RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5263585-harvard-funding-civil-rights/

Earlier this month, the federal government withheld billions in funding from Harvard. Last week, the IRS considered whether the school should even keep its tax-exempt status. 

Harvard’s response? They’ve labeled these moves as somehow “unlawful.” But they can’t explain how, because they’re wrong.

First, as it relates to funding, no institution is simply entitled to billions of taxpayer dollars. The federal government has the absolute right to attach conditions to the programs it pays for, especially when it comes to compliance with applicable civil rights laws. 

Contrary to what Harvard’s leadership may believe, this isn’t a First Amendment issue. The government is not suppressing free speech but exercising its own speech. And the Supreme Court has been crystal clear about this.

In Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (2015), for example, the court explained that “when government speaks, it is not barred by the Free Speech Clause from determining the content of what it says.” In fact, the court has persistently refused “to hold that the government unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of viewpoint when it chooses to fund a program dedicated to advance certain permissible goals, because the program in advancing those goals necessarily discourages alternative goals.”

In short, there is no First Amendment issue here because the government is not telling Harvard what to do: Harvard is free to keep on discriminating to its own heart’s content — just not on the government’s dime.

Second, the IRS has full authority to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and it is not a close call.

Over 40 years ago, the Supreme Court in Bob Jones University v. United States (1983) ruled that the IRS could (and should) revoke a university’s tax-exempt status because its racially discriminatory practices violated public policy. In fact, in some ways, this case is even easier, because not only is discriminatory antisemitism in this context against public policy, it is also actually unlawful under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. 

https://thespectator.com/topic/harvard-intricate-china-ties/

Scratch almost any major US political story and sooner or later you’ll hit a big red nerve that belongs to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Tariffs, energy, TikTok, the border, Fentanyl, Greenland, Panama, the Gulf of America – on all these subjects the Trump administration is, one way or another, trying to limit Beijing’s power in the West. And Donald Trump’s “war on Harvard,” it turns out, is no exception. It’s clear that the President is pushing against anti-Semitism and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion madness on America’s most famous campus, as well as in countless other colleges and universities. But the drive against woke insanity is often also a push back against the increasing influence of China in western life, especially in the many educational institutions into which the CCP has been pouring billions of dollars over the past two decades.

When Joe Biden was exposed for hoarding classified files, it soon emerged that some of the sensitive documents had been stored in the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, at the University of Pennsylvania, which just so happened to have received $30 million from Chinese donors. But that’s small fry compared to the money Harvard has been harvesting from the world’s second superpower in recent years. In the 2010s, the massively indebted Chinese real-estate behemoth Evergrande pledged $115 million to Harvard Medical School, which may or may not have had something to do with the way America’s scientific elite, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, pivoted against the Covid lab-leak theory in 2020. In the end, it donated $12 million, according to reports.

Now it seems that Harvard’s China ties may be even more intricate than previously believed. These connections may have given the Trump administration precisely the legal cudgel it needs in its bid to force Harvard to play by its rules on DEI and other issues. The new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has already declared that Harvard has not been “fully transparent or complete in its disclosures” concerning foreign donations. There are a number of allegations that Chinese funding – more than $1 billion worth of donations in total – has excessively influenced Harvard’s research and academic output.