US Politics Thread

[Kieran]

If you haven't read the administrations demands on Harvard, or Harvard's response, they're worth the read. I can post them, in case anyone is interested. But the demands are unlawful, and no private institution of higher education should submit itself to such government oversight, esp. as vague as some of the demands are, as well as unconstitutional.

But the worst is that the government is threatening them with loss of funding for research should they not comply, which is work that improves and saves lives. Harvard, as an educational institution, can exist on its own endowment, but the serious and important research that they do, in their medical labs, for one, needs government funding, and it does work for the betterment of all Americans and the world. This is short-sighted and foolhardy, but work will be shut down if Trump makes good on his threat.

I’d be interested to read the links, in a spirit of curiosity, and nothing else. I know they have/had issues with anti-semitism and there was the Claudine Gay fiasco, but these can be isolated and not necessarily a reason for government interference..

 

[Moxie]

I’d be interested to read the links, in a spirit of curiosity, and nothing else. I know they have/had issues with anti-semitism and there was the Claudine Gay fiasco, but these can be isolated and not necessarily a reason for government interference..

Here's the letter the government wrote to Harvard, outlining their conditions. In a petty move, I thought, they DID add what seems like a swipe at Claudine Gay, as to vigilance about faculty plagiarism, (as if they aren't, generally, Jesus,) which is then overseen by an independent government committee. I'm not sure where they are going to get the manpower for this committee, since they have gutted both the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services. They want Harvard to police foreign admissions "to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values...." That condition is pretty vague. And who's in charge of judging what these "American values" are, or what being "hostile" to them means? Presumably the Trump administration, since they're the ones determining who gets kicked out of the country these days, due process and the courts be damned.

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf

Harvard's response (well, their lawyers'):

 

[Federberg]

If you haven't read the administrations demands on Harvard, or Harvard's response, they're worth the read. I can post them, in case anyone is interested. But the demands are unlawful, and no private institution of higher education should submit itself to such government oversight, esp. as vague as some of the demands are, as well as unconstitutional.

But the worst is that the government is threatening them with loss of funding for research should they not comply, which is work that improves and saves lives. Harvard, as an educational institution, can exist on its own endowment, but the serious and important research that they do, in their medical labs, for one, needs government funding, and it does work for the betterment of all Americans and the world. This is short-sighted and foolhardy, but work will be shut down if Trump makes good on his threat.

I agree with you. This is yet another area where Trump has somewhat of a point, but finds a way to completely botch the execution. There's no question that there's been ideological capture in universities. Same on this side of the pond. I'm not sure what policy measures can be taken to deal with the problem though. For sure the market will, over time, take corrective steps to fix the issue. A century ago, the best universities in the world were in Germany and they became ideologically captured, and they lost their prestige. Perhaps it would be better for that to be fixed more quickly, but the donor class like Bill Ackerman are already turning their attention to this problem, and Niall Ferguson has created a new university in Texas. These things will probably force change in time. But for sure if there's some sort of intervention that can deal with the administration of these universities then I'm all for it. I read something not that long ago about universities and the decline of innovative research, some of the conclusions were so controversial some on here would accuse me of misogyny for even disseminating them. I don't know if it's true, but... if it is then something has to be done. Otherwise the decline will accelerate