Harvard, Has $53B, Still Wants Billions in Fed Funding Americans are supposed to feel privileged to give Harvard their money. by Daniel Greenfield
https://www.frontpagemag.com/harvard-has-53b-still-wants-billions-in-fed-funding/
Harvard has an endowment of over $53 billion. Despite that it’s fighting Trump administration demands for reform in order to extract around $9 billion in federal funding.
The Trump administration had asked Harvard for such things as merit-based hiring, promotion and admission, empowering tenured faculty over activist groups, and viewpoint diversity. It also called for an end to DEI and antisemitism.
It warned that “Harvard must adopt a new policy on student groups or clubs that forbids the recognition and funding of, or provision of accommodations to, any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment” and “permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student”.
Finally, Harvard “must also, to the satisfaction of the federal government, disclose the source and purpose of all foreign funds”.
Harvard predictably said “no”. President Alan Garber declared that “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.”
The trouble is that governments have been doing this for quite a while. And if Harvard doesn’t like it, it can stop taking federal money.
Instead, the Harvard president argues that “for three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations.”
Curiously he doesn’t cite any recent ones. But with over $53 billion, Harvard should be able to make all these “groundbreaking innovations” (and profit from them) without taxpayers having to foot the bill.
Yet Harvard wants billions more in taxpayer funding. It wants billions from the government, but it doesn’t want to restore law and order to its campus or bring back merit-based admission and hiring.
Americans are supposed to feel privileged to give Harvard their money. But what if they don’t feel privileged?
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