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Harvard University on Tuesday pushed back against President Trump's call for the institution to return funds it received from the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package, saying the money it accepted would go toward assisting students financially impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. The university emphasized in a statement that it received the money from a $14 billion fund established under the CARES Act, called the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, and not a separate program designed to help small businesses retain employees amid the pandemic. “Harvard did not apply for, nor has it received any funds through the U.S. Small Business...

Donald Trump vowed that Harvard would be expected to pay back their $8.7 million in federal aid received from coronavirus rescue funds. “Harvard’s going to pay back the money,” Trump said bluntly during the White House press briefing. Harvard received a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program passed as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, even though it already has a $41 billion endowment fund. The PPP loans are ultimately forgiven by the federal government, provided they keep their employees. That prompted criticism of the program, which was rushed forward in Congress to help support small...

Harvard University, which has a $40 billion private endowment, just received $9 million in Wuhan coronavirus "relief" funding. From the Harvard Crimson:  Harvard University will receive nearly $9 million in aid from the federal government through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, the Department of Education announced last week.The CARES Act — the largest economic stimulus package in American history — was signed into law on March 27. It allocates nearly $14 billion to support higher education institutions during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.Of the $8,655,748 Harvard is slated to receive, the government has mandated that at least half —...

It's ironic at a time when 56 million children in the U.S. are being homeschooled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that Harvard Magazine would publish an article calling for a ban on homeschooling. The article by Erin O'Donnell, headlined "The Risks of Homeschooling," sets up one straw man after another to make the case that the government must step in to protect children from their own parents—who are presumed guilty and ill-qualified to care for their own children. Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, told the magazine that homeschooling deprives children of their...

A rapidly increasing number of American families are opting out of sending their children to school, choosing instead to educate them at home. Homeschooled kids now account for roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of school-age children in the United States, a number equivalent to those attending charter schools, and larger than the number currently in parochial schools. Yet Elizabeth Bartholet, Wasserstein public interest professor of law and faculty director of the Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, sees risks for children—and society—in homeschooling, and recommends a presumptive ban on the practice. Homeschooling, she says, not only violates children’s right to...

Can I not have one g-ddamned day of hope?Just one day. In the middle of an endless waking nightmare. Jeremy Faust is the doctor in Boston who wrote a couple of pieces early in the epidemic for Slate, arguing (presciently) that the true fatality rate for COVID-19 was probably far below the three-percent figure gleaned from China’s Wuhan data. If it were really that high, he reasoned, we would have seen more dead on the Diamond Princess cruise after a huge number of passengers became infected. He’s been commenting sporadically on Twitter since then and noticed the enthusiasm over...

Harvard University is not ruling out the possibility that it might not open its campus again to students until 2021. The announcement comes as Harvard researchers have said that social distancing measures may be necessary until 2022. "We are analyzing multiple scenarios, but, in the end, we will be guided by public health considerations—just as we were in deciding on March 10 to send students home and then to implement plans for remote work" In a message to students on Monday, Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow wrote, "Many of you are concerned about plans for the fall. We are analyzing...

Professor Charles Lieber’s arrest on Jan. 28 made headlines on all the major U.S. media. After all, he was not only a Harvard professor, he was a world-class researcher in nanotechnology, working on highly sensitive research projects for the U.S. government. The FBI complaint alleges that he had been secretly participating in China’s “Thousand Talents Plan” since 2011, paid some $600,000 a year plus expenses to open and operate a lab at the Wuhan University of Technology (yes, that Wuhan). We know that China contracts with American experts in this way in order to steal their research and gain commercial...

Millions of college students will be closing out the semester from home, with online courses replacing in-person offerings. Due to the abrupt change, many schools are acknowledging the disruption, and associated changes in students’ circumstances, may lead to a decrease in academic performance unrelated to effort or intelligence, and are therefore instituting grading policies that provide appropriate understanding for the bizarre situation. Many universities, including Georgetown, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, have extended the deadline for taking a class pass/fail until either the last day of classes or even a week after report cards are released. However, many student groups are...

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration's decision to let states chart their own responses to the coronavirus crisis rather than impose a national strategy will cost thousands of lives and is likely to result in an open-ended outbreak rolling across the country, a dozen public health experts told NBC News. The only way to win what President Donald Trump has called a war against an "invisible enemy" is to establish a unified federal command, the experts insist - something Trump has yet to do. So far, the federal government hasn't leveraged all its authority and influence to dramatically expand testing and...

When Harvard told students to leave its dorms for the rest of the spring term earlier in March, most would have expected that they would be empty until the fall. But if some students have their way, the dorms will soon be filled with a new kind of resident. A petition calling for Harvard to house homeless people in its residential properties has gained serious momentum, having already amassed over 1,000 signatures. The author of the petition, Masters of Divinity candidate at Harvard’s Divinity School Christopher Diak also told The Harvard Crimson that he thought that because “there will be...

Harvard University, which has the largest endowment of any school in the country, is cutting its subcontracted dining hall workers without pay as it shuts down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The move is drawing criticism from employment rights advocates on and off campus who point to the university's $40.9 billion endowment as evidence that the school is hardly in financial straits. They also claim the decision violates Harvard's wage equality policy, which requires the university to compensate dining hall contract workers in a fashion comparable to the school's directly hired employees. Harvard closed campus dining halls and other...

Harvard University, which has the largest endowment of any school in the country, is cutting its subcontracted dining hall workers without pay as it shuts down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The move is drawing criticism from employment rights advocates on and off campus who point to the university's $40.9 billion endowment as evidence that the school is hardly in financial straits. They also claim the decision violates Harvard's wage equality policy, which requires the university to compensate dining hall contract workers in a fashion comparable to the school's directly hired employees.

Starting March 23, Harvard will not have in-person classes for the remainder of the spring semester amid fears of spreading the COVID-19 coronavirus, the university announced Tuesday. “The decision to move to virtual instruction was not made lightly,” University President Lawrence S. Bacow said in a statement. “The goal of these changes is to minimize the need to gather in large groups and spend prolonged time in close proximity with each other in spaces such as classrooms, dining halls, and residential buildings.” Students at Harvard release for spring break this Saturday and will begin remote classes. They are asked not...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is suspending her presidential campaign, a source familiar with the decision tells NBC News, a bitter blow for a senator who was long seen by prominent Democrats as headed for the White House. The decision ends a frantic year of campaigning for a candidate who branded herself as a progressive fighter from humble beginnings who was ready to take on a broken and corrupt system.

Mr Obama was briefed immediately on the suspected poisoning of the 41 year-old, which Chinese officials are linking to Mr Heywood’s powerful political allies, when American diplomats were told of the murder allegation. Gu Kailai, Mr Heywood’s former business partner and the wife of Bo Xilai, a senior politician who had been tipped for the highest political office, is suspected of ordering the Briton’s murder in a case at the centre of a political storm in China. The couple have disappeared from sight as the Communist Party attempts to regain stability....... Mr Obama was informed of suspicions over Mr Heywood’s...

Harvard, the crème de la crème of Ivy League education, has been proudly engaging in racial discrimination — in 2020.  Harvard has a sordid history of employing and supporting racists and engaging in antisemitic limitations on the admission of Jews. But this article isn't about the past; it is about present-day discrimination of a different group of Harvard-hated students: Asians. Asians have had their share of discrimination in American history, recall the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Japanese internment camps as examples. But the Asian U.S. community has proven themselves to be resilient and forward-looking, and they have effectively jumped over...

Almost half of all blacks and Hispanics who attend Harvard were admitted because of illegal racial preferences in admissions according to a brief just filed by the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice has filed a brief in a federal lawsuit filed by Students For Fair Admissions that says Harvard's race-based admissions process violates federal law. This filing marks a extreme departure from the Obama Civil Rights Division that spent significant time and resources seeking to expand the use of race in decision making. The brief filed by the Justice Department says Harvard "considers applicants’ race at virtually every...

The Department of Justice today filed an amicus brief in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In its amicus brief, the United States explains that Harvard’s expansive use of race in its admissions process violates federal civil-rights law and Supreme Court precedent. “Race discrimination hurts people and is never benign,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division. “Unconstitutionally partitioning Americans into racial and ethnic blocs harms all involved by fostering stereotypes, bitterness, and division among the American people. The...

For generations of future diplomats and cabinet officials educated at Harvard’s renowned John F. Kennedy School of Government, orientation day has come with a name placard that the students carry from class to class, so their professors can easily call on them. When Diego Garcia Blum, 30, got his placard last fall, the first-year graduate student immediately took a Sharpie to it, writing “He/Him” next to the big block letters of his name. Other students did the same thing, writing “She/Her” and “They/Them.” “Yup! Day 1,” Mr. Garcia Blum, recalled, adding, “That’s when I thought, the students are ahead of...