Comment by PerilousD
6 days ago
I guess that Harvard probably does not need the Feds as much as the Feds need Harvard but I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists. I'm going to have to see what NYU is doing now.
6 days ago
I guess that Harvard probably does not need the Feds as much as the Feds need Harvard but I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists. I'm going to have to see what NYU is doing now.
The thing to remember is that these grants are their research budget. The endowment is largely earmarked for educational projects. Your average university professor is there because they want to do research, not because they want to teach - so the research budget is critical for educating as well.
I assume Harvard has a plan for dealing with this dynamic. They have some extremely smart people there, so I don't doubt they've found a way.
What does the Federal Gov need Harvard for? Harvard gets 16% of its funding from them - what outweighs that on the aide of the Federal government?
The tax revenues from the $1.3T company that arose from their online yearbook?
Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually? 161 Nobel prize winners?
Its not clear what the effect no Harvard would be on those metrics. And all of those are necessarily in Harvards best interest to maintain too.
This is compared to a direct payment to sustain operations which the government is saying they may not be in favor of. But its not like Harvard would say ”it may not be in our interest to produce successful people anymore.”
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Don't confuse the credential factory with the skills and quality of the underlying students. Harvard is little more than a toll booth for students who were already smart and over-achieving. It's not like the teaching is extraordinary.
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One may expect that the funding is paying for research, such that the government finds the trade to have positive expected value.
Until recently, the US brand was where exceptional people wanted to go study and work. If you want to send the world's best and brightest to other countries that's fine, but it will have negative long term impacts on the US.
I wonder how many Harvard graduates work for either Trump or the federal government.
Most if not all of his cabinet (surprisingly) have an Ivy League background. Not sure if that's an endorsement on them, or an indictment on Ivy League schools
The GOP / Trump administration shows no real focus on employing experts, Trump shows no curiosity about anything. They're slashing research and science across the board department by department. They employ anti science people as heads of departments that require science.
I don't think the GOP & Trump thinks they need anything from Harvard other than agreeing to impose first amendment violations on others on behalf of the GOP and Trump.
> I'm glad they are standing up to the Fascists
Today I learned that demanding an end to racial discrimination makes you a fascist. I swear this word becomes more meaningless by the day.
Genuinely curious: what part of the federal government's letter to Harvard seems fascist to you?
Is the government asking a university to shift their bias away from skin color diversity to viewpoint diversity fascist?
Is there a historical parallel?
Or is it just the fact that the government is asking for reform, and any reform request would be considered fascist? If so, do you also consider the DEI reform requests fascist?
The section on "Student Discipline Reform and Accountability" is explicitly fascist. Harvard police must prevent/crush serious protests that cause disruption. Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy. Masking (even for valid medical reasons) is banned. (This lets you know that this has nothing to do with facts or diversity of viewpoints and everything to do with the supremacy of theirs.) The "Whistleblower Reporting and Protections" section is basically a demand for a hotline, direct to the government, to inform on anyone not toeing the line. The "Transparency and Monitoring" section makes it clear the government intends to monitor foreign students at Harvard closely.
This isn't quite 1930's Germany yet, but it's getting there. The next step to watch for would be any laws passed that regulate who can serve as faculty in universities or attempts to impose different leadership on universities that don't comply with demands.
You made several good points. While I am struggling to validate "Student groups must be vetted so that they don't violate orthodoxy", it may be because I am unfamiliar with the actions of the student bodies listed at the end of the section, or maybe subtleties in the wording that I am missing that could be exploited later.
Also I find the mask-ban strange and alarming. That example alone was probably enough of a red flag for me to more carefully scrutinize the good-faith of the rest of the letter.
Thank you for taking the time to actually engage with me constructively. Unfortunately many others decided to just downvote my questions.
I find it so disappointing that on a forum like Hacker News I am being downvoted for asking a question in good faith in an attempt to better understand a complex and nuanced topic.
When I ask ChatGPT to explain Facism to me, two aspects it pointed out were: - Suppression of political opposition, dissent, and individual freedoms. - Use of state power to enforce conformity.
I can see how the letter from the government to Harvard would be considered use of state power to enforce conformity. As someone who is open minded trying to understand the truth, the letter on first pass reads like they are using state power to unwind enforced ideological conformity. This is confusing, because on its surface it seems anti-fascist, so when people label it fascist (with charged emotions), it's hard for me to take them at their word without further explanation.
When the people who are concerned about the current actions of the government attack me for asking questions in an effort to actually understand their concerns rather than just accepting them, it makes me more suspicious of their viewpoints, not less.
Also, ChatGPT's thorough explanation of Fascism indicated to me that both administrations have been showing signs of increasing fascism, almost complimenting each other in their policies as they rock the cultural and institutional trunk of the united states back and forth with ever increasing momentum until it tips over into catastrophe. If such is the case, then maybe the only hope is for people to engage in these thorny issues with curiosity and nuance, to carefully sift out the bad from the good instead of assuming that everything the other side is doing is evil.
I have no control over what other people do, all I have control over is my own actions. I don't see a good way out of this mess that doesn't involve curiosity, empathy, understanding and reconciliation. So I will continue engage in the conversation with these intentions, and if people attack me for that then I suppose to will just have to accept what's inevitable.
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Let's set aside specific terms like "fascist" for now. Below is one of the demands from the government:
> the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.
Do you feel this is ok for the government to demand of an educational institution? This isn't about specific political ideologies. If the Biden administration had threatened to withhold funding from a university because, for example, their hiring policies weren't left-leaning enough or something, it would be equally outrageous.
Thank you,
Let me start by saying that I am not American and I am not your enemy. Also, I am genuinely trying to understand the truth about these matters, with an open mind to the possibility that it's messy and complicated and I might not be capable of understanding it. I hope that provides context for what follows.
Honestly, I am not sure if it's okay. It reminds me of the anti-racist movement, in that the action almost feels like it's anti-fascist. It's using a fascist action (use of state power to enforce conformity), to undo a fascist policy (suppression of political opposition and dissent). This reminds me of anti-racism, which uses one type of racism to compensate for a different type of past-racism.
What I find interesting is the very last statement in your post. I am not aware of anything Biden did, but it does seem like Obama did something very similar with the DEI policies forced on universities which came with funding implications for non-compliance. It was a different time, everyone was upset about the great financial crisis of 2008, and on their surface I am sure these policies sounded like a good thing. In the end though these policies were very much a form of facism in that it was a state sponsored effort to suppress political opposition. This probably sounds like I am defending the political views of racists, but really I am defending the political views of people who believe leadership roles should be filled based on the merit of the individual and their ability to take care of those in their charge, and not based on the color of their skin, their gender or sexual preferences.
As I have tried to unpack all this, the perspective that is growing for me is that for the last 20 or so years both administrations have been taking steps towards fascism while hiding their fascist actions behind intentions that sound anti-fascist. If this perspective is even partially correct, it would explain why so much of this has been so confusing for me.