Posted on 04/15/2025 1:35:10 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
On one side is Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, with a brand so powerful that its name is synonymous with prestige. On the other side is the Trump administration, determined to go further than any other White House to reshape American higher education.
Both sides are digging in for a clash that could test the limits of the government’s power and the independence that has made U.S. universities a destination for scholars around the world.
On Monday, Harvard became the first university to openly defy the Trump administration as it demands sweeping changes to limit activism on campus. The university frames the government’s demands as a threat not only to the Ivy League school but to the autonomy that the Supreme Court has long granted American universities.
“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the university’s lawyers wrote Monday to the government. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”
The federal government says it’s freezing more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard. The hold on funding marks the seventh time the Trump administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges, in an attempt to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda. Six of the seven schools are in the Ivy League.
Harvard is uniquely equipped to push back
No university is better positioned to put up a fight than Harvard, whose $53 billion endowment is the largest in the nation. But like other major universities, Harvard also depends on the federal funding that fuels its scientific and medical research. It’s unclear how long Harvard could continue without the frozen money.
Already, Harvard’s refusal appears to be emboldening other institutions.
After initially agreeing to several demands from...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Today’s Harvard brand is perhaps more aptly compared to the Cadillac brand. Yesterday, Cadillac called itself the “Standard of the World”. Today, it pleads, “Buy me, please.”
With a brand so powerful it’s name is synonymous with arrogant.
More intriguing to me, later the article mentions Trump’s threat to the tax exempt status of Harvard’s endowment for DEI violating civil rights laws. Capital gains tax on $50+ billion, baby! Let’s make it retroactive to the initiation of DEI madness. Lots of paper gains in the stock market during Bidenflation. Write that check to the IRS.
Fine. Then no more federal monies.
AP=All Propaganda=Garbage
Obviously, the government can choose who it contracts with. It’s not an entitlement.
I suspect there is a lot of discontent among Harvard researchers that they are getting the shaft because the administration won’t moderate its virtue-signaling.
Ha, ha, ha! Maybe 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Prof. Hanson always says his students at Hillsdale College are FAR better educated and FAR more intelligent than a student at Harvard. He says his students at Cal State 30 years ago would run rings around today's student at Harvard. There's so much "prestige" at Harvard that they need remedial math courses for the current crop of freshmen.
Prof. Hanson says that a Harvard degree these days is nothing more than a "brand" on your resume. It does not indicate a higher quality education or a more demanding curriculum.
I believe the DOJ can hire outside legal help. So hire the best legal talent to go up against Harvard. This should be a world class pissing contest.
Will the case be tried by the usual liberal Massachusetts judges? Or can the DOJ get a change in venue?
When I read the conditions that the administration had laid out, I laughed.
Now they’ve taken the bait.
This should be quite entertaining, watching harvard defend itself while crying for its handouts.
” put up a fight than Harvard, whose $53 billion endowment is the largest in the nation. But like other major universities, Harvard also depends on the federal funding that fuels its scientific and medical research.”
That doesn’t go together. Harvard has 53 billion, but they depend on the government teat?
And I still haven’t heard any sound reasoning why as to why a waitress in Lubbock or a mechanic in Denver should have their money taken at gunpoint and given to Harvard.
“Why should my tax dollars be spent to benefit a school that will never benefit me or mine?”
Not only that, but a school that works feverishly to destroy everything in your life. They attack your freedom, they attack not having perverts get access to your children. They push for wars and the border flood. Their business school churns out lawyers that offshore every industry possible and trains the ones doing the plundering of the remaining industries. Their law school sends radfems, foreigners and marxists into the legal industry where they push novel theories, push censorship, forbid protests, etc.
Harvard needs to be pulled out by the roots and reformed in a way that is unimaginable.
Any judge that went to Harvard has a deep conflict of interest. That includes four of the Supremes.
I am sorry. Harvard doesn’t have the great reputation it used to. DEI has relegated it to average status, at best, but more expensive than just about any others.
I AM OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN THE NAME HARVARD ACTUALLY MEANT SOMETHING.
I agree. About the only thing Harvard is good for, is the historical document collections they hold.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/commence-wonderment/
...In April, Harvard’s Commencement Office holds an open speech-writing competition for graduating seniors. Long ago, these orations were given in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew, and were mainly thesis defenses.
But times have changed, and students now address current issues and events, or speak of lessons learned from their years at Harvard — all in just five minutes (and only one speech is in Latin)...
Where in the constitution does it say that Universities are entitled to Federal government ( read Taxpayer ) money ?
Harvard currently in the FA phase and will soon move into the FO phase
(2) End tax-exempt status for universities
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