ~$100M.
that's 10 cents per american (still crazy!), but not $30, and $30 is only for Harvard much less how much federal funds go to other schools
Obviously I'd rather that 10 cents go to something productive, but on the national stage trump golfing feels like just a distraction from much more important topics
> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
Small towns overwhelmingly get more federal dollars than they put in. Big cities subsidize small towns.
>it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Because Americans in small towns overwhelmingly vote for people who lower taxes for rich people and promise not reduce the scope of government. Instead of blaming Harvard, why don't you ask your neighbors why they like to vote for people who refuse to help them?
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Are there world-class research facilities in your small town? Why would it be hard for you to see it makes sense for billions to be spent on research at world-class facilities with world-class scientists?
FWIW, chances are whatever local state university nearby also receives quite a bit from federal grants as well. But it probably scales based on the research facilities and staff actually there. Do you think it would be better management of federal resources to instead spend the same amount at facilities that don't do nearly as impactful or nearly as much research?
These are grants for specific research. Researchers put together proposals to study things, the federal government decides that's something worth looking into, and funding gets cut (simplified). Harvard has a lot of people doing pretty fancy research, so it makes sense they'd have a lot of grant proposals requiring fancy and expensive things. Complain to your state legislature for not focusing on making your local university a research university if you feel your area should be getting more of these grants. But let me guess, you probably voted for people who argued for lower taxes. Gee, I wonder what they found to cut...
And FWIW the federal government spends a bunch on a lot of small-town America. FEMA grants for emergency preparedness comes to mind. A higher percentage of populations of small-town America live off federal aid programs. Small-town America also sees more of its school funding from federal sources and grants.
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
The democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare and free higher education it feels like forever. UBI has even come up a few times. Nothing that Trump is doing is for anyone but himself and his rich friends.
Instead it will go straight to military contractors, yay!
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.
Even if Harvard wanted to comply with the government letter, it's full of so many non-sequiturs and self-conflictions that it reads more like a piece of satire:
> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity
> In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023
> Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming
The letter is a complete joke. Giving it any sort of compliance would be giving validation to a set of rules that are literally impossible to follow by design. There is literally nothing Harvard could do to not be in trouble later.
Also buried in the letter is this gem:
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
This is Maoist-style social reform through and through.
> Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
Aseptic surgical procedures may soon go the way of vaccines.
Harvard Medical School?
Ah yes I've heard of that, it's one of the "Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias" which most fuels antisemitic harassment and reflects ideological capture!
It seems like the government has a soft Monopsony. There are many universities willing to sell research, but the government is the biggest buyer and controls the research grant market
Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.
When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.
Research is often (usually?) the property of the host university, though. Yeah labs are independently managed but the university is in at least one sense, and imo many more, still the institution both doing and selling the work
By default, research belongs to the researchers. That's an essential part of academic freedom. The main exceptions are research funded by grants and contracts that specify otherwise, and when you start looking for patents and other commercialization opportunities.
In other words, the university may have some property rights to your work if you deal too closely with for-profit businesses or national security interests. But if you are just doing normal research with normal grants, you'll probably never see those exceptions in your career.
This isn't close to a monopsony but it's more directionally correct than it is wrong. Keep in mind research institutes can be funded by private foundations, state and local governments, industry (e.g. pharma), venture, or even foreign governments. The federal government is undoubtedly the largest buyer though. I do think there are other motivations to rely primarily on federal grants beyond number of dollars. In particular, funding sources other than federal grant money is often looked down on from an academic prestige perspective. Until now federal money came with very few strings attached compared to the perceived loss of objectivity that could occur when receiving money from other sources. The current situation may alter or relax the prevailing view on which sources of research money are perceived of as potentially compromising.
It's not a very good analogy because federally-funded research is a public investment, a public good like roads. The research is supported by the public (the government) and becomes available for anyone to use, learn from, and build off of. And in fact most successful U.S. business are built on the backs of technological innovation that was originally funded by the government, or at the very least, innovation from PhD's whose educations were largely federally funded. (Disclaimer: federally funded researcher)
You couldn't replace that with a private company "buying" research and expect the same societal benefits.
Anyone whose research is profitable is free to work for a private entity. The government is a "monopsony" in "buying" unprofitable research the same way it's a "monopsony" subsidizing any industry that would otherwise fail in a free market. That is not typically how the concept of monopsony is meant.
We are silently watching "Country of the Free" falling at max velocity to the deepest of the darkest pits of fascism, teocrasy, and dictatorship.
America is starting to seem like the world depicted in V for Vendetta.
Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.
This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.
I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.
However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.
> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.
According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.
[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation
Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.
Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.
You may not have noticed but it happened.
Much like outbreaks that never turn into pandemics, no one remembers the efficiency measures that prevent price increases.
Part of nafta was to slow the increasing costs of production, not lower them.
When looking over time it definitely worked in many regards. Things didn't get as expensive as they would have otherwise.
I don't think your concept her is bad at all.
But I also don't think your concept has anything to do with the situation at Harvard.
It’ll be nice if an institution finally decides to oppose some of the recent government overreach.
It’s really shocking to see an institution in our country take action that is not in its immediate financial best interest (assuming this letter translates to an action)
It's not just about finances. Trump just announced (possibly accidentally) that he's going to start deporting American citizens to El Salvador gulags: https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-says-the-us-could-de...
and they've been painting political enemies as criminals. It's pretty much the same situation as Russia/Putin but at an earlier stage of its development, and people want to avoid being the tallest grass that gets mowed.
It's good that some institutions are standing up but I don't expect it to go well for them.
He also said Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor may have committed treason for criticizing him as president after signing an executive order to investigate them.
These people (not only MAGA) perverted the very meaning of antisemitism to the point that it means nothing today. I am saying that as someone who's lost a family member to Holocaust. When I hear someone mention antisemitism today, 90% of the time it is to punish someone's views critical of Israel.
Which is, of course, deeply antisemitic of the people claiming antisemitism when they are talking about only criticism of Israel, to equate all Jewish people with the Israeli state.
Same, having descended from Holocaust survivors, what is happening in the U.S. and Palestine right now is chilling to me in its similarity.
When I was active on the Politics Stack Exchange site years ago I was "reported to the ADL" for merging the [jews] and [judaism] tags. Right out of the gate after I casually mentioned it in another discussion: not even a big fight about it. But the same person outright ignored the Trump-supporting holocaust denying user who harrassed a Jewish user with antisemitic slurs such (e.g. [1]).
Sadly antisemitism obviously exists, and sadly some pro-Palestinian activists have veered off into antisemitism. But the selective outrage is hard to take serious.
Remember, Caesar subjugated Gaul and killed or enslaved about a quarter of all Gauls in the process, to "protect" them from invading Germanic tribes. "Top kek", as I believe the old Latin saying goes.
[1]: https://politics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3596 – I am the author of that, I deleted my account since in large party due to all of this
Governments have a monopoly on violence in exchange for protected and upholding our privileged rights. When any government start disregarding that contract, so too can the populous.
Scathing, and wonderfully so.
Can someone confirm that if Harvard turned down Pell Grants and Federal student support, they could admit whoever they want?
>Private clubs are generally exempt from anti-discrimination laws under certain conditions. For example, being genuinely private and not engaging in business with non-members. However, there are exceptions to these exemptions. For instance, when a club receives significant government benefits or operates as a commercial enterprise.
They could. Look up Bob Jones College or Hillsdale College, both of which operate without any federal funding. It appears that the elite universities are going to find out the same thing that the small Christian universities found out in the 1970s, which is that the federal government Can control you if they fund you. I believe Bob Jones in particular won a case in front of the Supreme Court giving them the right to racially discriminate in their admissions if they refuse to take any federal funding.
ty
They recently closed their Middle Eastern studies department. Absolutely insane tbh. Imagine closing a center of Asian or African studies because the president wants to make his Jewish daughter and some rich donors of his happy. How can we be okay with any of this. They caved there. The only reasoning for this response is it infringes on their sovereignty. But make no mistake, every institution rolled back DEI and other initiatives for this admin. Hoping Alan will do what is right. Reinstate that department. Double down on fighting the admin in court. America will not be held hostage by a wanna-be autocrat, a foreign power or those who swear allegiance to Isra-el over American ideals and education in these United States. Silencing dissent in institutions of learning is tyrannical.
Re: endowments, really good post on why universities can't just tap into endowments for budget shortfalls:
https://medium.com/@myassa_62896/why-you-cant-just-use-the-e...
>It’s more like a patchwork of locked treasure chests, each with its own key and its own label: this one funds scholarships, that one supports cancer research, another pays for upkeep on a library.
Explain why direct donations cannot accomplish the same. I suspect that universities want endowment donations because they grow tax free.
My understanding is that a large part of endowments comes from large (really, huge) donations.
If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
It's not entirely about what the organization wants, but also what the donators/sponsors want.
>If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
You can make that restricted donation outside of the endowment. I thought endowments were for the support of students, not research.
As information, the current administration is doing similar demands to foreign universities, trying to impose the point of view of the world in a president we didn't vote for.
Here is an article about the Trump administration demands to our universities.
https://www-publico-pt.translate.goog/2025/04/11/ciencia/not...
Thank you for that link. I knew about letters to parts of the European industry but not to universities. 7. 12. 14. and 15. are mind blowing.
Wasn't Harvard's president a woman who wrote her PhD thesis on DEI? I vaguely remember the news about this (fraud or something). If this is what Harvard considers that the person for the job, I think the sense making apparatus of Harvard personnel is specifically tuned to not bend the knee in this case. The instrument would likely fail at the input validation step and not proceed to the sense making portion.
I do believe the universities have a lot to change for better, but sadly this government is the worst to ask for.
There really is no incentive to compromise with the Trump Admin on anything. Even if you cave, they just go for more. You need to act like a cornered animal and not expect honest negotiation.
OTOH if Trump admin WAS at all rational partners they could be extracting historic changes from these institutions. But they won’t.
> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.
While I am not a friend of a mask ban, universities should absolutely teach their students to stay home when sick. Going to work sick is an abomination that should be rooted out. And it is a nice liberal cause too.
I think you mean jailed, tortured and deported.
If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.
Except that masks do statistically work in preventing the spread of contagion.
Even if it's just 10% it's still worth doing.
There are also tons of legit reasons to wear a mask besides being contagious.
Anyone defending a mask ban is doing it to support ideology, not practicality. Just say that instead of using really dumb click bait fox news quips.
What if they have pollen or other allergies that masks help mitigate? What if there’s a huge forest fire that’s polluting the outside air with acrid smoke?
There are so many possible scenarios. What if the campus is infested with face-huggers from the award-winning movie Alien? What if there are still Jewish students and faculty members who need to be harassed anonymously?
I'll leave those to people more familiar with the subject. And as for the pneumonia scenario, I reiterate that the only sane course of action is to seek treatment, not to walk around public spaces, masked or not.
This is a larger idea, just tangentially related to this particular case.
In 2011 there was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement that argued that many of the financial problems we saw in 2008 were a result of a 1% of wealthy business people who were prioritizing their own wealth over the needs of the populations of the countries they operated within. I mean, they created a financial crisis by inventing obviously risky financial assets based on peoples housing. They knew it was a house of cards that would fall in time but they did it anyway with callous disregard to the inevitable human cost.
It was in the wake of that the "wokeness" became a buzzword, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, corporate policies were amended, management teams were upended, advertising campaigns were aligned to this new focus. Women, minorities and marginalized groups were championed and ushered in to key public positions. In a brief 14 years, then entire garbage dump of modern capitalism was placed like a hot potato into the hands of a new naively optimistic crew. This coincided with huge money printing and zero percent interest rate, the likes of which we haven't seen. That new elite grew in wealth, stature and public focus. They became the face of the "system" as if they had created it instead of inheriting it.
And now that the zero interest rates are done and suddenly everyone believes in the scary size of the deficit and the ballooning debt, the people sitting in power as we are about to actually feel the crash instead of just kicking it down the road yet again, those people are the target of public ire. I actually see people in these very comments acting as if the looming crash was caused by the DEI departments which formed just a little over a decade ago.
And guess who is coming back to claim they will save us from these DEI monsters? The people who created the actual mess in the first place. Yet now, instead of calling for their heads on spikes like the public was in 2011, we are literally begging them to save us from these DEI proponents.
Our anger has been redirected away from the wealthy and towards the minorities with such skill I almost admire it. The collective anger at DEI is at such a level that we are willing to cede core rights just to damage them.
This is spot on. The US has enjoyed enormous wealth and prosperity, but it's been mostly captured by the top 1% of private individuals. The GOP has done a masterful job redirecting the blame to China, DEI, immigration, etc... when the real problem is that we have not spread around the prosperity through programs like universal healthcare, free college, and heck, even UBI.
Ooh, I am jealous. A close family member has been branded egregious by various acting members of the current administration. I guess I am going to need to up my game if I want to be able to hold my head high at family gatherings.
> For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities
yep. stop doing that. your university is nearly half a millennium old, and everything from the last century will be a footnote. you are a networking ground for upper class society, not an upwards mobility machine for the plebians. just go back to your roots and you won't have any of these issues.
> These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history.
privately fund it now that its a proven method. this obviously won't be controversial in the future. if its economically impossible then it won't happen, the end.
Do they stand a good chance of clawing back any of that funding by suing the government (which they seem to be hinting at doing)?
If a president flaps his arms on one side of the planet does this cause a hurricane of chaos on the other side of the world? And everywhere else.
My father works for a big pharma company, which means they have to listen to the federal government or risk being shut down by the FDA (which would be easy for Trump to do).
He uses this an excuse for the company's complacency, and by extension, his own. I'm glad to see some institutions take a stand.
I think the only way for the universities to escape this blackmail trap is to bind together in their response, refuting the Trump's claims that they're not doing enough to "stop antisemitism" (obviously a cover chosen by the WH because it immediately gathers public sympathy), and reject Trump's demands. If they cave in now, it will be used against them again.
Take the haircut and wait for either the next presidential elections, or maybe midterms if the GOP gets pummeled because of this and starts standing up to Trump. One thing we've seen about Trump is that he fairly easily reverses course when the right pressure is applied.
Granted Harvard's in an easier place than most, but I predict Columbia will come to seriously regret their decision.
What jumps out at me is the paragraph: "Governance and leadership reforms." in the original letter sent by the government to the university.
The other stuff is hard to make sense of, but this part is crystal clear: The authoritarian government is asking the university to restructure itself along more authoritarian lines. ...essentially Trump wants continuity of reporting lines ultimately leading up to him, and going down to the individual faculty member, student, and foreign collaborating partner. That sort of thing could come in handy for all kinds of things in the future, not just the silly demands of the present.
Presidents and their policies come and go; knowledge stays and grows.
As long as educators aren’t selling themselves short, I remain optimistic about the future.
Einstein essentially gave up his professorship at the University of Berlin. How far into the future are you looking?
https://www.nytimes.com/1932/10/18/archives/einstein-would-q...
The current administration have interrupted the pipeline of students to research - current research funded or partially funded by federal government is stopping or will be curtailed and future students will question whether is a rational decision to go into any sort of path that leads to research because it would only be stable for maybe two to three years, assuming a sane, science respecting House, Senate and President were in office and used the regular norms to pass bills and implement programs. I do not see a recovery path from this unless American public gets a similar thrashing like the Great Depression and decides to not elect nut jobs for 50 years. I keep seeing interviews with those who vote for Trump and are hurt by his tariffs or immigration changes and insisting they still support Trump. Those (mostly older) people are going to have to die of natural causes and be replaced by demographic shifts before things change, but the last election showing young men shifting to Trump and this administration trying to suppress the vote of women does not point to this.
> As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”
This is already a shift on Harvard's part. When the ruling first came out, they announced they'd be finding ways around the ruling so they could keep doing what they'd been doing (i.e. discriminate against Asians by systematically scoring them low on "personality.")
There is no such thing as free speech under the Bourgeois State.
When you criticise of the last Western colonies, bourgeois goons disappear you.
When you criticise racial and apartheid laws in your home country, bourgeois goons disappeared you.
When you resist their power and establish a parallel people's, bourgeois goons WILL disappear you.
It's a shame we have forgotten that WE, workers, can be authoritarian too, if only we can organise, educate and militarise ourselves.
I think it's also important to point out the auditing and spying the government is asking the universities to comply with including the whistle blower section and things like - "report all requested immigration and related information to the United States Department of Homeland Security".
It appears that because it's easier to bully, punish and disappear individuals than an institution the Trump administration is doing everything it can to find out who these individuals are so they can be targeted.
The preponderance of academic and philosophical disingenuity — which could only be equally well explained by immensely subpar raw intellect (doubtful on HN) — in this very comment section perfectly illustrates why DJT was elected POTUS.
Let me just repeat the basic point:
Phenotype diversity != Viewpoint diversity
Can someone say tyrant? Or is that a thought crime for citizens too now?
I hope everyone is ready for a general strike because that time is coming up at us rapidly.
General strike when >50% of those who voted wanted this? What world are you living in?
Edit: I stand corrected, 49.81%. It doesn't change the point much. Especially when that ~49% includes many "working class"[1] voters. Who's going to participate in this general strike? A bunch of office workers?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-return-power-fueled-...
I suspect much less than 50% actually wanted legal residents of the United States disappeared to El Salvador.
Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
> Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
You're describing a coup or revolution. Isn't that highly anti-democratic considering this president just won an election? Why should the 50% be under the thumb of the 3.5%?
> just won an election
And just as just, violated his oath to the constitution. How long, precisely, should we allow him to violate his oath and our rights?
If the 50% can't or won't promise me that they won't ship me to El Salvador in a few years, I don't much care about abstract political principles until their power is broken.
He is ineligible for the office given his previous insurrection attempt: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/sectio...
49.81% of the people who voted did so for Trump.
It's a weak response, in that it accepts the Trump Administration's position on antisemitism. This is tied to the broad definition of antisemitism which includes acts by the State of Israel.[1] That definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. There's a more balanced definition called the Jerusalem Declaration here.[2][3]
This will lead to a controversial discussion, so I'll stop here, with the comment that getting involved in religious wars of other countries hasn't gone well for the US. The US has constitutional freedom of religion partly because the drafters of the constitution knew how that had gone in Europe.
"Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson
[1] https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/
[2] https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Declaration_on_Antis...
Why did the response have to include it? It’s not tactically useful.
How quickly we forget "Dear Colleague."
I would have preferred a much more concise refusal.
I’m not sure if you wanted it shorter for tonal reasons rather than simply for length of time to read, but I think it was pretty concise.
It's bad rhetoric. Using stronger, more direct language would have been much more effective at making their point and having their point reach a broader audience. We need leaders who refuse to comply with an authoritarian government and do so with proud defiance. This message was meandering and weak.
Harvard has "fuck you money". They should go ahead and make it clear that they know they have this power and are expressing it (not necessarily with the vulgarity, yet)
This is welcome change, to they defend admisions discrimination on race, sex is beyond me. They will fold, if federal funding is not enough, they will find other pressure points.
Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.
There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.
The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.
Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Response
Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?
Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.
Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.
Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.
The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.
Honestly I think he’s just doing it for the reasons he has stated
Yeah but money is fungible.
It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.
Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.
As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.
The government letter demands giving control back to tenured academics (from students, activists, and administrators).
I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.
It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).
Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]
[1] https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/about-the-institute/histor...
Do you have money in the bank? Do you have income? If so, you don't really need any help from the government. If you value your personal independence so much, then cut the cord.
I think that's what they're saying.
They don't. This is the federal government threatening to withhold payment for research they commissioned.
Next step: taxing that endowment (which is a good idea irrespective of the other demands: universities are government-subsidized tax-free hedge funds)
Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.
Sure, that's the narrative to manufacture consent from the naive, but I don't buy it at all. Perhaps for very small fledgling universities that makes partial sense; even then I am skeptical. For Harvard, definitely not.
At very least, if your endowment is growing on an inflation-adjusted basis, it does not appear to me that you need further subsidies; your primary business is to be an hedge fund and the treasury of an empire, not education for the masses. Gains should be taxed like a hedge fund at that point.
If you want to subsidize education as a society, there are much better ways: fund research directly and cut through the indirect cost crap (which was popular among academics up until the moment the current administration started advocating for it).
> Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
I agree. Gulf monarchies will probably come in a give even more billions to these institutions anyway to make up for the losses. No strings attached of course...
Harvard probably already secured some more funding from Qatar and what not.
I don’t think the administration seriously thinks Harvard will accept these terms. This will just be used as more fodder against “liberal elites”.
Conservative media will then headline with “Harvard rejects Trumps reforms on DEI” or “Harvard says no to ending anti-semitism”.
So, many of these universities were taken over in positions of power by people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries. They did this while describing themselves as open-minded institutions commited to everyone's success.
In the degree programs, they forced these beliefs on students in "diversity" classes, rewarded those on their side, and canceled or limited people with differing views. Those who make it through the process are more likely to force it on others in government and business, which they often do. Worse, being federally funded means taxpayers are paying for students' indoctrination in intersectionality and systematically discrimination it claimed to oppose.
Yeah, I want their funding cut entirely since theyre already rich as can be. I also would like to see those running it take it back to what it used to be. That's a Christian school balancing character and intellectual education. Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture. That is worth federal funding.
On top of it, how about these schools with billions in endowments put their money where their mouth is on social issues and start funding high-quality, community colleges and trade schools and Udemy-like programs everywhere? Why do they talk so much and take in so much money but do so little? (Credit to MIT for EdX and Harvard for its open courses.)
> people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries
Just like all people connecting to "Kevin Bacon", and all Wikipedia pages first links connecting to "Philosophy", every idea can be connected to mass murder if you're willing to manufacture enough links.
"Intersectionality" is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, idea. It promotes nothing.
More like it's two philosophies with similar elements originating from places where both were taught. In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
There's also large groups pushing this stuff in businesses, forcing it on all employees, under the banner of ESG. That includes Blackrock and World Economic Forum. There's billions of dollars behind forcing thus stuff on America. Yet, we still see voters rebelling against it, like by electing Trump, because they don't want our country to keep being ruined.
> In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
I think it is speculative. I haven't seen this happen beyond a small number of isolated cases, that generally are met poorly within the organization where it happens.
To my observation the association between "believing that intersectionality accurately describes the world today" and "attempting to force others to believe similarly", is about as strong as the association between "frequently voting Republican in the US since 2016", and "attempting to carry out a mass shooting".
Could you describe what you believe "intersectionality" to mean, as a philosophy?
> That's a Christian school
> That is worth federal funding.
... interesting.
You left off...
"Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture."
...before "that is worth federal funding."
Such cherry picking in ways that misrepresent what is said, also common in liberal media, is one reason distrust in liberal politics is at an all-time high. Put the truth of what others said side by side with your own position, like I mentioned intersectionality with my counterpoint. See if your ideas stand up to scrutiny.
It's really not necessary since you had already invoked the notion that separation of Church and State isn't particularly important to your evaluation of what the government should fund. Everything else sort of falls by the wayside.
Trump is about making money for himself so he can boast. He doesn't care about this. I wonder who's really calling the shots, because, this is just the beginning. At the same time, he feels he can (or he's testing) ignoring court orders. Where this meets in the middle will not be a good place.
The world should never forgive Americans for what they let the man they call their president get away with. Sending people to concentration camps, among many other despicable acts. "Wir haben es nicht gewußt".
Or, you know, they could follow the bullet points in the government's letter:
- foster scholarship over activism
- hire based on merit, and review potential employees for plagiarism issues
- admit students based on the merit of the candidate
- not admit foreign students hostile to values in the U.S. Constitution, openly espousing anti-semitism, or supporting terrorism
- abolish ideological litmus tests for faculty, provide a diversity of viewpoints to students
- adopt policies for student discipline that disrupt scholarship and normal campus activities including allowing campus police to enforce these rules
- implement whistleblower protections
- disclose foreign funding
Taxpayer money comes with strings attached. Be good enough to deserve it.
Not sure about the mask ban... Is that about mask wearing during protests?
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
W government
They have more than enough money in their coffers to tell Trump to fk off for a few years.
Soooo you want freedom of speech but if you don't like what someone else is doing, you want to censor them?
And even the reps don't mind this?
How hypocratic do you have to be to want to get rid of the 'Wokeshit' which is freespeech while also advocating for free speech?
Btw. the real term for what type of speech radicals and nazis is abusive speech and yes there are good reasons why abusive speech should lead to consequences
Good for Harvard. As idiotic as many of its policies are, this is clearly government infringement of freedom and speech.
That's right. Infringement of freedom and speech should be left in the hands of government funded institutions like Harvard.
> 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.
So alongside antisemitism, The other demand is for changes in intellect. For some reason this reeks of Christian evangelical movement to purge wokism and anti-Zionism, both of which have run counter to evangelical dogma.
I guess that Harvard probably does not need the Feds as much as the Feds need Harvard but I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists. I'm going to have to see what NYU is doing now.
The thing to remember is that these grants are their research budget. The endowment is largely earmarked for educational projects. Your average university professor is there because they want to do research, not because they want to teach - so the research budget is critical for educating as well.
I assume Harvard has a plan for dealing with this dynamic. They have some extremely smart people there, so I don't doubt they've found a way.
What does the Federal Gov need Harvard for? Harvard gets 16% of its funding from them - what outweighs that on the aide of the Federal government?
The tax revenues from the $1.3T company that arose from their online yearbook?
Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually? 161 Nobel prize winners?
Its not clear what the effect no Harvard would be on those metrics. And all of those are necessarily in Harvards best interest to maintain too.
This is compared to a direct payment to sustain operations which the government is saying they may not be in favor of. But its not like Harvard would say ”it may not be in our interest to produce successful people anymore.”
Harvard isn't the first to be targeted, nor will they be the last.
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
>The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century.
Merit based reforms would only help. What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
> And merit based reforms would help continue this.
I look forward to some.
This ain't it.
Ill settle for agreeing in principle that Harvard should be merit based
> What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
Amongst others, legacy admissions and discrimination against Jews, Catholics and non-whites. Let’s not pretend that Harvard’s admissions process, or American society more generally, was some kind of perfect meritocracy in 1925.
Don't confuse the credential factory with the skills and quality of the underlying students. Harvard is little more than a toll booth for students who were already smart and over-achieving. It's not like the teaching is extraordinary.
Harvard does substantially more than teach undergrads.
> Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually?
Lawyers and doctors aren't undergrads.
Medical research depends heavily on faculty and postgraduate folks.
Only some of their thousands of annual graduates are undergrads - about 1/3 of them, per Wiki.
I am confused. Who says credentials only apply to undergrads?
I said they do more than teach undergrads, to which you re-quoted me questioningly.
Include postgraduate folks and they're still doing a lot more than just teaching and credentialing. Places like Harvard output research, too.
A university research lab is controlled by usually one professor or a very small number of professors. They can decide to move to another university and take the lab with them.
One may expect that the funding is paying for research, such that the government finds the trade to have positive expected value.
Until recently, the US brand was where exceptional people wanted to go study and work. If you want to send the world's best and brightest to other countries that's fine, but it will have negative long term impacts on the US.
I wonder how many Harvard graduates work for either Trump or the federal government.
Most if not all of his cabinet (surprisingly) have an Ivy League background. Not sure if that's an endorsement on them, or an indictment on Ivy League schools
The GOP / Trump administration shows no real focus on employing experts, Trump shows no curiosity about anything. They're slashing research and science across the board department by department. They employ anti science people as heads of departments that require science.
I don't think the GOP & Trump thinks they need anything from Harvard other than agreeing to impose first amendment violations on others on behalf of the GOP and Trump.
> I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists
Today I learned that demanding an end to racial discrimination makes you a fascist. I swear this word becomes more meaningless by the day.
Genuinely curious: what part of the federal government's letter to Harvard seems fascist to you?
Is the government asking a university to shift their bias away from skin color diversity to viewpoint diversity fascist?
Is there a historical parallel?
Or is it just the fact that the government is asking for reform, and any reform request would be considered fascist? If so, do you also consider the DEI reform requests fascist?
The section on "Student Discipline Reform and Accountability" is explicitly fascist. Harvard police must prevent/crush serious protests that cause disruption. Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy. Masking (even for valid medical reasons) is banned. (This lets you know that this has nothing to do with facts or diversity of viewpoints and everything to do with the supremacy of theirs.) The "Whistleblower Reporting and Protections" section is basically a demand for a hotline, direct to the government, to inform on anyone not toeing the line. The "Transparency and Monitoring" section makes it clear the government intends to monitor foreign students at Harvard closely.
This isn't quite 1930's Germany yet, but it's getting there. The next step to watch for would be any laws passed that regulate who can serve as faculty in universities or attempts to impose different leadership on universities that don't comply with demands.
You made several good points. While I am struggling to validate "Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy", it may be because I am unfamiliar with the actions of the student bodies listed at the end of the section, or maybe subtleties in the wording that I am missing that could be exploited later.
Also I find the mask-ban strange and alarming. That example alone was probably enough of a red flag for me to more carefully scrutinize the good-faith of the rest of the letter.
Thank you for taking the time to actually engage with me constructively. Unfortunately many others decided to just downvote my questions.
I find it so disappointing that on a forum like Hacker News I am being downvoted for asking a question in good faith in an attempt to better understand a complex and nuanced topic.
When I ask ChatGPT to explain Facism to me, two aspects it pointed out were: - Suppression of political opposition, dissent, and individual freedoms. - Use of state power to enforce conformity.
I can see how the letter from the government to Harvard would be considered use of state power to enforce conformity. As someone who is open minded trying to understand the truth, the letter on first pass reads like they are using state power to unwind enforced ideological conformity. This is confusing, because on its surface it seems anti-fascist, so when people label it fascist (with charged emotions), it's hard for me to take them at their word without further explanation.
When the people who are concerned about the current actions of the government attack me for asking questions in an effort to actually understand their concerns rather than just accepting them, it makes me more suspicious of their viewpoints, not less.
Also, ChatGPT's thorough explanation of Fascism indicated to me that both administrations have been showing signs of increasing fascism, almost complimenting each other in their policies as they rock the cultural and institutional trunk of the united states back and forth with ever increasing momentum until it tips over into catastrophe. If such is the case, then maybe the only hope is for people to engage in these thorny issues with curiosity and nuance, to carefully sift out the bad from the good instead of assuming that everything the other side is doing is evil.
I have no control over what other people do, all I have control over is my own actions. I don't see a good way out of this mess that doesn't involve curiosity, empathy, understanding and reconciliation. So I will continue engage in the conversation with these intentions, and if people attack me for that then I suppose to will just have to accept what's inevitable.
Universities and colleges are hotbeds of political protest. Take young people with poor impulse control, expose them to education and political literature, and let them freely associate (e.g. form student groups). They're going to question authority and government policy, often in an unruly manner. That's just how it goes. The thing is, when students are right, protests often spread to the rest of the population. That's why the letter makes explicit a concern about non-students being invited onto campus. The last thing any administration wants is for student groups to spark a big protest that sticks around for a bit and pulls in protesters from off-campus. That stuff will make the news every time!
Most governments recognize that large protests can influence public opinion against them. If you let such a protest occur and do nothing to satisfy the demands of the protesters, then things can get ugly quick. Freedom of speech and association are powerful things! There's not much an open, democratic government can do except respond to protests by addressing the underlying issues or crush the protest and hope that the public decides the protesters were wrong. What the Trump administration is trying to do here is reduce their risk by infringing on freedom of speech and association. It's fascist or totalitarian. Take your pick.
As for their claims that they're trying to "unwind enforced ideological conformity"... You can't do that by enforcing conformity to a different ideology, as they are attempting here. This is a case where you should pay less attention to words and more to actions.
Let's set aside specific terms like "fascist" for now. Below is one of the demands from the government:
> the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.
Do you feel this is ok for the government to demand of an educational institution? This isn't about specific political ideologies. If the Biden administration had threatened to withhold funding from a university because, for example, their hiring policies weren't left-leaning enough or something, it would be equally outrageous.
Thank you,
Let me start by saying that I am not American and I am not your enemy. Also, I am genuinely trying to understand the truth about these matters, with an open mind to the possibility that it's messy and complicated and I might not be capable of understanding it. I hope that provides context for what follows.
Honestly, I am not sure if it's okay. It reminds me of the anti-racist movement, in that the action almost feels like it's anti-fascist. It's using a fascist action (use of state power to enforce conformity), to undo a fascist policy (suppression of political opposition and dissent). This reminds me of anti-racism, which uses one type of racism to compensate for a different type of past-racism.
What I find interesting is the very last statement in your post. I am not aware of anything Biden did, but it does seem like Obama did something very similar with the DEI policies forced on universities which came with funding implications for non-compliance. It was a different time, everyone was upset about the great financial crisis of 2008, and on their surface I am sure these policies sounded like a good thing. In the end though these policies were very much a form of facism in that it was a state sponsored effort to suppress political opposition. This probably sounds like I am defending the political views of racists, but really I am defending the political views of people who believe leadership roles should be filled based on the merit of the individual and their ability to take care of those in their charge, and not based on the color of their skin, their gender or sexual preferences.
As I have tried to unpack all this, the perspective that is growing for me is that for the last 20 or so years both administrations have been taking steps towards fascism while hiding their fascist actions behind intentions that sound anti-fascist. If this perspective is even partially correct, it would explain why so much of this has been so confusing for me.
This is massive. In Europe, we know what real Resistance looks like. And what Harvard just did? That is Resistance, plain and simple.
It breaks my heart to see my country backing the fascist side of history again. But just like before, we won’t stay silent.
hats off to Harvard, did they generate the response with chatgdp? so many em dashes lmfao
We can debate about specific requests from the Trump administration, but it is pretty clear that Harvard has been horrible. The previous administrations completely failed to fix it.
- Harvard has been discriminating against Whites and Asians in admissions for decades.
- Harvard deliberately refused to protect Jewish students against intimidation and harassment. Students camped in school property for weeks against Harvard's official rules. They chanted that they would bring islamic terrorism to America ("intifada, intifada, coming to America"), established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews, and remained there for almost a month while the school simply refused to remove them. [1]
- Harvard's president stated that calling for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily constitute harassment. This is particularly bizarre when contrasted to Harvard's approach to other groups, like when it considers "misgendering" of trans individuals to be harassment.
[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/harvard-jew...
For the people downvoting: can you actually provide arguments for why you think these points are incorrect?
If you are downvoting simply because you disagree politically with what I commented, you are going against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
problem will only last another 3 years or so
Being anti-Israel should not be conflated with being antisemitic. After all, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for a reason.
Trump is using “antisemitism” as cover for the imposition of authoritarianism. This comes from Putin's playbook. Putin used denazification as an excuse for invading Ukraine.
Trump himself has espoused antisemitism from time to time, see below.
John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, reiterated his assertion that Trump said, “Hitler did some good things, too,” in a story published Tuesday in The New York Times. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...
Donald Trump dabbles in Nazi allusions too often for it to be a coincidence. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/trump-nazi-allusions...
Trump's re-election campaign that featured a symbol used in Nazi Germany. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53098439
Trump’s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4677700-trumps-latest-...
Trump campaign accused of T-shirt design with similarity to Nazi eagle https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/11/fac...
Donald Trump's 'Star of David' Tweet About Hillary Clinton Posted Weeks Earlier on Racist Feed https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-...
An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” are still on the shelves but “Memorializing the Holocaust” was removed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/naval-academy...
TLDR:Harvard will continue to drive towards a modern edukayshun at all costs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
Good. Trump is simply trying to see what he can get away with and the answer as it turns out is a lot. Everyone need to stop capitulating to this nonsense. People, universities, companies, all of them.
I initially engaged in these comments by asking questions in good faith in an attempt to better understand what was going on. I was trying to address my own ignorance by asking questions, and I was mostly attacked for it (mass downvoting).
I had more luck copying the scenario over to LLMs and asking them the questions.
It's disappointing to me, because I come to HN instead of other social media for intellectual discussion and nuanced perspectives. To be attacked for asking questions is frustrating and disheartening.
That said, after significant back and forth with the LLMs in an attempt to untangle several key issues, this is the summary I was left with. Somehow I suspect this will be downvoted like the rest of my comments, but I will share it here just in case it helps someone better understand why some right-leaning people may condone the governments letter and also why the letter is so concerning....
Good-Faith Policy Concerns Potentially Addressed in the Letter
Title VI Compliance:
Seeks to ensure that race, gender, or national origin are not used as explicit criteria in hiring, admissions, or funding decisions.
Merit-Based Standards:
Advocates for transparent and non-discriminatory evaluation of faculty and students (e.g. ending race-based preferences, enforcing plagiarism rules).
Viewpoint Diversity (In Theory):
Attempts to correct ideological homogeneity that may stifle academic freedom or lead to one-sided discourse.
Antisemitism Response:
Responds to documented or alleged incidents of antisemitic harassment post-October 7th, which could fall under Title VI protections if based on shared ethnicity or national origin.
Governance Reform:
Calls for clearer lines of authority and accountability in complex academic institutions, which is a reasonable administrative concern.
Key Issues and Overreaches in the Letter
State-Enforced Ideological Engineering:
Viewpoint diversity audits and mandated ideological balancing per department move into compelled intellectual conformity, which risks violating academic freedom and free speech.
Suspension of Institutional Autonomy:
Replaces university-led decision-making with federal oversight, annual audits, and direct hiring/admissions intervention—a level of control inconsistent with traditional norms for private institutions.
Targeting of Specific Programs:
Selective audits of programs like Middle Eastern Studies or Human Rights centers signal ideological targeting, not neutral application of anti-discrimination principles.
Guilt by Association / Collective Punishment:
Calls for discipline and de-recognition of entire student groups (e.g., Palestine Solidarity Committee) based on political stances, even absent direct policy violations.
Mask Ban and Protest Crackdown:
Mandated suspension for mask-wearing and harsh punishments for past protests go beyond civil rights compliance and verge into authoritarian control of student expression.
Foreign Student Loyalty Screening:
Requiring ideological screening for “American values” and reporting foreign students to DHS raises civil liberties and due process concerns.
DEI Abolition Blanket Order:
Calls for total shutdown of all DEI offices and functions, regardless of their form or function, eliminating even neutral or inclusive programs not tied to race-based quotas.
Summary Judgment
The letter does address real legal and policy issues—especially around race- and gender-based preferences, antisemitism, and bureaucratic governance. But it leverages these issues to justify a comprehensive, ideologically driven restructuring of a university. The result is a state-imposed orthodoxy enforced through threats of defunding, loyalty tests, and discipline, extending well beyond what’s required for civil rights compliance.
I'm a scientist and I've spent a lot of time at Harvard, including working there for years.
These demands seem on point to me. I see a lot of uninformed opposition in this thread, but I think most of you all don't have any idea how it actually is at elite universities.
- Political tests for employment, or continued employment. The UC system (a public system!) is one of the worst offenders here, but Harvard is really, really bad.
- Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof). The number of academics who aren't even aware that this sort of discrimination is illegal is mind-boggling. I would say 9 months ago it was 80% or more. The number of emails I've received either indicating a candidate isn't viable because of his genitalia or skin color, or telling me this is the reason I didn't get the job is crazy. They literally don't know and don't care.
- Compelled speech. This is a bright line we have so far, as a society, successfully succeeded in not crossing. Harvard and other elite universities were crossing it, and the Biden admin's Title IX rules overtly crossed it. A bad look, to put it mildly.
- Widespread censorship, to the point where we (social scientists) have developed code to talk about certain things "nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus" hahaha...dear lord.
And these aren't small effects. It's not 55% / 45% type scenarios. You have to view the Administration's requests in the light of: Harvard is 95+% Blue Team, and that's largely because they actively filter. There are plenty of people who aren't willing to bend the knee who don't have jobs because of it. Harvard has created an intellectual monoculture. They want "diversity" in the sense that they want people who look different on the outside, but who are all the same on the inside.
Asking for monitoring to make sure they're no longer illegally and immorally discriminating in hiring and admission is warranted, indeed it would be kind of crazy to not monitor. They'll just continue racist and sexist hiring otherwise.
What's in this letter is a reasonable set of asks in response to a situation that is so off the rails it's hard to describe.
Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed.
I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine.
I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding.
Trade schools cater to the lower income, are much more effective dollar for dollar, and get a lot less federal funds. If that money were to be poured into trade schools instead of universities, it would help create a better middle class.
Why should Harvard be so entitled?
EDIT: IMO, The reason youth go to college is to have fun. The real reason the parents are willing to pay, is because their children will forge connections with other wealthy families that is worth the money. It may be good for the wealthy that the money stays in their circle, but IMO this is not something the Gov should subsidize.
Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.
Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.
If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.
Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.
the money is for research not education.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.
What an outrageous and incoherent letter
So much for academic freedom
Awesome response from Alan Garber
With their large untaxed endowment, they should be fine without federal funding. Make it so.
They are already are spending billions a year from their endowment, which covers nearly 40% of their operating revenue, which is around the maximum they can sustainably spend.
Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.
Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.
Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.
Whats the problem.. just get your pal Soros to give you the money instead.. With $36T debt, Federal Government cannot continue splashing out money like there is no tomorrow
If they were concerned with spending, they’d just cut the spending.
They’re making the spending conditional on Harvard following their ideological instructions.
Trump is increasing the debt tho and did in his first term.
Republicans only care about debt when it can be used to either bash Democrats or used as a talking point to eliminate something they don't like. Lookup "Starve The Beast".
Republicans do not care about the debt. They care that it can be used as a tool. That's it.
They run up the debt when they want and then turn around to blame Democrats for the debt they ran up.
Nobody is really concerned with the US debt outside of silly wanna-be patriots and the politicians who use it to scare them. Now, one way to make the US debt a much bigger deal is to cause a recession...hmm...wonder if anyone is trying to do that...
Almost every economist believes there is no serious and immediate problem with our current debt level (which is actually increasing under both Trump administrations, despite their fake expressions of concern). Why do you believe you are right and they are all collectively wrong?
Lot of bluster from Harvard. Harvard is free to not do what the gov't is requesting, they just don't get the fed money.
Public funds should not be subsidizing wealthy private universities. The end.
Unless you're speaking about the high overhead rates, that's really the wrong framing. The public funds at issue are buying things like research, or hospital services.
One framework I like to use is, “If this thing didn’t exist today, and someone proposed it, how would people react to it?”
I think it’s fair to say that if none of this existed today, and someone proposed that the federal government simply give universities like Harvard seemingly endless billions, it would be laughed out of existence by republicans and democrats alike. All of this is the product of inertia at best, corruption at worst. It’s a different world today and we don’t need our tax dollars going to these places.
"If thing doesn't exist, gets proposed, gets laughed out of the room, good idea" is your framework? It doesn't sound like a good framework.
Wait till you hear of countries where university education is 100% tax funded. And you get money from the government while you're a full-time student.
The law in the immigration act to disallow people who espouse support for terrorism is a good one.
We protect freedom of speech for citizens because we have to. They are part of our country.
I don’t believe this extends to foreigners. We should allow only immigrants who do not support terrorism and want to be productive members of society. This isn’t too much to ask.
This is not a right or left issue. This is a pro-America vs con-America issue.
"Congress shall make no law" is not unclear, nor is the idea from the declaration that " all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". There is no spot in the founding philosophy of this nation that makes a home for "rights of citizens" only, and there was copious space to fill that in if they wanted. You made that shit up.
What you're doing is scriptural prestidigitation. It's the equivalent of christians deciding that Satan and the serpent in the garden are the same entity, even though it's very clear that they aren't[1]. You're doing it because it makes your world view seem like less of an incoherent mess, not because it's true.
Define “terrorism.”
The administration, for example, freely uses the word to describe someone with no criminal record and no proven gang affiliations: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
They also use the word to describe Tesla vandals: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/25/us/fbi-task-force-tesla-a...
The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang. Also, the government of El Salvador confirmed this.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
I believe that setting Teslas on fire is domestic terrorism. They were politically motivated to specifically target a political figure to intimidate other citizens. I think setting ballot boxes on fire is also domestic terrorism.
> The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang.
The executive branch has made that allegation. The person didn't have a trial in the judicial branch.
Please look up "habeas corpus", and Article 1 Section 9 Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
This is the law department. Religion is down the hall and around the corner.
Assumption: everything critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza is supporting terrorism. That’s quite the take.
The evidence presented to the judge that allowed the deportation was that he specifically supported Hamas. He wasn't just pro-Palestinian. This is why he is being deported.
The government's list of requests is reasonable, moral and necessary. It's the taxpayers' prerogative to demand a merit based system that, in conjunction, upholds the values and freedoms they hold dear.
The elitist and morally detached Harvard and its fellow privileged, largely useless, institutions can exercise their right to refuse the demands and the money.
No need to complicate it further.
The university, as a private institution, has every right to hold whatever views and enforce whatever policies it sees fit within itself.
The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It's best when the bargaining about such conditions happens with mutual respect and without overreach, but respect and sobriety are in very short supply in the current administration. Even better it is when a university does not need to receive the government money and can run off the gigantic endowment it already has, thus having no need to comply with any such conditions.
(It's additionally unfun how the antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem, in a very muffed way, and any other kind of discrimination based on ethnicity, culture, or religion is not mentioned at all. Is fighting discrimination out of fashion now?..)
> The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It really doesn't. There are both normal laws and Constitutional restrictions on how the government can make decisions, and the reasons it can have for making those decisions.
I'm very much not an expert here, but this includes restrictions on viewpoint discrimination in funding.
I agree! The government is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions. But it's entitled to set some. I suspect that some acts of Congress require the government to set some conditions on providing governmental funding, as the Constitution prescribes: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46827
> is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions
Indeed, but most of these conditions _are_ arbitrary and often mutually-conflicting. Mask ban? What is the scientific basis for this?
The government already set numerous conditions on research funding relating to accounting, ethical conduct and so forth. Attaching conditions that are only tangentially related to the purpose of the funding is almost arbitrary by definition.
The governments conditions are not unlimited.
Their proposed "viewpoint diversity" is absurd at face value.
Indeed. I wish the government side was more reasonable, but it's hard to expect now; they are into running a TV show :(
I think this administration never had the intent to be "reasonable".
If they were concerned about out of control diversity efforts, I might even semi agree with them.
But this administration and the GOP doesn't value free speech. Despite their complaints they're not the least bit opposed to the government enforcing their viewpoints on people, in fact they just want to do it in spades.
Do you believe antisemitism is a problem at Harvard? If so, what led you to believe this?
Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning? I'm sorry but the continuously faithless positioning of the Trump administration right now makes me believe the antisemitic accusations are a pretext.
> antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem
Because it's very obviously being used as a cover to exert control over universities which are deemed to be too "woke" (which has nothing to do with anti-semitism).
Yes, antisemitism exists, like many other social ills. But is it a major problem at Harvard and these elite institutions? No, it is not.
The government does not have all that right tho. First amendment and all.
I would invite you to read the government letter if you have not, but look at each demand and put yourself in the position of the recently affected but also try to see if you can hold a "controversial" view of the world that should be fine but would be put in danger by these demands: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Civil rights, suffrage, they were all the controversial opinion at some point. Some people still argue that they are but anyone against those can go pound sand.
I don't think that the government's demands are all reasonable, or even permissible. Some things read like they were written in the height of the civil rights movement in 1960s:
> By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices
Some though read as if they were written in an advent to a totalitarian dystopia:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
To my mind Harvard is right in bringing this to the public attention. It's also free to walk away from governmental financing programs that stipulate such conditions (if they are even found legitimate), and is even in a position to do so.
The government subsidizes a private institution that cuts class sizes. Clearly education isn't their priority, so the subsidy can go.
Harvard received the "worst score ever" clamped at 0.0 in 2023. By the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The actual score was -10.69.
They were particularly oppressive on anyone espousing opinions on the political right...Both leaning toward Individual liberty & stateist inclined.
While I believe that freedom of speech is a right not to be infringed on. Their current stance is selective. They have a massive endowment. So Harvard doesn't need subsidies. Since their endowment benefits private parties, Harvard can be funded by private parties.
https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...