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Comment by imgabe

5 days ago

> 1. They aren't, Harvard does

> 2. Federal grants aren't targeted to specific students so revoking them isn't a targetted punishment

> 3. Harvard can still operate without these grants, including bringing in international students who the current admin might disagree with.

Harvard funds them with the money it gets from grants. If Harvard wants to fund activist students with their own money out of their endowment, nobody is stopping them from doing that.

No, they can't unilaterally import foreign students though, the government has to grant them a visa to come here, and it really doesn't seem prudent to grant visas to people who hate our country and everything it stands for. If they believe the US is so evil and awful, they should be quite relieved that they won't need to come here. Maybe Harvard can open a satellite campus in Gaza if they really feel that these are the best students who are most deserving of a Harvard education.

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imgabe

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Braxton1980  5 days ago

>Harvard funds them with the money it gets from grants.

The grants fund students regardless of views. Yes they can use their endowment (I think) it's quite massive but the point is the government attacking universities for what a small amount of students say which is wrong.

It's also quite hypocritical considering views on free speech and "big government"

"Shutting down free speech will destroy our civilization." - JD Vance

>it really doesn't seem prudent to grant visas to people who hate our country and everything it stands for.

Why? In the case of attacking Israel that's not even our country? What if they hate the current government?

What is "our country" to you because most probably hate the government, a very common attitude for many inside the country.

If they hate our values of freedom then punishing them only says that those freedoms aren't that dear to us because we're willing to compromise.

The rest of your comment is Facebook level of like "If you don't like it leave". I do think your other comments are professional so I hope we can move back

>they should be quite relieved that they won't need to come here

  • imgabe  5 days ago

    > If they hate our values of freedom then punishing them only says that those freedoms aren't that dear to us because we're willing to compromise.

    How is it a punishment to send someone away from a place they hate?

    For all the people chanting “from the river to the sea” and then crying about their free speech when their visas are revoked, where is their passion for free speech when someone draws a cartoon of Mohammad?

    These are not people who care about the ideals of freedom. They only want to use our indulgence as a wedge to promulgate their own, much less free ideology.

    Or to put things in maybe more HN-friendly terms - suppose you have a public facing service that you intend to be very liberal and accepting of any inputs. Does that mean you need to allow SQL injection attacks? Cross-site scripting? Spam? Not all actors are acting in good faith. Some are deliberately trying to harm you.