Harvard, Welfare Queen
It cries independence while depending $9 billion from Uncle Sugar
The Babylon Bee is the Captain Kirk of comedy. It goes where no man has gone before.
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Alan M. Garber, who replaced the plagiarizing DEI hire Claudine Gay as president of Harvard, issued a memo expressing his indignation at the Trump administration for telling it to quit racial discrimination under penalty of losing $9 billion in federal grants.
Garber said, “The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Regardless of which party. Where’s my Sure Jan GIF?
I cannot see how a demand that Harvard end its racial discrimination violates the college’s First Amendment rights, so let’s try to figure this out.
On Friday, officials from the General Services Administration, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Service sent a letter to Garber and Penny Pritzker (Obama’s billionaire commerce secretary and sister of the governor of Illinois) in her capacity as Lead Member of Harvard Corporation.
The Trump administration’s letter said, “Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the University to its promise. We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.”
While Garber is Jewish, Harvard has a long history of antisemitism in its admissions policy and in recent years has lowered admissions standard for black applicants while raising them for Asian Americans to standards so high mere mortals have little chance of getting in.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ended Harvard’s racist policies in admissions in deciding Students v. Harvard. The University of North Carolina was a co-defendant. The court cited the 14th Amendment.
The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.
The court was clear. It did not say Harvard should facilitate non-discrimination; the court ordered Harvard to stop the discrimination.
The Trump administration insisted that Harvard end favoritism of people on the basis of the color of their skin. The administration’s letter called for:
Governance and leadership reforms.
Merit-Based Hiring Reform.
Merit-Based Admissions Reform.
International Admissions Reform.
Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring.
Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias.
Discontinuation of DEI.
Student Discipline Reform and Accountability.
Whistleblower Reporting and Protections.
Transparency and Monitoring.
Instead of working with the administration to comply with the Supreme Court and the Constitution, Garber is giving a kneejerk cry of academic freedom. If anything, Trump’s regime is calling for more diversity in academia.
Harvard is perhaps the biggest Welfare Queen in America receiving $2 billion a year from federal taxpayers. The $9 billion is not an annual number but covers future budgets.
Axios claimed, “Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment grants the university less protection against potential federal funding cuts than such a stacked bank account might suggest.
“Elite universities like Harvard have massive endowments, but legal restrictions, donor intent and other red tape severely limit the flexibility the schools have to spend.”
That makes sense and to be fair, the endowment covers about 37.5% of the university's $6.4 billion operating budget.
Axios said, “Harvard has put some measures in place to protect it from hard economic times. The school imposed a temporary hiring freeze in March. Harvard also got back into the debt market in March, issuing $450 million in tax-exempt bonds.”
Not mentioned, of course, is Harvard’s announcement that it will stop charging tuition for students whose parents earn less than $200,000 a year.
Harvard has a special place in the federal government because it has the best lobbyists on the world—better than Zelensky the Money Launderer. Harvard’s graduates and professors who hold public office. Yes, I’m talking to you, Pocahontas.
Obama peeped out of his groundhog hole to tweet, “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions—rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect.
“Let's hope other institutions follow suit.”
Unlawful? Where’d he go to law school?
Oh, that’s right, Harvard.
The press coverage is about as one-sided as one might expect. The Boston Globe is in a company town just like the Coal Valley News is. The only difference is the company is Harvard (and MIT and a bevy of other universities) instead of coal.
The Globe reported on Sarah Fortune, the lead Harvard scientist on a tuberculosis study, which she stopped when the Trump administration pulled funding. If the research were as crucial as she claimed, Harvard should have found alternative funding.
The story said, “Fortune can no longer distribute funds to her collaborators at other universities and she must cease using federal money for any purpose related to the study. That means scientists may have to be laid off.
“Researchers may also have to kill macaques, a type of primate, being used in a vaccine study at the University of Pittsburgh that is funded by the Harvard contract. Killing the animals may be necessary, Fortune said, because they are no longer allowed to use federal funds to feed and care for them.”
Insert the National Lampoon magazine cover here.
By the way, PeTA praised Trump for halting some research that uses dogs.
What about Macaques Rights?
The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance tweeted, “Harvard’s fighting the Trump administration harder than it’s ever fought antisemitism.”
I look forward to the Southern Poverty Law Center listing Harvard’s Board of Overseers as a hate group.
Here’s an idea. Instead of demanding that taxpayers pay Harvard billions of dollars each year with no strings attached, why not press the college to make the reforms the Trump administration wants? I thought liberals wanted transparency, reform and meritocracy. It’s ridiculous to claim academic freedom when you oppose “Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring.”
Garber does not have to do a thing Trump says—and the American people who elected Trump president again don’t have to give Harvard a dime or a damn.
Harvard or any other school doesn’t have the “right” to discriminate on the basis of race. It also doesn’t have a right to any federal tax money.
Maybe the leaders there ought to talk to the folks at Hillsdale College about how to run a college without federal funds.
Harvard has a right to be antisemitic, but it does not have a right to federal funding.