It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they want and don't need to think about the other.
The end to current diversity policies and the start of others combined is a demand for u-turn: stop allowing the things we don't like, start allowing the things you were stopping.
Same for speech: stop auditing the speech we want to say, start auditing the speech you were previously allowing.
And so on.
In the minds of the administration it makes sense, because they think of each item separately where there is conflict and together where there is not. Such cognitive dissonance seems to be their natural state of mind, the seem to seek it.
Much like their cries of “but what about tolerance?!”¹ when you mention punching nazis. They want the complete about-turn: LBTQ out, racism/sexism/phobias in. You are supposed to tolerate what they want you to tolerate, and little or nothing else.
--------
[1] My answer there has often become “you didn't want tolerance, you specifically voted against continued tolerance, what you voted for won, intolerance is your democratically chosen desire, who am I to deny the will of your people?”.
Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
[..] The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time [..] was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
[..] It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'
The quotes seem to be from the famous book "1984" by George Orwell. We had it in English literature class in high school.
There are some other famous quotes from that book or one of his other famous books, "Animal Farm".
Writing from memory and googling, so may be wrong:
"Some people are more equal than others."
The society that Winston finds himself in puts forth the slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The meaning of this phrase is to force confusion upon the members of the Party. It is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party.
According to the article, the original version with "2 + 2 = 5" suggests complete submission to the oppressive regime, with the protagonist's mind being irreversibly altered.
Technically part of the Ministry of Love, Room 101 is the most feared place in all of Oceania and Winston learns far too well that it is here that the …
What is the final message of 1984?
… a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the ability of a repressive regime to manipulate and control individuals to the point where they betray ...
I think a clearly ideological actor leaving by choice after being ostracized for representing blatantly false and unscientific ideological claims is good, actually, and that providing this as an example is shifting your goalposts. For context, Carole Hooven is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing "think-tank," and an associate of notable transphobe Stephen Pinker. The personal costs of her self-created ostracization seem minimal (perhaps negative).
The statements that she made hinge on a supposed "strict sex binary," which relies upon forced ignorance and denial of the existence of intersex people. This is a weaponized claim used to gird the foundations of an ideology which has successfully sought to engage in human rights abuses, initially directed by this administration at denying children social acceptance and access to life-saving medical care as well as directly impugning the moral character of US military service members while attacking their access to life-saving medical care and discharging them from service. Simultaneously, Harvard has come under attack from the administration on a purely ideological and fascist basis. It seems like her critics were right to view her as a threat to science, human dignity, and the institution they mutually-represented.
Sex is binary - for all species that reproduce sexually, including humans - because there is no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg.
What you're referring to with "intersex" is actually a set of disorders of sex development which affect each sex differently. For example, consider 5-alpha reductase deficiency: a mutation in the gene that encodes the enzyme for converting testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, causing loss of enzymatic activity, may be present in anyone of either sex, but will only impair male sexual development.
None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.
The dramatic moral harms of this Engineer's-Disease-based reasoning on public policy are already visible and are only expected to dramatically accelerate for the foreseeable future. There's no point in engaging an off-topic and inflammatory line of discourse that attempts to paper over this undeniable reality with smug appeals to authority.
Hold on—we're being a bit taxonomically lazy here, aren't we? You're applying a species-level classification (based on gametes) too rigidly to individual-level variation. If you look at actual developmental outcomes, there's a non-trivial set of cases that don’t map neatly onto a system of just two categories (which is not a lot of categories). Calling all of those 'disorders' assumes the categories are already correct, rather than testing whether they fit what we actually observe.
Ps. The Overton window is such an interesting concept; Imagine arguing our case before the head Eunuch of the Ottoman Court in the 16th century or so.
> None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.
True, but nor is it generally controversial amongst the un-indoctronated that
sexual reproduction and gender identity are NOT (as claimed a couple of posts above) orthogonal concepts. I don't know about you, but while my biology and mental identity happen to nicely match up, I consider myself to be more than my testicles and can accept that others don't share my cis status.
Wanna guess which books the Nazi's burned first? Yep the ones about transgender research from the Institute for Sexual Research. I'm sure they acted in good faith like they usually did.
idk if there's much I can do here. Carole is a respected scientist. So is Steven. Carole is a fellow of this institute as a result of having to find new patrons because of her cancellation, not the other way around. Your understanding of the situation re sex and gender is completely incorrect.
Good? You made a claim and had one point disproven because there's a difference between voluntarily leaving an institution and being kidnapped by the federal government.
No one really asked about your opinions otherwise. We're just establishing 2 very obvious lines in the sand.
You could attempt to provide citation for your initial claims. Carole Hooven does not meet the criteria, providing her is only suggestive of a disingenuous ideological motivation.
Obviously other words like "terminated" may be appropriate too. Of course, most situations like this don't come to firing--like with Carole, the bureaucracy simply takes away everything you love and makes it clear you will never advance. It's much simpler when people "choose" to leave.
- McCarthyism is was an end to egalitarianism, until the 'previous regime' (which I take to mean a regime since 1959, whatever 'regime' that means).
- Stating some people are lesser gets you fired from empirical institutions.
In short, people being equal is soviet style communism, the old regime which included Regan and Nixon is over, and only now you can say what you want because something changed?
This here is a fantastic example of newspeak, doublethink. Thank you for that
I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.
Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.
Sadly America was founded on principles that too 200 years to try and undo. And given the last year alone, they are still stripping rights as we speak. I don't know which fork we turned on that made us so reliable on racism and sexism to function and band together as a country that much of the EU seems to have navigated better. Maybe reconstruction should have had an actual Nuremburg trial instead of "forgiveness" (aka pushing the can down the street until someone could assassinate the one trying to compromise).
the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.
Authoritarian governments are arbitrary governments, all decisions are made arbitrarily. Consistency is unnecessary. That's the trouble with choosing power as a guiding principle over reason or consent.
This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.
No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.
It doesn't serve the goals you think it should, that's not necessarily stupid.
> High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states).
Yes, but the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance" and, to the extent that it related to economic performance, doesn't have any necessary relation to a broad aggregate, its more concerned with very specific aspects of relative distribution.
I maen, what are their goals? To make more money? Yes, stupid to crash the economy just to insider trade. Power and influence? Yes, it's stupid to overextend too fast. Ask 99% of regines from human history (Rome, Soviet Union, Great Britian). Ideaological warfare? Yes, it's stupid to outright declare constitutional war on day 9x out of 1400.
What are their goals?
> the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance"
well they should have. Again, Bread and circuses. Mess with people's money and they get neither.
Again, stupid move. This could have been an easy, silent, calculated takeover in the course of two years. Instead they just swung a hammer at the house and are frustrated that people are yelling at them.
Who is "others"? Who is "aggregate"? You're being vague because your idea doesn't make any sense.
Let's be clear:
1) Trump very clearly - very obviously - cares a lot about broad US economic performance compared to China.
2) This is at odds with his desire for unlimited power within the US, because corruption and oppression doesn't do very well economically.
That's why it's stupid - it doesn't serve its own goals. One of those two has to give.
He and his voters don't understand "Woke" is great for the modern economy. You want everyone working at their absolute full potential. Slaves don't invent chips, corruption drives away business investment, etc. It's very simple to understand if you're not a racist, but the South has been stuck on this point for generations.
They're not selecting to maximize performance, they're selecting to maximize their own control. Pete Hegseth isn't SecDef because he's good at it. He leaks war plans and can't get through a press conference without being seen with a drink in his hand. He's SecDef because he'll do what Trump tells him to do regardless of whether it's legal or a good idea. The tariffs aren't meant to bring manufacturing back. They'd have gradual and consistent and the money raised would be earmarked for developing that industry at home if they were. They're arbitrary because they're the way the people in charge punish countries and companies that don't bend the knee. Everything they're doing is about removing the institution of government with its pesky rules and procedures and bringing everything under the control of one guy who can reward and punish arbitrarily as he sees fit. Overall economic performance simply isn't a factor.
It's changed my outlook a lot to make an arbitrary decision to stop assuming people are stupid when their stated goals don't line up with their actions, and to start assuming the easily predictable results of their actions are their actual goals regardless of what their stated goals are. Once I did that, I started being able to understand and even predict what these previously inscrutable people would do next.
their stated goals (avoiding obesity) don't line up with their actions (food choices that promote obesity), so they must have different goals (enjoying food regardless of whether it promotes obesity). not the opposite of their stated goal, just a different one.
I think you're equivocating between the value of the actual goal itself and the value of the actions they're taking in the context of fulfilling that goal. Blowing up the economy to maximize your personal power is short-sighted, I agree, but once you accept that as Trump's goal you'll see that arbitrary tariffs (and other financial manipulation, look at how he's using federal funding to thought police universities and punish dissident state governors) is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to [federal funding]. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
>is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
He really screwed up the "people beneath you" part with his "effective strategy" . The people beneath him wanted at best lower prices and at worst stronger deportation. As it is, they are the ones suffering the most from these economic policies (because blue states tend to have more funding to weather this BS) and he decided to go full mask off on the idea of deporting US citizens. These aren't popular actions nor views, outside of the most fringe supporters (who aren't enough to carry such a narrative).
You're taking everything I discuss and projecting my moral approval on it. I've purposely expressed no opinion either way, but you can't fathom the idea that Trump might be good at something. You have to live in a world where he's just a flailing idiot, and I'd caution you to take some time with the fact that that flailing idiot is currently batting a very prescient .666 against those of us who'd like the USA to at least last out their own lifetimes.
lol you think .666 is a lot? The entire South has been stuck on this point for generations. They keep voting for tribalism/racism/nepotism, and the poorer they get the angrier and more aggressive they get.
Voting is just one big popularity contest, and 54% of American adults read at or below 6th grade levels.
I'm just not a good bootlicker. I call stupidity wherever I see it. You can keep your "caution", I'm moving on from this conversation.
It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.
They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.
It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.
“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”
Very unlikely in the first place, but second, that way lies far worse chaos.
Similarly, when Julius Caesar turned the republic into an empire, and was subsequently assassinated: it did not mean the empire reverted back to being a republic - rather that centuries of increasingly despotic emperors lay ahead.
Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.
> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)
Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)
And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.
French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.
The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.
Looks to me like a legitimate and democratically elected regime. There are many unsolved issues in the world, having sympathy for people getting exactly what they want seems like a waste of a finite resource.
(1)
It is still an interesting topic, because in this case, it has world-wide consequences.
(2)
Many of the problems of the world can only be solved if people are convinced that those are important problems. You need to fix people's closest problems first, like their bread and perceived security. Each individual has just one life, I wouldn't say it's selfish to want an OKish life, and only then think about what's best for the human race.
(3)
Most of the right voters were convinced (and might still be) that they were doing what is good for them. But it isn't. They voted wrong, they were tricked against their actual will.
(4)
This is not a singular event. The same may happen somewhere near or around you maybe sooner than later, so analysig how it happened, which groups exactly voted against their own advantage, and how to make the consequences clear and understandable beforehand, and how to prevent it in general -- all this is important.
Not wasted resources at all. The opposite. We need to remember that this is not a boring news topic.
Until america experiences the full consequences for their stupidity they will continue being stupid. Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, with a responsible person nearby and then never again.
The sooner that happens the better for everyone it is.
OK, burning is happening right now, so mission accomplished, I guess? Are you sure people will learn from it? And who is the responsible person nearby in this reality?
> Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, ...
That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove.
Also, this is not an individual Darwin problem like the stove example -- this has consequences for many bystanders who did know better, and many more bystanders who had no say in this.
beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."<
So you really have no idea! Sad!
I suppose you have also never been hungry and bitten into a wonderful-smelling and -tasting hamburger only to find that a finger (yours, to be clear) is in the bite, and thus you become at one moment both ravenous attacker and fearful prey struggling to escape?
Such experiences are part of life, to be embraced only afterward.
It isn't strong vs weak. But the lack of such experiences sets you apart from others and marks you as literally inexperienced. It does not mark you as smarter or stronger, but as one who simply "has no idea!"
You'll never know (until you do!8-))
I revisited the "stove experience" several weeks ago. While at a convenience store I entered the restroom to find the sink water running full blast. This only increased my urgency and aided the process (as flowing, dripping, or running water often does). Once relieved, I walked over to the sink and plunged both hands into the cold whirling water in the basin. At once I was caught between my (vividly-imagined) thought of cool swirling relief and the sensory reality of boiling hot water - the former wished to enjoy the pleasant ice-cold flowing water in the sink and the latter could not withdraw fast enough.
Life provides you with a sequence of such experiences:
- a pre-adolescent viewing with puzzlement his older siblings as they mature and begin to participate in courtship,
- falling in love,
- making love, etc.
Some people never have certain experiences. We're all different to some degree b/c of that.
Go ahead, put your hand on the stove. But be careful about touching that woman!8-))
P.S. Yes, I turned the sink off, depriving the next poor soul of my worldly experience.
Nowhere near it, the hand is hovering near the fire - people are shouting "don't put your hand in the fire" and the kid is saying its nice and warm and see nothing bad has happened, I am going to put my hand right into the fire and it will be great.
Trump term 1 they bailed out the Farmers for 20bn when they messed around on tarrifs and blew it up. They learn't that there are only two outcomes to fucking around 1) you win, 2) you find out and they give you 20bn.
If those are your outcomes the only rational choice is to vote for Trump and cheer him on in fucking around as much as possible.
Dismantling the current world hegemony might have a few unanticipated impacts. When little Timmy responds to burning his hand by evaporating the world economy we might not be so smug.
The smug little so-and-so here is the USA. Dismantling their hegemony and releasing the 95% of the world that are not Americans, I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm as MAGA chants "lock her up".
How many Americans despise the liberal universities and their students? How many Americans think the US should be a Christian nation?
Fascism is popular. Many people will fall for it. Time and time again. The US is not special- it happened in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal. It can happen in America.
Not stupid, just careless. Trump has fuck-you money, he doesn't care about the rest of the country. He wants means of extortion so people have to lick his boots to get a reprieve.
Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".
It's a social problem. Smaller democratic political arenas work closer to the ideal. Larger political arenas have more noise and less concise agendas, because of the disparate groups being appealed to. The US is too big. Large societies, across time trend toward authoritarianism (sometimes leading to full-fledged) until revolution and dissolution. Then the remaining states fight amongst themselves within a region, assembling into a singular organization due to practical and political factors, until it starts over again. Eventually you get something like europe and most of southeast asia. States tend to be more stable if they roughly match their regional terrain boundaries and aren't too large.
The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.
It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online.
The goal is power. Suppressing DEI, etc is just a simple way to find a group of people that have different values and eliminate them from the power structure.
Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.
Sigh, no. Obviously, just about any argument from nazi immediately gains credibility nearly instantly. It surely approaches the merit of 'think of the children' in terms of its ease of use while maintaining its flag waving functionality.
And no, when people talk about "freedom of speech", it is not about just saying that. It is about saying anything. The problem is, and always has been, people. Why? Because when you defend it, you tend to defend ones that are, at best, edge cases.
Defending all speech however deplorable would be consistent and defensible. The administration isn’t doing that. They are targeting speech they don’t like. Don’t speak out against our genocide in Gaza or be deported/expelled. Don’t share your pronouns or lose your job. Etc.
HAMAS is a designated terrorist organization. It is the U.S. government's job to keep out foreigners who overtly do things like support terrorist organizations, do human trafficking, etc.
It's quite simple, IMHO, and not a free speech issue. Americans don't owe entry to everyone who shows up at their borders, nor do they owe them a full suite of rights and legal protections once they're admitted.
Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism? Since no due process is being followed what gives you any confidence that the accusations against these people are true?
> Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism?
I don't think that's what's at stake here. I would assume the vast, vast majority of deportations are some version of "You're here illegally because you snuck in / overstayed your visa / lied on some form. Here's a ride back to $COUNTRY"
I think what is at stake is the small, small % of deportations that are because of particular speech or actions that aren't transparently crime (e.g., stealing a car is transparently crime).
And to answer your question, I don't know. While it doesn't appear to me that the Americans are reaching the highest possible standards of due process, "no" due process is pretty obviously false. And I don't think it's an issue of the accusations being true or false, either--my impression is the facts aren't in dispute, it's what happens based on the facts that is.
OK, all of that said: my guess is the people being deported for supporting HAMAS aren't HAMAS supporters in some sort of deep, true, essential way. They're kids or young people who are swept up in a fad.
How does that relates to the parents post ? For sure you can understand Hamas is a terrorist organisation AND any the same time that some wants to talk about the genocide in Gaza.
Also, using a terrorism judgement as an argument is a bit weak because it’s subjective, and because our western gouvernement do trade times to times with terrorist organisations. Heck my own countries is classified as a terrosist and I’m totally free to come visit the USA (which are themselves a terrorist state).
I was one of the people who briefly tried to take right wing “free speech” arguments at face value, eg when Elon Musk bought Twitter. Almost instantly he began allowing white supremacists and actual declared neo-Nazis back onto the platform, while kicking people off for any speech he didn’t like. I don’t think the claim “the recent right wing enthusiasm for ‘free speech’” does, in fact, selectively benefit Nazis and white supremacists” is actually wrong when you evaluate the effects.
This is a general argument and has nothing to do with Elon Musk. He capitalizes on a weak position some of his political opponents bring forward. Not giving him the opportunity for that would have cost nothing... on the contrary.
Would you argue that the "kicking off" is more or less intense under Elon vs. the other guy?
My impression that the rate of censorship overall has plummeted. Pre-Elon, it was easy to get banned for wrongthing. People would gang up on wrongthinkers, mass-report them, etc.
They just want to protect nazi speech, like I said in the downvoted comment.
I don't care what your vibes are here.
They aren't even against actual anti-semitism. Happy merchant memes, george soros conspiracies, protocols stuff, that's all A-ok because it's nazi stuff.
If you have the wrong opinion on israel palestine, it's the concentration camp for you.
The first group the nazis sent were social democrats, peace activists, journalists ... The famous nazi book burning was at an lgbt institute. I mean they're just doing nazi shit. I don't know why this isn't clear.
Without knowing the denominator (# of accounts, # of posts, # of new accounts), I'm not sure what to make of it.
Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech). According to the actual report (which can be found here: https://transparency.x.com/content/dam/transparency-twitter/...), of 5,296,870 account suspensions only 2,361 were for "hateful conduct", while 57,185 were "violent and hateful entities" and 1,102,778 were for "abuse and harassment". Eyeing the categories, those are the only ones that seem plausible for political motivation.
So it's some subset of that 1,162,324 (22% of total) that we're interested in. I would bet the vast, vast majority of those either aren't politically motivated, or are politically motivated but in such a way that virtually everyone would agree (e.g., torturing puppies for fun).
And, of course, among politically-motivated bans, not all will be in support of Red Team / against Blue Team. Some will be bans of Red Team supporters, and for some the valence won't be clear.
> Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech).
Do you have any examples was banned for supporting Reform? I ask because I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard someone say they were banned for their political views and then checked to see that what actually got them banned was something like targeted harassment of a political opponent.
I didn't mean this as a real example, I meant it as illustrative. I've never seen anyone banned for supporting Reform (I've never seen anyone banned at all! I try to limit my internets).
If you're a free speech absolutionist (your argument was simply "kicking off got more intense"), it shouldn't matter what speech was said to get kicked. Politcal or not, it's all speech.
So the only way to retort the bans tripling is if you think Most people banned are not humans. Which is possible, but unlikely given current speculations that Twitter is 80% bots.
That's all speculative. Musk Twitter brought a bunch of far right provocateurs like Alex Jones Back on and increased the bans by 3x. There's more people leaving than coming to the platform.
That's what we do know.
As far as "Red/Blue" that's not current.
Instead we've got an establishment party, the Democrats, a disempowered left, a disempowered conservative party, and a party that does Nazi shit, the Republicans.
That's why a bunch of the Bush era conservatives lined up behind the Democrats, conservative and right wing are Not the same just like liberal and left wing are not
Nothing in my grandparent comment is speculative. I literally type out the data and discuss what additional information we would have to have in order to arrive at something approaching a meaningful estimate of the quantity we are both interested in.
As for Red/Blue not being current, I'm not an expert. The only bone I would pick is the Republicans aren't doing "Nazi shit". Nazi / Fascist used to mean something, you know. It seems like people are starting to use those words to mean "authoritarian" or something along those lines.
> Diversity is bad when it involves Whites, men, straight people or research involving these groups.
If you think that's what the "other side" is saying, then you've completely misunderstood what the diversity idea is about. You can't compare one idea with the misrepresentation of the opposing idea. That's just making things up.
and yet when fields with a dearth of White Men offer recruiting events tailored to them, the "other side" is up in arms about it. Its clear that no part of DEI wants to include Whites, Men, or the doubly dreaded White & Men combo.
The problem is- they are not anti-racist honest. You are either nurture or nature, but if its all nurture, they refuse to discuss that part, compare those parts, work out the problematic parts and compose better societal models. They just idealise, bigott stay quiet and adverse engage only with those who respond civilized. Its all lies and damned lies and statistics.
As loathe as you may be to admit it, there is such a thing as truth. Both sides claiming something doesn’t mean both sides claims are true (or conversely that neither sides claim is true).
I'm not sure what "agree with the Palestinians" would mean. Like they are not happy with being genocided? I think that would be most people's feeling in that situation, though that doesn't show any proximity in belief, value or principle.
Yeah I guess this is what happens to censored viewpoints. Most people have only heard a caricature of it.
The world is really a lot more interesting if you try to understand everyone’s actual perspective. It also becomes much more coherent. Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
In what I’ve seen of “race realist” writings online, they tend to be very anti Israel. So to associate the admin with “race realists” for cracking down on anti Israel protests strikes me as lacking an understanding of either the admin or of the “race realists” perspective.
> Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
If you're arguing a fairy-tale definition of "evil" as an inherent property were people do evil for evil's sake, or simply can't help it, sure - almost nobody is "evil", if having actual, realistic motivations automatically disqualifies "evil".
I think evil can still be a useful, moral concept, if you give up the need for it to be absolute and objective, while accepting the ambiguity that comes with it. Still, it's likely possible for a lot of people to agree what constitutes evil, especially when seeing examples.
I would certainly like to keep considering things, actions and sometimes even people, to be "evil", _especially_ after considering their motivations, views and justifications.
>Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
If your interest is in killing me on account of how I look and nothing else, I would indeed consider you evil. Your "viewpoints" end where my rights begin.
as for the admin, I don't care about their views. They have a constitution to follow. Which is specifically aobut what the government cannot do to its people. We tolerated KKK and Neonazi rallies under those principles of freedom of speech and assembly. While citizens can counter protest, the government stepping in to quash either of those people is illegal here.
"Race realism" is just a meaningless label Neo-Nazis use, because they are still trying to fly under the radar, or they are slightly embarrassed of being what their grand-parents fought. They might try to butter up their standing by (falsely) citing stuff like the Bell Curve, but it is still the same vile and evil ideology it was 80 years ago.
But not all fascists are neo-nazis. Just because a subset of today's fascists describe themselves that way, doesn't mean they are fundamentally different from other fascists. Look at Steven Miller; he's jewish, and quite obviously a white supremacist. He's all about dehumanizing people he thinks of as leser, and he welcomes the new fascist America. AfD, the german far-right party, is both very pro-Israel and loves to play "tread the nazi line and extend it"-game. Anti-semitism is a common, but not necessary prerequesite to fascism.
When I was younger I also thought the opposite of good should be bad, and it is silly to describe things as evil. I disliked the religious connotation, but have changed my mind. There are people committing absolutely horrible things, and calling it anything but evil is underestimating the depravity of those characters. To quote Captain G. M. Gilbert:
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
of course "race realists" tend to be anti-Israel; many of them are genuine neo-Nazis. the term arose back in the '90s among white supremacists, who tend to be heavily antisemitic.
the Trump admin aren't (for the most part) "race realists." or antisemitic. or philosemitic. no, the Trump admin is cynically indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people. they're using antisemitism as a cause celebre, a useful cudgel to attack their enemies on the Left. Republicans are using Jews the way the Democrats used trans people - as pawns in a game of identity realpolitik. at least until our political liability outweighs our usefulness, then we get left holding the bag.
you can spot false allies like this because they will amplify the most extreme voices, the most divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, when speaking for their charge. I guarantee you, most trans people didn't want Canadians fined for using the wrong pronouns, and most Jews don't want grad students deported for writing an op-ed. the loudest voices aren't ours.
Neonazis tend to like the idea of Israel while hating the occupants. They hate sending aide there but love it if Jews move there.
The notion of a Jewish state was an OG Nazi idea (see Madagascar plan). They wanted a place to send their unwanted citizens.
On top of that, core to most fundamentalist Christian belief is that utopia will happen after a strong Israel gets involved in massive wars. That value is why you may see neonazis cheering on Israel as an aggressor because they believe it'll lead to utopia.
This is why mixing support for Israel with whether or not someone is antisemitic is silly. Israel isn't the Jews and Jews aren't Israel.
And it seems to work quite well in the current political landscape and the use of such tactics certainly got more common in recent years. It seems to work better with reactionary groups since they would accept any and all reason for their animosity anyway.
"Race realists" tend to be anti-jew but not anti-Israel. Israel provides a few key benefits for their belief system even if they hate jewish people. It means that there is a place for jewish people "over there" and not here. And it provides a starting point for their ethno-nationalist project in other countries ("if Israel can be a country for Jews then why can't Germany be a country for Whites").
Further, the Trump administration is committing violence against people simply advocating for no more bombing in Palestine. Despite the administration's claims that these people are "Hamas supporters" and "anti-semites", the bulk of these people are not actually advocating for violence to be done to jewish people that might put them in concert with far-right anti-semites.
Yeah, Nazi seen themselves as heroes building better future for the Germany. Stalinists seen themselves as heroes too. They just had different interests and viewpoints. And those different viewpoints indeed make them indeed "evil". And dangerous.
Also, seeing people whose goals are cruelty to others or harm to me as neutral is wrong.
Genocided is certainly the wrong term. It is not on all Palestinians but the government of Gaza did attack Israel. It fired an insane amount of rockets before their latest attack too, but that has already been seen as normalized. Which is ridiculous as well.
If oppression justifies these rocket attacks, a lot more than some rhetoric can be justified as well.
Israel has security interests after it was attacked by Hamas. It did withdraw from Lebanon, Gaza and quite a few other places that immediately filled with militant terrorists. And this latest escalation only happened because of an attack as well, otherwise Gaza would look quite differently now.
To say their goal is just killing people is way out of context and blind to the facts.
Either these places find peaceful solutions like Egypt or Jordan, or they will face military consequences for their aggression that will also hit innocents, which is what is happening now.
The demands of the administration are the demands of a bully who doesn't want your lunch money, he just wants you to know he can take it away at any time.
so you understand how much "tons" is with regards to a population of 330m Americans? Now consider that China probably has gigatons and is where all of NA gets most of its supply.
They want to have the old system (deliberate bias and vehement denials of there being any "bias,") but working for them, and the way to demand that without describing it is to require all of the results and "forbid," by name only, the necessary methods.
Nothing they do makes sense until you accept that hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, for them and their base. They know that what they're asking for is impossible to meaningfully comply with...
You see the establishment of separate, unwritten classes of things here, right? It will be a case-by-case basis which of these rules is invoked, that way no matter what happens they're "just following the rules we all agreed to" but they get to hand-select which thoughts are compulsory and which are forbidden.
It all makes sense with a fascist power logic. The goal isn't to implement consistent policy to reach rational targets. The goal is to wield power and slowly errode any opposition with divisive actions that support anybody that is loyal to you. Importantly being loyal doesn't guarantee you will be spared. In these goals consistency is irrelevant, in fact being inconsistent and acting with arbitrary despotism is a feature since it produces more fear.
If you ever find any fascist critique of their enemies you will quickly realize that all of which they accuse their enemies of doing, they will do themselves. Decry freedom of speech as no one is "allowed" to say sexist/racist things anymore? Be sure they will go in and ban books, political thoughts and literal words. Hillarys emails? We literally operate our foreign policy in signal groups.
Quite frankly I am a bit puzzled by the neutrality with which some Americans try to analyze this absolutely crazy political situation. It is like pondering over the gas mixture in the smoke while your house is on fire, absolutely unhinged.
First I think people who recognize there are problems is what is needed now. You leaving makes things worse.
Then again, it is understandable not everybody has the luxury to be in circumstances that allow adequate forms of resistance.
If you ask about which country, I'd say it depends. It depends on who youaare, what your skills are, which climate zones and cultures you prefer, whether you're willing to learn a new language and so on.
The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it.
In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-whites or non-christian.
What's interesting is that this is not necessarily a struggle between the top of a hierarchy vs the bottom of one, but between two different hierarchies. The democrats support cultural non racial and economic hierarchies, while the republicans support racial international and the same economic hierarchies. So while they both support the rich over the working class, there is a struggle over whether to support racial and international hierarchies. Democrats tend to support globalization, i.e unifying of the power of the top of the economic hierarchy across international boundaries, while eliminating racial and sexual hierarchies as they are seen as "inefficient" from a neoliberal perspective. Republicans are more focused on the "national elite", the rich people that depend on america being a global hegemon specifically, energy industry, military industira-complex, etc..
Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.
The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.
Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.
Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.
Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.
The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.
It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.
Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.
What the demand is, is institutional fealty to Donald Trump. Trying to interpret it as anything else is going to lead these institutions into poor decision making. Harvard is doing the right thing.
>>- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
I'm sure we both know what this one means though. Forcing the university to hire people who think the earth is flat and that climate change isn't real - for the sake of diversity of course.
It makes sense when you realize that their true position is "free speech for me but not for thee". The contradictions are about censoring speech they disagree with and promoting speech they like.
To the fascist regime, "diversity" means "hiring black or gay people". Likewise "diverse points of view" means "viewpoints that think it's okay for black and gay people to be hired and for transgender people to pee". And "speech control" means "kicking out people who shout Hitler did nothing wrong in the middle of the library". And "inclusion" means "letting black or gay people study". It's all newspeak.
I was brought up as an American to believe that most important American value inscribed in the constitution was that the government cannot control your speech. So regardless of what Harvard does or does not do that quote, coming from the government especially, is simply unAmerican on its face.
> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
Sure, why not? Everything should be open to criticism at our institutions of higher learning. If not there, where? That which is above criticism is dogma.
> including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism
In Trump administration code, this means "has ever said anything positive about the Palestinian people." So yes, them too.
2. We both know and understand that's not what's actually happening. When you have people peacefully protesting for the genocide in Palestine to end and they get disappeared by the state, then the situation is different. Please, at least try to be honest.
There are 2 issues here. The first is that it's not consistent with ending speech control policies.
The second is that hostility to American values is actually pretty subjective. For instance, the January 6 insurrectionists were very hostile to American values and used violent terroristic tactics to try to destroy the constitutionally mandated transfer of power. But Trump pardoned them all because it improves his ability to wield violence against America in the future.
It's impossible to take any of this document seriously in that light.
> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
I'm not sure you thought this through—if Harvard stopped accepting Republicans like you're suggesting, I'm not sure how many people would be left.
Harvard's admittance policy should not be up to the government outside of preventing discrimination along protected classes. If Harvard admits students that are bad consistently, and they turn out to be bad hires/professional connections, then Harvard the institution will lose its competitiveness with other schools for the best talent and previous alumni will pressure/complain that recent admittance policies are devaluing their degrees.
They're so "accepting of diverging viewpoints" they mandated Harvard to devote effort to monitoring the viewpoints of foreign students so they can be deported for wrongthink...
Zero? I’m a visa holder in the US and I’m aware that supporting terrorists and celebrating violence against Jewish people is probably not going to make the country keep me here.
Weird how wide the definition of "supporting terrorists" seems to be. Especially given that State has now said that people's "expected future beliefs" can be used to disqualify them.
Have you no hesitation, even at this late juncture?
Read everyone elses comment above, and try to stretch your critical thinking ability just a bit.
Trump is our Caesar, we have ceased to be a constitutional republic, and you defend this with blithely pretending that 2 months of pure power-madness have not been occurring in plain view of the entire world?
I suspect that such discourse as we have will not be "permitted" indefinitely.
Because I read the letter from the government to Harvard. Did you? Racially-based admittance is only one bullet out of ten. The government isn't demanding specific policy changes, they are demanding cultural and ideological control of the university.
Did you? As you can read, they tackle racial bias immediately and follow up with preventing advocacy for terrorism and racism, then viewpoint divergence. At no point are they arguing for a single viewpoint to exist, they are CONSISTENTLY doing the exact opposite:
The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
> The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
I'm all for pluralism. I have no objection at all to the existence of as many conservative academics as you please or whole (private) universities explicitly committed to conservative ideology. But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds. And it's also a super-ultra-clear first amendment violation to compel the speech of a private institution.
Finally, I'd like to point out the rank hypocrisy of calling for "merit-based" hiring and admissions in one breath, and then in the next demanding a quota system for ideology: "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity." The government, as conservatives are so fond of saying, shouldn't "pick winners."
If there are a "critical mass" of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber professors out there looking for a position they should start their own university and admit that critical mass of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber students.
"By August 2025, 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."
They are calling for Republican commissars in universities and accusing you of being the one who wants to enforce a single viewpoint and call you the enemy of pluralism. Not surprised, but I continue to be infuriated to witness such shameless insincerity from Republicans.
Yes, because universities have shown they want to enforce a single viewpoint on students, the government is using its funding contributions to encourage viewpoint diversity. There is certainly some shameless insincerity going on, as well as a disgusting disregard for logic.
Typical conservative doublespeak - speak as though there are commissars suppressing political dissidence so you can actually have an excuse to install commissars to suppress political dissidence. Conservatives have long disdained education for decades and abandoned its institutions, and now that they aren't bowing down, you want to use the government to force them to do so. The disgusting disregard for logic here is on you.
You are projecting. We have established you prefer a ideological uniform college campus and are campaigning against plurality of thought. Don't bother gaslighting people otherwise.
I imagine you would sign a different tune if Biden admin hypothetically forced your employer via federal funding to make you say "Trans Rights!", for plurality of thought of course.
Your logical fallacy is false equivalence. Nobody is asking for compelled speech here.
And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that. That’s why democrat approval is so low.
It's implicit, you just don't want to see it. It's literally political commissars.
> And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that.
What are you talking about? I never seen that or do you mean that people present themselves in a business meeting? Is this compelled speech to you? Hearing "Hi my name is Mark, call me he" is such a earth shattering trauma that you'll allow party officials in your universities?
No, you have accused without basis, because you know you have no defense of installing conservative Republican commissars in schools, and to privilege the Republican students and workers present, so your only hope is to gaslight and imply that your opposition is the same—again, typical of authoritarian conservative Republicans. You can keep accusing and gaslighting, but I will never submit to your dishonest narratives to justify the Trump regime's actions.
There is absolutely basis to say that you prefer an ideologically uniform college campus and are campaigning against plurality of thought. For example, your comments in this thread arguing against efforts to support a diverse range of viewpoints in higher education.
Accusing people that support diversity of thought as being authoritarian is more projection and also quite funny.
There are no Republican commissars. That is the conspiracy theory you made up.
There is no privilege for Republican students or workers. That is a conspiracy theory you made up.
The Trump administration is not a regime (in the traditional sense this word is used, ie for dictatorships) because you dislike it winning an election.
I am not a republican. I would desperately like the Democrats to become electable again. Advocating for admissions racism and brainwashing children into racist conspiracy theories about Jewish people doesn’t seem to be a good way to do that.
I accuse you of gaslighting because you speak well enough that you are probably not stupid, but rather completely aware of what you are saying is false. I suspect you think your righteous anger makes what you say true. It does not.
I'm literally quoting the letter saying that they demand an external party to audit the student body, the leadership, the staff, and their teaching units for sufficient "viewpoint diversity," which reports directly to the federal government. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see that this is a euphemism for instilling conservative Republican thought in the student body and in the classes they take. And yes, this will privilege conservative students and staff, because non-conservative staff will be fired and students will be denied admission as a result of this.
Do you think dictatorships have never been elected? Trump will not be held accountable for the laws he breaks, because his party would never betray him as their leader. He will not leave office. He will send and has sent people illegally and without due process to a confinement center in El Salvador in co-operation with Bukele, another authoritarian. I doubt there will be fair elections in red states - they'll probably claim mass fraud and throw out allegedly fraudulent votes. They already tried to send fraudulent electors to make Trump president in 2020, and a violent mob to the Capitol after that, as well as pressured election officials in swing states to find votes.
You may not call yourself a Republican, but I make no distinction among those who defend the regime so wholeheartedly. Keep playing the fool; it will not justify your authoritarian apologetics.
> But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds.
That's true. Harvard can absolutely continue to hire for, advocate for, and grade for a single political viewpoint, provided it does not take federal funding.
They can also continue to racially discriminate as title IX only applies to organizations that take federal funding.
Harvard should also lose their current non-profit status per Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983) if they continue to racially discriminate.
"It's fairly clear that Herr Hitler only means to instill properly virtuous German educational values."
No, we've seen more than enough to know exactly what kind of administration this is, and how it lies.
FFS it's just 3 months in and already they're kidnapping people from America into concentration camps for the rest of their lives (however short that might be) with no trial nor even the pretense of charges.
Come to think of it, what's The Hacker News policy on storing user information? Is it time for people who aren't fans of the current administration to make new accounts?
- Stop promoting Democrats' agendas as the ultimate truth; stop bullying people for non-Democratic views
- Allow Republicans' agendas to be equally represented
Is it really so difficult to understand?
Out of many bad things Trump has done, this isn't really bad for anyone except core Democrats voters.
The US academia has become hostile to anyone except one particular culture. This should stop.
Conservatives should start their own universities, if they aren't happy with the existing ones. The federal government has no business enforcing conformity to certain ideological demands in private institutions. It's right there in the very first amendment.
If the university was founded by the government, it should represent Americans. All of them. Half of Americans are conservative. Approx. half of academia should be conservative.
Harvard is older than both parties. There is no good reason why it should cater to only one half of Americans.
Why should any university go out of its way to "cater to" conservatives and liberals in equal measure if those ideologies don't equally value things like reason and truth? The mission should be providing education and facilitating research, not keeping political partisans happy.
So, we should have merit-based hiring with respect to race and gender, but then have a quota-based system for political affiliation? How do you even measure this? Who counts as a "conservative"? MAGA-only, or do we get to count RINOs? Won't people just lie about their political beliefs to get a job? Do you detect any irony in the way your agenda exactly parallels that of structural racists who see racism in any job where the racial distribution doesn't match that of the general population?
The reason that academia is overwhelming left-leaning is that those are the people that choose to go to grad school and pursue academic careers. For whatever reason (whether ability or inclination) conservatives do so in much smaller numbers. You want conservatives in academia, go get a Ph.D.
Are you arguing that _all_ universities that receive government funding should cater equally to conservatives and liberals? Given that Texas Christian University receives funding from the government, would you argue that it too should stop receiving federal funding until represents America equally?
If they receive federal funding, they should represent Americans. If 100% of Americans will be Democrats, then it can be this monoculture. If more people shift to Green politics, or Libertarian, it should represent those more too.
If there is a Christian university, it should either be sponsored by Christians only, or similar funding should go to other universities representing other major American groups (for example Jews).
Discrimination based on political views should be treated the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation or race.
Conservatives have started their own Universities. No one likes going to those schools, and they end up bankrupt, with students who are functionally uneducated.
I don't think Trump University was ever indented to be a real university. Wasn't it basically the Trump-branded version of those late night infomercials promising to teach you how to get rich in real estate? You know, the ones where ultimately they basically just sell you a bunch of tapes for $5000?
If you're looking for an actual conservative university, a better example would be a place like Liberty University. I think the problem is starting an institution is hard, it'll only really hit its stride like 100 years after being founded, and it's hard to keep an ideological project on track for such a long period of time.
With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.
If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.
That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.
College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities. A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
Other article:
proposing an 8.6 percent tax hike
When hacking the government rules is used against you.
>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in
taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.
But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.
>But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Taxing donations is really thorny. If people realize that the government is taking money they want to give away... they stop giving away money. It's a self-terminating cliche in action. So you either leave it alone if you want to encourage people stimulating charities, or you make the tax very small.
>Same goes for religious organizations,
I don't fully know. Some attempt at separattion of church and state. The government tries to maintain that except when other boundaries are crossed.
It does sort of fall into the same umbrella though, when regarding tithes.
People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education. You and I are not chartered as an educational endowment; things like Roth IRAs exist for us.
I think the point is that money for many was taxed before the paycheck ever came in. And you have no control over it. Part of your W-2 goes to fund social security, part of it to fund the federal, part of it to fund the state.
Taxing donations is just double dipping on your money. That's how you discourage donating.
why do you disagree? Most people working a job do have taxes taken out. That's why you get a "return" when the IRS realizes they took too much or you provide other means to deduct your taxes.
In France, we ran an NGO whose music festival got a bit big… a million or two of beer sales. Tax office came in and put that part of the NGO under the business rules, ie we paid and received VAT, paid the corporate tax at the normal rate, etc. We ended up putting the entire charity under the business rule because it was more profitable (saving VAT on all providers, while our donations were exempt of VAT).
I’m surprised USA doesn’t have a rule that industrial/commercial sections of any org is liable to all corporate tax laws.
we "sorta" do. It's an all in or all out matter with 501c3's. You declare a non-profit and essentially all your money needs to be funneled back to the company. There's many other regulations to prevent the most obvious means of fraud.
No skin in the game, but curious to know why any Republican would want to raise taxes. Is this some sort of power play like the tariffs? Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz.
They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
> They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
A very large portion of the country vote Republican, and I would be surprised if they are by and large the most well-off part of the American public.
The voters are not the party and the party is not the party leadership. The actual policies that end up being supported have little-to-nothing to do with the stuff that gets talked about while campaigning, and this only gets more true the further away from the actual voter the position is.
These voters were scammed. Many still don't realize or believe this, and they avoid real news for the purpose of keeping faith in the easter bunny they voted for.
And you are right... that's why "The Party" instead appeals to "the party" with various single issues (you know all the hot topics) and implement (or perhaps, pretend to implement) those while the real bills "The Party" want are passed under their nosess. "The Party" spends a dollar on "the party" while grabbing hundreds from the vault they all pitched into.
Worked for decades. Not so well when Trump so publicly tanked the economy and snatched one of the 3 untouchable things.
> Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz
Yes. The abstract of "the economy" doesn't matter. The priorities are "owning the libs" on Twitter and other media, and their own personal bank accounts which can benefit from insider trading the tariffs, state-sponsored memecoins and so on.
Easy, Harvard is essentially a training center for their ideological enemies on top of providing an actual education. They're just putting the boot down and saying stick to teaching instead of implementing and advancing a specific ideology. If taxes are the tools, so be it.
Harvard is a private instutution. If they want to teach underwater basket weaving, there's not much you can do to stop that. Anymore than Trump can raid apple and tell them to start making Androids. I thought a billionaire businessman would understand that much; imagine if Clinton back in the day tried to seize Trump Towers.
And while we long forgotten: don't forget that all of this is illegal. to retract congressionally appropriated funds that were already budgeted. The time to yoink this stuff legally was a month ago.
LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
It's JD Vance's keynote speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference. The speech, which I've just skimread, is mostly well-worn US conservative complaints about US higher education. He also talks about red-pilling because he's down with the kids, and he adds Jesus sprinkles in case you forgot he's Christian.
The speech is dull but it's bookended with two spicy statements, both of which you mostly quoted. The latter statement is not his words but a quote from Nixon.
Opening statement: «So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement in this country, I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country and so I'm excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.»
Closing statement: «I really want to end this on an inspirational note [...] and the person whose quote I ultimately had to land on was the great prophet and statesman Richard Milhous Nixon [...] there is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom, and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40-50 years ago. He said, and I quote: "the professors are the enemy".»
EDIT: And for the context of the Nixon quote, it comes from a private conversation Nixon had with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on December 14, 1972, recordings of which were released in 2008: «Henry remember... we're gonna be around and outlive our enemies. And also, never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.». It's worth noting that Nixon was already keeping an "enemies list": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List
It doesn't matter what Nixon's context was Vance was quoting him literally by proclaiming it a piece of wisdom.
Posting the entire speech only bolsters my view. For example
"[To accomplish goals].. I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities..."
I'm confused about your argument. I don't consider it a smoking gun just a concise example of what Vance and MAGA Republicans belive. There's no context confusion, it's on video, and it being dull only shows how comfortable he is exposing insane views.
The spicy soundbites on their own are scary and do suggest the state wants to destroy intellectuals.
The speech they're from doesn't.
The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society. Vance even claims some academics prefer to ignore evidence that refutes their positions, and he's against that; that would be a valid pro-intellectual position if true (but it's completely nebulous and unsourced)
The thesis of his speech was he doesn't like the content of what academics profess and he thinks they ought to teach his political views (and his audience's political views) instead. That's not anti-intellectualism, i.e. "don't trust those book-learning types, look to the common man for answers". This guy still wants ivory towers provided his cronies are in them.
Also it's interesting to see where his quote came from. He clearly picked an on-theme Nixon quote just to appeal to his audience, and he seems to miss the context of the Nixon quote in that Nixon is a paranoid nutter saying it, not coming from a rational place like Vance thought he just did.
>You are simply defining intellectual as “whatever universities do and say
Definition of anti-intellectual
"a person who scorns intellectuals and their views and methods" from oxford
Intellectual
"of or relating to the intellect or its use", "given to study, reflection, and speculation", and ": engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect" from MW.
I didn't define anything. If I said the administration was anti-education would that be better?
> the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among
faculty, staff, and leadership.
> the University must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof, throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs.
In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education? Is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?
>In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education?
It's not. Calling universities and professors the enemy is. The government taking away funding because you want international students to adhere to an ideology is wrong.
>is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?
You ask other scholars in the field to read it and give their opinion on it. It’s this thing called “peer review” that is kind of the basis of all modern academic inquiry.
In the case of hiring, typically a committee of other professors in the department would evaluate candidates, not a bunch of DEI bureaucrats. They would read what the candidates have published and see if the arguments they make are sound, and look at things like # of citations that indicate how prominent the work is in the field.
I don’t know if you’ve ever met any academics, but I promise you they have no problems forming opinions about the quality of work of other people in their field.
Sure. Research by definition deals with areas that are not settled, so different people can have different theories, and they might disregard scholars who don't like their preferred theory. On the other hand, some academics welcome debate and differing viewpoints more than most people.
Like, if you were a physics professor and you were applying to a department where everyone was a string theorist, and your position was that string theory is a bunch of bullshit, you might not get that job. Or you might, if your work is otherwise solid, you never know.
But that's a disagreement about physics, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to evaluate a physics professor on. It's not about how enthusiastically they endorse some ideological dogma that has nothing to do with physics.
If people can be ranked differently as candidates by different universities and the people at them how can you ever be sure that a person who got the job because of DEI was the worse candidate?
There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that. Every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field that are the most competitive to get published in and are the most respected, someone with a lot of publications in those journals would be objectively better than someone with no publications or with publications in crappy no-name journals that claim they are "peer-reviewed" but basically publish anything that gets submitted.
We're not talking about roughly equal candidates with similar qualifications and one getting the edge because of race. I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.
You may not be able to say that one candidate is the unequivocal best when there are many qualified candidates, but you can definitely say that a particular candidate is unqualified or not even close to other candidates when, for example, they have not published at all.
>There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that
None of these are objective measures of quality.
1. The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.
2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else
3. If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.
4. Awards are a subjective judgement
Of course all of these increase the probability of quality but it's not a guarantee.
> for example, they have not published at all.
I don't think anyone going for a position as a professor hasn't published since most PHds require it. This point probably adds more weight but I think it would be rare between candidates for job.
Reading more carefully, you're just making nonsensical statements that have no connection to reality. Yes, many of these absolutely are objective.
> The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.
Yes, someone who writes more and spends more time doing research and has more desire to do research is objectively better at research than someone who produces less. There is a possibility that one person writes lots of low quality papers and another person writes a few high quality papers, but in asserting this you are admitting that there is some objective measure of the quality of a paper (which there is). Since the reviewers would be reading the papers, they could also objectively assess the quality of the papers too.
> 2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else
No, the quality of the journal is not subjective. If journal A publishes anything they are sent without review and journal B rigorously reviews everything by sending it to other experts in the field, then journal B is objectively higher quality than journal A.
> If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.
If you write the only published paper on a subject, then you are objectively the world's leading expert on that subject. If the university wants someone who knows that subject, the only person in the world who has published on it is objectively the best choice.
Part of a professor's job might be to communicate about their research and bring it to a wider audience, and convince e.g. grant committees that it is important and deserves funding. Someone savvy enough to get published in popular journal is objectively more qualified to do this than someone who hasn't been able to accomplish that.
> Awards are a subjective judgement
The awards can be subjective, but whether you have won an award or not is an objective fact. If the job involves doing the kinds of thing that impress the people who give the award, then someone who has achieved that is objectively better than someone who has not.
Sure, it’s not infallible, but having other experts in the field read and judge a candidate’s work is at least an honest attempt at assessing merit.
Whereas going by who can write the most enthusiastic essay about diversity, as judged by the blue-haired gender studies major in the diversity center, is a system that will only select for rabid ideologues and disingenuous bullshitters.
Pretend you are an investment banker. You've spent the last 10 years living and breathing investment banking. You've worked 100 hour weeks. You can point to a long list of successful deals you've done. You have glowing references from every client and colleague that has ever worked with you.
Now, you're applying for a job at a major investment bank, but before your resume is reviewed by any of the investment bankers, you have to write an essay about how much you love baseball. This essay will be reviewed by a panel of baseball superfans. They will judge it on how much you know about baseball and how much you love baseball. If they feel you know enough about baseball and you sufficiently express your love for it, they will then pass your resume on to be reviewed by the investment bankers.
Now, maybe you like baseball, maybe you don't. Maybe you have no particular strong feelings about it. Mostly, you didn't have time to think much about baseball because you have spent your time obsessed with investment banking.
Do you think this is a good system to hire investment bankers? If someone said "hey, we should hire investment bankers based on their track record in investment banking and not how much they love baseball or if they are baseball players", would you call them "anti-investment banking"?
>I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.
Give me examples then because how could you know this?
I've worked in academic publishing for a long while, and I can tell you from experience that:
- "quantity of publications" is a problem and directly leads to bad science, so is on aggregate a measure of anti-quality
- "quality of the journals published in" is all in the mind; prestigious journals with high impact factor have been repeatedly found not to have the best research. The rigour of the editing process is more important, but few researchers know that, and importantly they are heavily incentivised by funders to go for high impact factor, completely muddying the waters of who's a good researcher by that metric.
- number of citations would be a better measure, but unfortunately is directly linked to impact factor, in practice and in perception.
- awards won, books published - too niche and random to matter much.
- "every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field" haha, no, you'd be as surprised as I was when doing that research.
Academic publishers have been considering the measuring problem for decades, and no one has found a solution yet.
There is no good measure of the quality of a paper until many years after publication. It's easy to identify some true positives (high impact, no retraction), it's quasi-impossible by definition to identify false negatives (unfairly ignored papers), and most importantly this emphasis on prestige research is terribly harmful to Science. Science needs researchers who are happy to replicate studies, people who publish disappointing results, and people who study otherwise unglamorous topics, otherwise Science fails.
TLDR: measuring how 'good' a researcher is by their prestige is extremely destructive to Science. You can't do that.
I'm not saying it's only prestige, but to a first approximation, a researcher who has an article published in Nature is highly likely to be better than one who has only published in no-name garbage journal that publishes whatever they are sent. Of course, nothing is certain, but we're talking about probabilities here.
And, as I'm saying, prestige, or probable future prestige, isn't a good proxy for a researcher's value or future value, even if it could be fairly guessed, which it can't. Nature is exhibit A, B and C, as it's the most prestigious journal, but not the most rigorous in any field, and its very existence damages Science by overvaluing the research it publishes, reducing the impact of better journals and the research they publish, and wasting the time, quality of life, and quality of research of scientists who feel like they must do anything they have to to publish in it, or are pressured by funders and/or academic institutions to do so.
But you are talking certainty when you claim DEI hires means that it's possible the lesser person is hired. If you have no objective system to measure merit then it's possible to ever know this
How does anyone know anything? Why even vet candidates at all? Let’s just assign professorships completely randomly then. We’ll have high school dropouts who can’t explain the quadratic formula teach differential equations at Harvard.
I’m sure they would do just as good of a job. Because nobody could ever possibly objectively tell whether someone with a PhD in math is going to be better at teaching and researching math than a high school dropout, right?
The administration is saying “hire and promote faculty and admit students based on scholarly merit, not ideology and activism”. Universities are saying “no, we want to keep doing the ideology stuff”. That is anti-intellectual.
The people in the administration were not admitted to their universities based on merits, they paid to get in and they paid for their degree. This is especially true for POTUS who holds an entirely fake degree bought and paid for by his father.
The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and then instead advocate for terrorist groups that are hostile to the interests of the US and its allies. No, that isn't the same. Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government? Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?
>The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and instead advocate for terrorist groups.
1. You can get an education while advocating for causes
2. The letter doesn't only say advocating for a terrorist group.
From the gov demand letter:
"International Admissions Reform. By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism."
>Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government?
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.
4. The US government gives money to people who want to destroy it all the time. Welfare, social security, etc is given to anti-gov US citizens with no restrictions based on those views.
5. Although only proposed Trump wanted to set up a fund for January 6th protestors who he pardoned. Some of whom attacked the US capital to disrupt a Democratic election process.
>Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?
No. How is that related to this? You just overly generalized the entire situation in order to produce a question where I'd mostly likely to say "no" as a argument manipulation tactic.
> 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.
>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
> 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.
They are the ones asking to live in a different country. The burden is on them to demonstrate why they should be allowed to live here, not on us to prove why they shouldn’t.
Let’s say I want to come live in your house. Do you need to prove to me why I shouldn’t be allowed to do that, or do I need to prove to you why I should? If I make speeches and write articles about how you’re an evil person and we should burn your house down, does that make you think it’s a good idea for me to live with you?
Applicants for faculty positions are required to submit "diversity statements" expressing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This statement is evaluated before any of their other qualifications, like their standing in the field, number and quality of publications, teaching experience, you know, the intellectual quality of their work. If they are judged to be insufficiently committed to the DEI ideology, then their application is rejected without further review, regardless of how qualified they might otherwise be. That is anti-intellectual.
That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies.
> growing number of states and schools have also begun eliminating requirements that job applicants furnish “diversity statements” — written commitments to particular ideas about diversity and how to achieve it that, at some institutions, have functionally served as litmus tests in hiring.
> Chavous and her colleagues did not collect demographic information from applicants. Instead, they were asked to submit statements addressing how they would advance D.E.I. goals, whether through research into “race, gender, diversity, equity and inclusion,” “significant academic achievement in the face of barriers” or “commitment to allyhood through learning about structural inequities.” Departments were invited to nominate candidates from an application pool created by the diversity center, which then oversaw further vetting.
I don't agree with Ohio's diversity statements being used as part of the selection criteria. It's wrong.
What about every other university though? JD Vance's statement called universities the enemy. Most universities aren't connected to each other, they aren't a single organization and aren't responsible for what each does.
1. If only a few were using diversity statements as a part of the hiring process, which is wrong, what's the justification in calling all of them the enemy?
2. What about the professors? Most aren't responsible for setting hiring practices. Why are they the enemy?
> That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies. [ from your original comment ]
Same as the above for this. A University is a large insinuation of students, teachers, researchers, and various employees. Harvard employs 19k people and has 23k students.
#----------------
My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.
Why I think this:
1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.
2. There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.
> 1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.
Not all, but most. It may have decreased as some universities have started to abandon it now that it is falling out of fashion, but it was a large percentage, I'd estimate 90% offhand, but it's not like there's a lot of sources on this. It is a movement led by an aggressive and militant minority who silences and drives out anyone who disagrees. Most professors, who just want to do their research on 19th century French poetry or the mating habits of dung beetles or whatever they care about just shut up and try to keep their heads down so they don't get denied tenure or have students protesting at their office because they said the wrong pronoun. If you know people in academia and they trust you they will tell you off the record that it is nearly universal and so, so much worse than what is publicly reported. Sorry, I can't provide sources for this. You can trust me or not, but I know what I've seen and what people have told me.
> There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.
There is a religious freedom issue, because religion is also a protected class. I don't know, religious schools are not that many and they are not a big factor in academia. If you really care about that religion, then you go there, if not there are lots of other places. I don't know why an LGBQT person would want to force their way into going to a school where everyone thinks they're sinful and destined for hell. Seems like masochism to me.
> My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.
Well, neither of us can read his mind, but he benefited from a system that espoused meritocracy and used it to improve his life from growing up very poor to becoming vice president of the United States. I think it's reasonable that he would want to preserve that so other people could also have that opportunity and not get denied because they were the wrong race.
The administration defines what ideology is and given the current administration claims it’s based on merit and given the nonsense they do economically, scientifically and militarily they are the ideological activists.
Not to mention that they are clearly hired based on gender and skin color.
No, that's a lie and you know it's a lie. The administration specifically demanded that Harvard must submit to viewpoint diversity audits, hiring faculty and admitting students as necessary to make sure that every department has a balance of viewpoints the government finds acceptable.
No, that wasn't sufficient. The government specifically demanded that Harvard must commission a government-approved external party to audit viewpoint diversity, and must promise in advance to follow its recommendations, for each of the next three years.
No, it's not a lie that the administration said universities should hire and admit students based on merit. The administration's letter is linked from the university's statement. You can go read it. It's the very first two points.
It's true they also said they want viewpoint diversity quotas and audits. I agree that goes too far. I think they would probably give that up if the university pushed back. This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation. He even wrote an entire book telling you exactly that's what he does, yet somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic. Every plumber, electrician, and carpenter that ever worked with Trump figured this out decades ago.
> somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic
This is extremely disingenous. Throughout this thread you've been arguing on the basis that hiring people simply to fit a political viewoint is wrong, but when it's pointed out that that's exactly what your team wants as well you fall back to name-calling.
>This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation
Harvard rejected the demands and Trump pulled funding. What negotiation happened?
Also, if everyone knows you're just demanding more than you'd accept what's the value of the negotiation tactic? Everyone would just reject demands initially knowing this
Yes, you reject the first offer and make a counter offer. That is how negotiating works. You ask for more than you expect to get to find out what the limit is that the other party will go up to. How else would you find the limit? You don't know what the other party is thinking or what all of their priorities are. You can't just magically intuit it a priori.
If that's how negotiating works, and Trump cancelled the funding instead of delivering a counteroffer, shouldn't we conclude that Trump is not in fact negotiating? It seems like your vision of negotiation is that Trump does whatever he wants and everyone else politely begs him to be gracious in victory.
Trump made the initial offer. It was up to the university to make a counteroffer and try to meet in the middle. Instead they flatly refused everything. When one party rejects an offer in a negotiation, the other party often walks away. That’s what Trump did. If you aren’t willing and able to walk away, you’re begging, not negotiating.
No, they had issues with some of the demands and wanted to open a dialog.
Harvard's response says they changed policies to protect Jewish students, made other changes to related to the protests, etc.
It also states
"It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms ..."
#-----------------------------
Finally they said:
"Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration. "
I find I'm willing and able to walk away from this discussion. I'll keep your strategic advice in mind the next time a Trump supporter tries to explain why I should not shun them or organize a boycott of their business.
What he explained in his book is that he's an evil, dishonest person, who routinely lies and harms people in negotiations in order to get his way. I agree that being evil and dishonest is often quite effective - if you came up to me with a knife and an outlandish demand that I should give you my wallet, I'd probably concede the negotiation. But I don't at all understand the idea that I have to respect this as some kind of clever negotiating strategy. The innocent researchers whose grants he's cancelled are real people suffering real harm, and they don't become transmuted to a mere negotiating tactic just because Donald Trump doesn't care about them.
I’m not half the country, but I can explain it to you. Billionaires already pay tax on investment income. Universities are exempt but now the proposal is that they pay as well, just like individuals (including billionaires) and other profit-making groups.
Why do you expect a billionaire to steal from billionaires? a portion of non-essential stealing comes from respct, and of course these billionaires are all a part of the same club.
The other lens is simple as well: big fish don't go after the other big fish. That just ends in two hurt fish and no food. Trump thought he was going after a small fry and underestimated the response. just because Columbia folded doesn't mean all universities will.
Doesn't this tax only apply to "net investment income"/realized gains? Billionaires technically already have to pay it at a higher rate. And well they generally do? I mean when they personally actually sell stock and or receive dividends and interest.
Most of the wealth being in stock is really tricky. You can't really tax stock ownership, but at the same time stock can be leveraged against business deals (Musk for example bought Twitter with largely stock, without having to sell it first and therefore being subject to tax), and you can take out loans with stock as collateral.
Sure, if you exclude primary residence. We aren't trying to fuck with the middle class, just the uberwealthy. I'd be fine with only taxing collateralized stock on people with over $20M in net worth too. We just don't need to provide tax breaks to the rich to make them more rich.
It's such an odd argument - the wealthy always seem to know what their net worth is. We could just make them declare it. If they lie, straight to jail.
Do they? I think exactly the opposite is true - if you ask any sufficiently wealthy person, they’d need a team of people working for a bit to arrive at a very hazy net worth number. Private stock is extremely illiquid and doesn’t usually have a good mark to market, ditto most artwork. My impression is that even most public stock doesn’t generally have the depth of liquidity to absorb a founder selling any significant fraction in a short timeframe without cratering in value.
How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
I'm not defending billionaires and I believe they should be heavily taxed, and huge inheritances should be outlawed, but what's Elon Musk's net worth, for example? He surely doesn't have $369 billion in cash. Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year? It's tricky.
> How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
They get to tell us what they are worth. Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud. There are some areas that are tricky, like pre-market startups, but we have things like 409A valuations that help with that. Penalties should have no statute of limitations - if you lie about it, you get to look over your shoulder forever. It's not perfect, but as you have clearly recognized, there is no perfect system that allows for a reasonable degree of freedom.
> Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year?
Not really tricky! He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2. If the value goes down 99%, you pay way less tax (or none if he's no longer wealthy enough to qualify). He can sell his shares to pay it, and I honestly do not care if he is not liquid enough to do that - that's a situation he put himself into. No he doesn't get a tax break on the loss - the rich have a sense of entitlement that their wealth belongs to them free of charge, and I think they should have to pay maintenance. Without public utilities (roads, electricity, air and sea traffic control, etc) and social stability, most of these billionaires would lose their wealth to warlords very quickly.
> He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have $8B worth of shares and I have $2B in cash, and if the wealth tax is 20% I will have to pay all my cash this year. If my shares goes down to zero next year I'm broke. I couldn't just sell $2B worth of shares in the first year either because that would have affected the value of the shares. This is not how taxes should work.
Everyone agrees on income tax or capital gains tax because they are both cash, and the tax is also in the same currency. If we can find a way to tax wealth in the same "currency" (for example 20% of your share portfolio, plus 20% of your cash) then it might work. Obviously the state may not always be able to use shares to fund infrastructure, and cashing out those shares would diminish the value. Also it's still hard to do that for, say, real estate investments.
What doesn't make sense? He'd owe $1.6B the first year, and then he'd be shit out of luck because he drove the stock to 0. Not my problem. And you should stop putting yourself in his shoes - you will never be a billionaire, and you probably won't be a mega-millionaire either. Start worrying about your own situation.
In any case, the whole thread about "net worth" is really besides my original point, which is that collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event. The only reason we got into net worth was because I said I'd only apply it to high net worth individuals, since they have almost exclusively benefitted from the economy over the last 10-20 years. This is also super achievable because to get the bank to loan you money, you have to declare the value of the assets and the bank has to agree with the valuation - super easy to determine tax on that number.
I don't feel that strongly about it if he is just sitting on the assets, but if he's leveraging them to buy Twitter, OpenAI or to donate money toward overthrowing the Democratic order, then yes, he should absolutely pay taxes for the privilege.
I'm not worrying about billionaires. I'm discussing about hypothetical ways we can tax them. They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
> collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event
> They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
Disagree. We've been negotiating from the middle. We got the New Deal because the alternative for the wealthy was facing a socialist revolution.
When I bought my home I had to sell $XXX,XXX of stock to make the down payment. If Jeff Bezos wants to buy the same house, he would use a line of credit from the bank, collateralized by his Amazon shares (or whatever source of wealth) and pay with that. I paid 15% in long-term capital gains, he pays 0%. Under my plan, he would pay 15% LTCG for collateralizing his stock,. If I had to pay it, then it's entirely fair and reasonable that we expect him to pay his fair share too.
You could have done the same thing with a margin-enabled brokerage account, e.g. Interactive Brokers or Fidelity.
It's not particularly hard. Just have enough collateral to not get margin called. And, like the margin interest rate better than the tax hit. Shop around for rates. Notice, you don't have to pay the entire down payment this way.
If you have amassed 6 figures of stock and are buying a house, you're qualified to educate yourself on these topics. It's usually worth reading up anytime you incur that sizable a taxable event.
I am not saying this is a great idea, BTW. Just, it's an idea within many people's reach.
If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument - why would you suggest it? The tax laws shouldn't favor the gross accumulation of wealth, nor the starvation of the treasury, so the laws need to change to force the rich to pay their fair share.
I believe the GP is just cautioning rando HN readers that they should not rush out and make their down payment in the manner described, as opposed to liquidating some of their stock options for "real cash" like the GGP had to do.
They are just explaining a reasonable method that the (above) average HN reader could use to be in the same situation as Bezos of having a 0% tax on their down payment.
In the US, there's a pretty massive exemption (well, deferral) for capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence, so once you have one home to work with, the down payment is (kind of?) tax-free anyway.
They definitely shouldn't. It's absurd to suggest that because a middle-class homebuyer can get a margin loan through iBroker means that we should let the richest people in history dodge taxes in this way. If no one would actually do that, then it really doesn't matter that they technically can. The obvious solution is to take away the privilege from the wealthy and make them abide the same rules as the rest of us.
Another very rational reason for such a margin loan for a home down payment is if the stock you wanted to sell hadn't been held for a year and therefore its sale would not yet qualify for long-term capital gains rates.
You might choose to pay margin interest for up to a year so that the stock sales become taxed at the much lower long-term capital gains rates instead of like income.
That might make sense for someone in the 24% federal bracket which ends at just under $200K of annual income, depending upon how much longer one needs to hold the position to achieve the more favorable taxation. Certainly far below the yacht-owning bracket.
And withdrawals from margin accounts should cause taxable events too. Honestly it is up to the industry to justify and propose a workable tax scheme that makes margin accounts feasible. Withdrawals triggering taxable events seems fair to me, though.
Bezos gets a much better margin rate than you or I would ever get on IBKR. And IBKR doesn't margin call, they straight up auto liquidate. Bezos's lender would never do that to him.
If I get something of worth, non-related to the stock/ownership, for the current value on my stock/ownership, I should pay taxes on that amount. I am using the stocks value to gain something. If I take out a loan for businesses needs, that is in the interest of the thing I own. If I take out a loan to buy a separate thing, I have leveraged the current value and have therefor realized the current value and should pay accordingly.
Why does it matter? It eventually gets taxed through estate tax and at a higher rate than income. This obsession with taxing them _now_ only makes sense if the point is to punish the the rich.
Agreed. For the revenue tax activists want from billionaires, it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional. The non-profit tax exemption fight is about "income taxes" which billionaires already have to pay (but avoid). So it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.
If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).
> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.
It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.
> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes
It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.
> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]
What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.
Recommend James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" to learn more about the evolution of property valuation and rights. The systems of land rights in up to the 1500s-1800s were quite complex. The modern state imposed a uniform system of free-hold tenure which shifted the complexity to the downstream consequences.
The concept of freehold tenure is pretty central to the book. Not sure you could get any more on-point for the general reader looking for a book recommendation.
But since you ask: the peasant's rights to land were exquisitely bespoke. No tax collector could figure out how much one family owed versus another in another county. The rules in one prefecture of one county may have been completely unresolvable with the rules of a county a hundred miles north. Everything was negotiated family to family over generations, with rights in one place having no corollary whatsoever with the rights in another area, making the tax man's duty a fool's errand.
So, I don't your first statement "European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today." is really meaningful. Because no generalization can be made about the rights of a European peasant. That problem is the whole reason for the systems of freehold tenure that prevail today: making the territory "seeable" by the state.
You're talking about something entirely different. The typical case for the renting medieval peasant is that the rent on a given plot of land is set by custom, the nominal amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason. No administrative task could ever be simpler than collecting the rent.
Landowners responded to that by adjusting the size of the units in which land rents were due, which is why a major demand of peasant movements was for standardized units.
The fact that rents were absolutely nonnegotiable led to other developments, such as the lord being so indifferent as to exactly who was renting from him that the renter was free to leave his status to whoever he chose in his will.
Again, you're generalizing. To say that doesn't work in medieval Europe is probably itself a generalization. But if you read the book, I don't think this would be a point you'd be arguing.
The Supreme Court explicitly allowed property taxes in Pollock decision. They haven’t for wealth taxes (they still might allow it but they also might not).
"Double taxation" is absolutely constitutional. Tons of things are double, triple, quadruple and more taxed.
I make a W2 salary. I pay federal income taxes on it. I pay FICA taxes on it. My employer pays payroll taxes on it. I might pay state income taxes on it. One event, tons of taxes. I take that quadruple taxed money and buy a dinner with a beer. Sales taxes on the overall sale, additional taxes on the alcohol, additional sales tax riders because I bought it in the touristy night life area. Triple taxes on my quadruple taxes, good lord! Unconstitutional!
Worthless phrase, "double taxation".
> That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
Once again, the several different taxes applied to my salary income. Then on that I go buy a gallon of gasoline, uh oh, federal gas taxes on that. Or I buy a plane ticket and that gets Federal Excise Tax (7.5% of the base fare), the Federal Segment Fee (currently $5.20 per segment), the TSA Security Fee ($5.60 per passenger), and more. Oof, "double taxation"! Even at the federal level!
"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"
A wealth tax is generally considered to be a direct tax. If you wanted to enact one at the federal level, my understanding is that it would have to be done in proportion to the census. So, given that Mississippi is around 1% of the total US population, Mississippi would have to pay 1% of the wealth tax. Mississippi is the poorest US state, so that would be a very regressive tax.
An income tax is also considered to be a direct tax, that's why it took an amendment to the Constitution to enact one.
The Constitution applies to taxes at the federal level, not state. States could enact a wealth tax the same way they enact property taxes now (depending on their state Constitutions). The problem for them is that wealth is a bit more mobile than property.
And yes there are arguments about what a direct tax really meant in the language at the time the Constitution was written, there are arguments that the income tax should have been legal without an amendment. But that's not how it went down.
If they sell and incur capital gains. But they have so many better alternatives than you or me. And if they do incur capital gains they pay the same tax rate (or maybe 5 basis points higher, depending on your income) as you or me.
Borrowing against assets. Wealthy people get low, low rates, much lower than the hoi polloi would get on a HELOC or brokerage account margin loan. Banks like having them as clients.
Not only they get low rates, but if they have friends in the palace, they tend to be beneficiaries of large governmental contracts; during times of economic upset, they are the beneficiaries of large “monetary injections” that later cause inflation and prices to rise for all of us. During 2008, COVID, and the Mango recession the wealthy got much much wealthier, and all we got was expensive eggs and higher costs of living.
You don't pay back the loan. You die, your assets pass to your heirs, and their cost basis is stepped up. The heirs sell some of the assets to pay the loan back. They don't have capital gains because of the stepped-up cost basis.
There are finer points I don't understand such as:
1. Is the stepped-up cost basis available to the estate or only to the heirs? If it's to the estate, it's easier for the bank to trust they'll be paid back.
2. If the heir gets the stepped up cost basis, what legal guarantees does the bank have that the heir will pay the loan back?
And probably a lot else. I assume there's expensive lawyering and accounting involved in setting it up, so it isn't cost-effective unless you have a certain amount to shield from taxes in the first place.
> Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns
Not to you or me. Giving powerful people who can send more business the bank's way a freebie on their personal accounts might make sense as a loss leader.
An ELOC for a HNWI can be significantly lower interest than a mortgage. They can often get "fed funds rate/LIBOR + 0.5%" or so. This is because they can accept a floating rate, while mortgage rates get locked in for 10-30 years.
First of all, prime can be pretty good vs being taxed. Secondly, who knows what kind of sweetheart deal can be pulled for a small (in the big scheme of things) "loan" when banking of billions is at stake.
Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money though - that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists. Spending and borrowing is heavily encouraged at all levels, while investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income to prevent the poor from being able to "work smarter".
> investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income
Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
> Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money
No, it isn't. People who save money are terrified of risk. There's nothing stopping anyone from investing the money.
> that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists
That's the excuse the government makes to inflate the money. You'll never see a politician point out the real reason for inflation. It's so they can spend it without raising taxes, but it does cause inflation, and inflation has to be blamed on something else. Anything but the truth.
> Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
Buying a few stocks on an app is not anywhere near the same thing as being an accredited investor. Access to the most lucrative investment opportunities are not available to the average person, and that's almost entirely due to rules intentionally created to block anyone but the already wealthy.
Please, this thread is about the average wage-grade worker (money earned via the "sweat of one's brow"), not an "accredited investor". In this example, almost anyone in the US can open up a Robin Hood, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc account with probably $25. You don't need access to the most lucrative investment opportunities to make money; simply buy a standard S&P 500 ETF and call it a day. Over time, the chances of you making money with your investments are high, and the tax burden is lower, meaning you get to make and keep more money in your pocket. That is a win for everyone - not just the magical "billionaire".
The average worker in the US needs these sorts of opportunities to be self reliant. You don't need to be a billionaire to make money on the market, you just need a few dollars, some time, and the will to take a little risk. Stop hating on the average worker...
The methods that institutional investors have, like market making or delta one strategies, aren't available because of the rules, it's because individual investors literally don't have the scale, flow and networks to do it.
Second of all, at the end of the day it's other people money's they're using, and are entrusted to manage. You can't demand people to just lend money to anyone, any sort of free market of loans will quickly coalesce into a few capital allocators.
Sorry, nothing prevents the poor from working smarter. Just because you are poor does not mean you are uneducated. And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income. Literally anyone in the US can open an investment account and get started. The lack of desire is the real issue.
> And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income.
What? There is literally a class of people considered accredited or sophisticated investors.
To be considered an accredited investor by the SEC you must have a net worth of over $1M -not including- your primary residence, and you must have an annual household income of over $300K.
We have tax-advantaged retirement accounts to enable the middle class to save a reasonable amount in order to retire without being a burden on society. A typical saver doesn't have additional extra money leftover for a taxable brokerage account that exposes them to capital gains taxes.
Low capital gains taxes aren't meaningfully encouraging somebody making 75k and saving 10k annually to continue with their saving plan.
Only short term gains are taxed as income. Long term capital gains tax caps at 20%, wildly lower than the top income tax bracket of 37%. And it's always possible to defer short term gains (e.g. put your trading money in an IRA).
IRA contributions are drastically limited to a $7000 cap per year under 50. Whether they should be is another question, and one worth exploring.
Long-term investment is rightly seen as something to be encouraged hence the lower tax rates. You can make the argument that the rate should be more like 0% since the money invested and risked was already taxed most likely...20% is a reasonable value for the market regulating infrastructure provided by gov't entities.
IRA caps are low, but loads of people earning enough that they'd reasonably save more than 7k annually have access to 401ks or similar accounts that raise the annual cap to >30k, vastly more than the typical person is saving.
The middle class isn't taking advantage of low capital gains rates to earn more from their taxable brokerage accounts because they haven't even filled up their tax-advantaged accounts.
There are loopholes to roll all sorts of nonsense into an IRA though. There was a whole news cycle in the 2012 election about Mitt Romney's $4M "IRA" or somesuch. And IRAs are hardly the only shelter from income tax, they're just the most obvious.
The simple truth is that wealth beyond the ~$10M level in the US pays essentially zero "income tax". It just doesn't happen, no one does it. Short term gains are only taxed for small investors who don't know any better.
"Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on social networks that this year he will pay 11 billion dollars, thus becoming the largest taxpayer in the history of the USA."
That was on a sale of Tesla stock that he'd held for much longer than the long term rate threshold. He paid 20% on it, or plausibly less. I, personally pay a higher rate than that. Big numbers notwithstanding, Elon Musk shouldn't be paying less tax than I do, sorry.
You're dodging, and I know you're smart enough to know how this goes. I don't make money with long term stock, I make salary. I pay >>20% tax on that salary. Billionaries make, statistically, zero salary. All their income is on long term gains. All of it. So billionaires pay 20%, and that only if they're dumb enough not to find other shelters.
You're just saying "Well, that's the way the tax code works". I'm saying "The tax code sucks", and your point is non-responsive.
So how "over time" do I need to wait until I start paying the same tax rate as a billionaire? Seems like your solution to "the rich pay less tax" is "well, everyone should just be rich then"?
"Let them eat cake" makes for extremely poor federal revenue policy.
No but their earnings are mainly in their companies, and those can hire fleets of tax attorneys and accountants to crush their tax burden.
Once the money is in stocks, it doesn't get taxed unless you draw on it, but the billionaires can use strategies like buy, borrow, die (which last I checked only really works if you're north of ~ $300M) to avoid personal taxes.
Billionaires benefit most from the largest tax exceptions. No tricky accounting needed it’s baked blatantly into the tax code. Long term capital gains are specifically lower than short term capital gains. Further gains are only taxed on sale allowing a lifetime of growth to pass to the next generation tax free.
They also operate at a scale where many tax breaks become viable. CEO owners aren’t paying themselves nominal salaries because they are actually working for free. Creating a shell company to own your 50k car isn’t useful but it’s damn well worth it if you’re buying a 50+m dollar yacht for personal use. Turning depreciation into a nominal loss offsetting capital gains etc.
Meanwhile people of lesser means get stuck with all kinds of crap like a 10% early withdrawal penalty on 401k plans.
>> College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.
> LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
Because they already do it for billionaires: unlike university endowments, billionaire investment income is not tax-exempt by default, it's already subject to income tax [1].
[1] At least theoretically, ignoring the loopholes and tax-dodges billionaires can take advantage of with literal armies of accountants.
They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes.
Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)
Imagine how much federal revenue would increase if that 1% paid the same effective rate as say a typical plumber, rather than the <10% they currently pay. That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt.
I hear that sentiment a lot, but it doesn't seem right to me. My salary is pretty close to the median plumber's income, and my family's effective tax rate last year came in at... 1.6%. And that's with all retirement account contributions going toward Roth accounts. If we'd chosen to contribute to traditional IRA/401k accounts instead, the EITC and child tax credit would easily turn our tax bill negative.
A quick search tells me the median plumber salary is ~$60k. Your telling me your entire tax burden is ~1k? I find that hard to believe, and if true is pretty darn atypical. That's closer to what I was paying when I was making ~10/hr.
Yes. We had $50k of taxable W2 income ($63k including pre-tax insurance premiums and HSA contributions), $13k of taxable family leave benefits, $4k of interest/dividends (mostly qualified dividends, taxed at 0%), and $9k of long-term capital gains (taxed at 0%), making our pre-tax gross income about $89k. Only $66k of that is subject to taxes; the standard deduction brings that down to $37k, on which the tax is $4k. With a $2,000 child tax credit, $400 saver's credit, and $200 foreign tax credit, our tax liability is reduced to $1400, which is 1.6% of $89k.
"That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt."
It might also result in even more spending. I don't think that there is any "natural ceiling" when it comes to willingness of politicians to spend other people's money. The only ceiling is external - how much will the system bear.
Edit: it's an honest question. Maybe the top 1% paying 40% of all income taxes is too much tax. Maybe it's not enough. Without knowing how much of all the income they make it's a meaningless number.
According to the Tax Foundation[1], for tax year 2021, the top 1% of U.S. earners—those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $682,577 or more—accounted for 26.3% of total AGI and paid 45.8% of all federal income taxes.
My personal opinion is that income tax should be more progressive, but I know that plenty of smart people disagree on that.
Your source leans right-center, so probably good reason to suspect their reported top 1% AGI is low and their reported federal income tax estimate is high.
1. Does not follow. Just because you don't like someone's politics doesn't mean they're dishonest.
2. Your own link contradicts you. It says explicitly that that site hasn't failed any of their fact checks and doesn't use loaded words that they say are typical of that category. It says the categorization is because the site promotes libertarian policies.
There are a lot more taxes than the federal income tax. It happens to be one of the most progressive taxes. Anyone focusing on that and ignoring all the others is trying to scam you.
This is true for ultra high net worth individuals. They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
It is also true for many “normal” one percenters. For example there is a service for incorporated anesthesiologists where you tell them where you plan to go on vacation and what dates, and they create a bullshit anesthesiology conference, including the brochure and other artifacts, that meet the letter of the law IRS definitions for a valid business expense. None of this stuff ever hits AGI.
A simpler example: social security taxes hit a cap at a bit under $200,000/year. Somebody working fast food at minimum wage is paying 6.2% on every dollar they earn, while with my fancy tech job I’m paying a substantially lower percentage.
The social security "tax" should really be conceptualized as an investment, not a tax. The typical fast food worker has probably not passed the first bend point in the Social Security PIA formula, meaning that social security is giving them 90 cents on the dollar*. You, with your fancy tech job, are likely well past the second bend point: social security is only giving you 15 cents on the dollar* (and nothing, obviously, for earnings beyond the payroll tax ceiling).
It's a progressive system overall - but it wasn't designed for the purpose of wealth redistribution, hence the payroll tax ceiling.
* More precisely, their monthly benefit at full retirement age increases by 90 cents for each additional dollar of pre-retirement average monthly earnings, whereas yours only increases by 15 cents.
If the asset appreciates faster than the interest rate there's never a need to sell. If the interest rate is lower than the capital gains tax rate, paying the interest is cheaper than paying taxes.
UHNW individuals can borrow until they die. Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis. The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
Normal people can't do this. If I die owing money, my creditors will take it out of my estate before it passes to my heirs. UHNW estates can be structured differently and creditors can accommodate different payment terms (get paid second) because they know the money's there, and it saves taxes.
I assumed you asked a question to learn something. If you're not interested in learning, please continue believing that everyone gets the same tax system. Otherwise keep reading.
> the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
it has a fairly detailed explanation of how it's a completely different ballgame above a net worth of $300m. Grantor trusts allow sidestepping estate tax and...
> The loan and the interest payments
"The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was. Income that would normally have been derived by selling assets. Obviously it has to be paid back. No one said it's free money. Only that it's (largely) tax-free money.
The interest payments are lower than the income tax would've been on the same amount of income.
> and dont forget the inheritance tax.
You mean estate tax. Explained above.
> Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
Not in the same way, and not nearly as effectively.
> There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
> "The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was
Borrowed money is not "income" in any sense of the word. When I was on summer vacation, I decided to take a class in accounting. One of the most productive uses of my time. I recommend it. P.S. if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income", that's called fraud.
> If you read the link I posted
I rely on my CPA for tax advice, not the internet, nor do I care much for misusing accounting terms. I've read too many articles that confuse income with revenue, wealth with income, and so on.
> They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
The estate's value is reduced by what it owes.
> if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income"
sigh C'mon man, engage in good faith here. Stop saying things I didn't say.
If you can borrow cash against assets, don't have to pay principle until you die, and only pay low interest payments then it's functionally the same as selling those assets at a low tax rate. That's the principle.
And if you can use trusts to avoid estate taxes then there are no (or very low) taxes due ever.
> I rely on my CPA for tax advice
Ok ask your CPA what they know about using trusts to avoid estate taxes. Maybe it's BS but maybe it's true. Without some curiosity, how will you ever know?
> not the internet
More reputable sources than Reddit indicate it may be possible to use trusts to greatly reduce or eliminate estate tax:
The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.
For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)
Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.
By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.
You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.
> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax
Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.
Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)
Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.
--
While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?
Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.
So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:
There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.
This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.
[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.
Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).
Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?
Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.
If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.
I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.
There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.
I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.
If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.
People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.
Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not
If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.
> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.
Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.
> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.
> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.
Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.
How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?
What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?
Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.
Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.
In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.
Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.
Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.
> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Tell us how that works.
> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?
So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?
I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?
I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
If they don't wanna pay so much in taxes, they should stop having so much money. Taxes function to raise revenue and thus have to go where the money is.
There are no loopholes for investment gains. If you are talking about offsetting losses and delaying gains, those options would likely be available to endowment funds.
I think the 9 billion is very misleading. More than half goes to hospitals affiliated with Harvard. I am not sure but I don't think they get anything from the endowment. The impact of loosing this money would be very uneven across different parts of the university and hospitals affiliated with it.
The faculty of arts and science would be fine. Yes, some cuts, a hiring freeze etc. The med school and public health school would feel a big impact. They employ so many people on "soft money" through grants including many faculty members.
The hospitals are a different story and I am not sure why they are even lumped together.
Yeah this isn't purely a question of Harvard's P&L being dependent on subsidies. The money in question is grants attached to specific practices or research. The money isn't just gratuity for Harvard being so great, it's awarded for specific objectives that Harvard was deemed capable of delivering. Cutting off the money isn't going to hurt Harvard, it's going to stop all the programs the grants were funding.
People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad things do happen, you will probably see mass layoffs of researchers in particular in life sciences and biomedical research.
I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.
That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.
That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.
I understand. I am saying they are correct that much of Harvard's endowment is not discretionary, even if they accidentally used a term that implies that it is.
This might be true for Harvard, but I don’t think free speech should only be for those who can afford it. I know my school couldn’t if the government came knocking.
Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.
This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.
Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?
If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?
My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.
Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).
> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed. I don't want my tax dollars going to support discrimination against Asians and others.
This is absolutely NOT what the 1st amendment is about, you are confusing tax and speech but they are treated separately in the Constitution.
The reason for that is simple, if every taxpayer could deny the funding of everything they didn't agree with, we'd have a very different Constitution. The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king... If you scale that ambition back a little and ask only for the power to decide where YOUR own money goes, you'd be speaking of something other than a tax because this isn't the way taxes work.
I'm not explaining this because I see much good coming out of Harvard, in fact I don't, but that's a different conversation. Both political parties, as well as certain private organizations have their hands deep in students' brains - it's the ultimate cookie jar after all. The real problem is the attempt to legitimize overt government meddling in the "cookie jar" instead of focusing on transparency and examination of the current forces involved in that process.
BTW can you elaborate on your assertion about "discrimination against Asians"? Neither the government letter nor Harvard's response mention Asians! Were you trying to comment on another post? Maybe something about the tariffs?
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past"
> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed.
Fascinating. Do I have a similar right to stop paying taxes, because I don’t support the things the President is saying, or the causes Mike Johnston is adding to the budget?
So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.
Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.
I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.
> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.
I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.
That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.
The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?
Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.
Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."
Stephen Miller made it clear this morning:
"Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."
If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.
Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.
i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.
Cannot edit my original comment, because I wrote it 16 hours ago, but I am somewhat surprised by the fluctuating up/downvote count, going from 0 to 6 and back.
It seems that the very idea that some employees in academia might be superfluous is very disagreeable for some HNers.
Why? Institutional bloat is a well known problem, it happens in private sector, public sector, churches, military, wherever you can think of. It probably already happened in Ur and Nineveh. Why should academia be somehow immune from this problem?
And if it is not immune, shouldn't it try to do something with it?
There was a massive increase in tuition in the last generation or so. How much of that extra money goes to the core mission of the universities, and how much is spent on "nice to have extras", starting with opulent campuses and ending with "Standing Committees on Visual Culture and Signage"?
Everyone has to trim the fat down a bit from time to time. Even Google and Meta. Why not Harvard.
People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.
People in HN have been complaining about university admin bloat for many years. In this thread, the problem is it’s political and people struggle with the cognitive dissonance about that stuff.
This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.
>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.
>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.
More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:
>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.
I've seen arguments of this general shape and form many times about this, and yes, this is true. In general, Harvard should not spend down it's endowment when it has other sources of revenue.
I think the issue here is that this _is_ an emergency. Harvard should consider that Federal money gone for the near future and spend and plan to spend as if they will not have it. There is no point in them continuing to exist as an institution if they accede to these absurd demands.
Paraphrasing J. P. Morgan, the man, in the midst of the Panic of 1907 reassuring a banker concerned about dipping into reserves to pay out depositors: "what are reserves for if not times like these."
Eat the seed corn. Fight. Then raise unencumbered donations from the billionaires whose balls haven't fallen off. If Harvard plays this correctly, they could become one of the flag bearers of the legal and financial resistance to Trump.
>You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% last year, growing the total by $2.5 billion. In the previous year, the endowment returned 2.9%, though the total endowment decreased as the gain was offset by contributions to operating expenses. [0]
In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
>In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something. The argument is that they shouldn't raid endowments by doing additional withdraws to fund the current shortfall.
> the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest
THATS WHAT WHAT THE FIFTY BILLION IS
It’s a war chest that has been carefully cultivated over decades. The fifty billion is the result of a hundred years of investment and management.
If it can’t be spent now then when the fuck exactly can it be spent? In 200 years you’d still be saying “this is the seed corn for tomorrow!!”
I’m not saying burn it down to zero. But the whole fucking point of an endowment is to provide stability during trying times. If you can’t use the interest that has been accumulated now then when the fuck can you??
Their principal is not intended to be spent, ever. The point of an endowment is not to "provide stability during trying times".
The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity. Which Harvard already does and has always done. Interest from their endowment is already a large part of their revenue. That's what the endowment is for.
Returns fluctuate wildly, while expenses are roughly constant. So obviously expenses are drawn conservatively. And if investment works well, you can grow the endowment too. Obviously it is up to the university to strike the right balance.
The more it grows, the less risk there is in the future. But if you start spending it more than the levels of its average returns, that's high risk. And the point is it's supposed to last forever.
You also need to grow it simply to account for inflation and other rising costs.
How much is “enough” money to hoard in an endowment though? We hear lots of arguments about how the concept of a billionaire is itself obscene, why can’t we apply to same logic to institutions? E.g. much like people say “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, perhaps endowments over some similarly arbitrary value shouldn’t exist either.
Well, it's proportional to their spending to some degree. It takes a world-class endowment to fund a world-class university. And it's all from private donations.
Harvard doesn't make a profit. It educates students and does research. It sounds like you're arguing Harvard should be broken up or something? But based on what? Is it abusing its power or something?
Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.
Endowments have come from people over the entire history of the institution. The vast majority of the endowers are likely deceased and won't be able to agree to change the terms of their endowment.
And yet some trust, estate, or descendant somewhere ultimately has the authority to change those agreements. These things are not immutable facts of the universe, they can be changed.
As for the minority where that is not the case, it also means nobody will have standing to sue if the school decides to stop letting someone who died 200 years ago decide exactly how Harvard's money will be spent.
They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized.
At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.
I don't know that making a bad investment makes them terrible fund managers, just as making a good one would not make them brilliant. Don't you need a string of data points?
If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.
To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.
The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.
>...much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose
I would assume that a tax on an endowment would be like a capital gains tax, i.e., taxed on the investment growth. Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's reserved because the donation was earmarked for a specific purpose (eg. a business program or whatever), not because they reserved 30% on tax owing.
>Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's probably safe to assume donors are competent enough that such glaring loopholes don't exist. After all, the concept of endowments being used as long term savings, rather than spent immediately, isn't exactly a new concept. Failing to take this into account would mean any earmarks are void after a few decades.
It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.
He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.
He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.
No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.
That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.
Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.
The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.
The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.
> You want to argue that Joe Biden didn't weaponize every branch of the bureaucracy against Republicans?
He didn't. I don't know why you guys think he did. A lot of those agencies, like the Justice Department, act independently.
It's not like any Republicans were jailed. This is starting to seem less like a legitimate take, and more like a strange fetish for persecution.
For the record, if people like President Trump want to no longer be under the eye of Justice, they should stop doing illegal things. It seems every other American citizen has figured that out. It is shameful our own president has not.
Joe Biden did nothing remotely comparable to what Trump is doing now.
And unlike Trump, Biden faced constant criticism from within his party. He would have faced outrage if he tried to, for example, cancel all federal grants containing the word "conservative" in them.
Meanwhile we're heading towards a future where Trump can deport anyone he doesn't like to an El Salvadorian prison without so much as a trial, regardless of whether they broke any laws. Why doesn't this terrify people on the right?
The people I've talked to just don't believe it can happen to them. They're going through the normal immigration channels, only getting abortions when medically necessary, and limiting their anti-Trump speech to the few quibbles they have here and there. They don't realize that the deportations aren't just the "bad" immigrants, even medically necessary abortions are being stymied by the current administration (with predictable deaths), and that any anti-Trump rhetoric is dangerous.
There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America. If you're in the US and doing business with a bank, the courts can order that bank to do things or face isolation from the entire financial system.
> There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America
There are to varying extents. You want a country that isn't aligned with or dependent on America, but also isn't its adversary. (And which has a good banking system.) That list was classically Turkey, the UAE and Switzerland. Today I'd add India, Qatar, Canada and Brazil and remove Switzerland.
Yeah I'm no expert in financial systems but since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S. or locked away overseas and can't be transferred in for the next ~4 years.
> since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S.
Of course it does. The hypothetical we're considering is the administration illegally freezing bank accounts. You don't need something legally impenetrable. Just complicated enough that it slows down the goons while you fight them in court.
It's much more than that, foreign banks will comply with US court orders, it's not just a blockade.
US courts shut down a series of Swiss banks that were trying to hide American's assets behind the swiss banking secrecy laws while also doing business on American soil (just having bank employees in the country did it).
This is true, and they have likely been accelerating the arrangements they already had for a while now. At the same time however, getting 50 billion in assets into various European jurisdictions is not at all easy. I'd estimate Trump could cut off 70-90 percent of what Harvard has to work with.
Alumni will need to come through for continuing operations if the worst does happen. And I'm certain Harvard has put some thought into that contingency as well.
Trump can make that illegal in no time. „No foreign funds” is a well known method of fighting opposition, tried and tested in many soft regimes (looking for a recent example, Hungary comes to mind).
According to NYT, “ of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”
This is about lots more than money. Sure, Harvard can go without federal funds. Then comes federal tax breaks. Then Harvard's ability to recruit foreign students (no visas, no foreign students/professors). After that comes the really draconian stuff like the fed revoking clearances or not hiring/doing business with Harvard grads. Such things were once thought illegal but are now very much on the table. That is why Harvard needs to win the money fight no matter the numbers.
Right, money is just the first and most obvious cudgel. Does Harvard have any biomedical labs that require federal approval to handle hazardous materials? That could be delayed or revoked. Do they file taxes? They could face an audit. There's no shortage of painpoints an organization that large has exposed to an unethical government.
those endowments, especially for the Ivy League schools, aren't liquid at all. They'd take a massive haircut if they had to start pulling funds from it
Presumably they could go to a large bank and make a deal so that they only have to take a relatively small haircut by getting a loan to be paid back from endowment interest.
If I give a school 20 million yearly to research a specific form of cancer, and I find out that they instead used that money to upgrade the plumbing in their dormitories and spent nothing on cancer research, I would not give them 20 million ever again.
Sure, due to funding cuts students will suffer with slowly degrading infrastructure and will need to do plumbing fixes at some point. But that doesn't mean people who give them money for one purpose are happy with it being used for another purpose.
This is absolutely par for the course for university endowments. They're not big pots of money, they're thousands of small pots of money with various restrictions on their investment, disbursement, etc.
For a quick institution specific overview, see “with donor restrictions” on page 20-21 (pdf page 21-22) of their most recent annual report[0].
I’d imagine “maintain and invest the original contribution in perpetuity” covers majority of the restricted funds, with use-specific restrictions in a distant but comfortable second. Since it’s Harvard, they probably also have more funky restrictions than the average bear (gifts of stock in kind with restrictions on timing of sale, voting, etc.).
Harvard is probably thinking they just need to draw the $1 billion extra for another 4 years. Unless, Trump runs for a 3rd time which he has floated. If that happens then I think everyone's just screwed.
It's very dangerous to assume "oh, this will only last four years". The rights currently being eroded (free speech, habeas corpus and voting rights themselves) are required for free and fair elections. Even if the term of the current Shitstain In Chief ends when it's supposed to, his replacement will be from the same cloth.
I'm sure he's got plans to issue an executive order declaring all of the votes against him null and void because they weren't cast and counted within 4 hours of each other on election day.
With an overbearingly powerful executive like the federal US executive you can come up with so many ways to fuck with companies or institutions like this one beyond not giving them money.
Which is, of course, why the internet is a spectacular failure and SpaceX is our best chance to ever put a man on the moon, and polio is still ravaging the country. Great point.
From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)
This is how we know that the Republican party has no interest in freedom as the word is conventionally defined.
I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here:
Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.
This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.
Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1].
We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to inform themselves either, which makes things much worse.
A large part of the population struggles to even entertain a hypothetical scenario. I’m active in several agricultural forums, and it’s clear that many participants lack fundamental knowledge across the board. They’re generally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussion. Almost every comment they post seems aimed at shutting down the conversation rather than continuing it. There is no curiosity. The world is already way too complex.
I think that's a function of the internet combined with a new flavor of individual exceptionalism. It is shockingly easy to engage only in echo chambers, even without knowing it. You're just on a site for people with similar interests, nevermind that those people all agree with you entirely.
Combine that with the lessons kids are learning that they are legitimately unique and special, and anyone who makes them feel bad is just wrong, and here we are.
Or maybe I'm just the old man shouting at clouds now. Who knows.
Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.
ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.
Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.
The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.
A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc.
"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality
Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.
it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.
>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?
As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.
That's exactly my point: all three articles says nothing about any doctor's responsibility for abortion with the goal to prevent harm to pregnant woman. No arrests, no charges, no fines, nothing, not even single case (as far as I know; your links also describes zero such cases).
And still women are bleeding out. What else could it be other than doctors' political stunts at the cost of women's lives?
I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.
> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point
ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".
Morals ostensibly drive logic for some (not most, most are boring tax stuff) laws, but what's really going on is some group of people thinks the law will advantage them and so pushes it. Blue Team doesn't inherently care about black people, they care about getting black Americans' votes. You'd hope the moral and the instrumental would align, but not always.
It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.
Probably not, they'll just pump up international student numbers to recoup and basically gut the domestic student experience. There's near infinite demand for American universities overseas even now.
I think you're wrong. I know several bright students that have decided to not go to the US now given the persecution and targeting of international students.
Intl students are not mad. Who is going to pay the US intl student premium, to add the Columbia tag. Intl students are paying for very specific future life paths.
I am nervous about the US right now. So many cases are going to end up at the Supreme Court that is controlled by conservatives. It may not be the lay-up you think it is.
Also what happens if Trump just decides to ignore a court loss as he did with the recent deportation of Kilmar Garcia?
Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
> Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
> I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
I can sort of theorize that human society does have the ability to cycle that is partially based on human life spans / human memory. It is like a LLM that runs out of context and then starts forgetting what it learned in the earliest part of the context. For humans it is related to our lifespans as we culturally forgot what we have learned, and thus have to relearn it.
That said, I think that periods of peace are punctuated with war. War resets the pressures that build during peace. This is similar to how refactors or rewrites are needed every once in a while as the technical debt builds up as requirements and use cases change over time, especially if no one was paying down the techn debt as you went.
Cultural ouroboros. Eventually we become so distant from our past selves culturally that we identify once normal, helpful, natural things as foreign. I'm seeing this with the new wave of mental illness in my generation.
Or you could find illegal conduct for congress people, have them sued in criminal courts, and then hold elections to elect people (republican or democrat) who will make congress function as it is meant to.
Perhaps someone can provide security services to republican congress people who are threatened with violence if they dont toe the line, so that they are safe enough to stand up to trump. (This is an actual reason given for their cowardice)
The core fundamental problem from my viewpoint in the US political system is unlimited campaign contributions which empowered the ultra wealthy. This means that elections are fought between ultra wealthy people and politicians have to first appeal to the rich people to get them on their sides, rather than the majority of the people.
You need to fix this, otherwise you have muted the impact of the majority of people in your democracy.
From a geographic standpoint, the conflict isn’t state vs. state this time around, though, it’s rural vs. urban. Blue cities in red states. Red counties in blue states. Not very conducive to conventional military conflict.
Perhaps. The Courts and the Legislature have yet to defend their powers, but the crunch point to do so is approaching. When we get past the stage that they have fully capitulated to Trump then it'll get truly ugly.
The biggest irony here is that after Roberts, the justices Trump appointed are the conservatives most likely to do the right thing. Gorsuch and Barrett are fine justices (even if they have opposing views to mine), Kavanaugh could be worse. Hopefully he doesn't get to choose another one or we'll get another Alito or Thomas.
So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions
Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and
Hiring".
I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.
I have never been a "woke" person, but Trump really makes me doubt the meritocracy argument. If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
As others have pointed out to you, "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Leadbelly used it at the end of his "Scottsboro Boys" [1] in 1938, and it likely was in use many years before that. Erykah Badu's "Master Teacher" also uses it prominently, which probably helped bring it out of AAVE into more mainstream use [2].
Anyway, that's all to say I find it sad and funny that people are all up in arms about being "woke" these days. It's like stating "I'd prefer to be ignorant".
> "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world.
Yes, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy that serves the people of Korea.
Sometimes expressions have meaning beyond what advocates for the related concepts claim. For example, as I’m sure you are aware, ‘woke’ viewpoints repeatedly advocate for racial discrimination in American universities.
I’m liberal and I also find wokeness to be irritating, so it’s not just things Republicans don’t like. Like the above person says, it’s not just awareness of structural discrimination and the like, which I believe are real and ought to be addressed, but also a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with. Hence, the GP comment. If we can't agree on meanings of words, we talk past each other instead of to each other.
You see your two meanings and you realize how arguing about the term without aligning isn't a discussion, right?
----
as an aside:
>a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
I'll be "woke" here and note the discminination in when a demanding male tends to be thought of as "leadership material", whereas a demanding female in the same role is called "bossy". These kinds of internal disciminations is exactly what "woke" people try to address (and ironically enough, are dismissed as "militant" over. Because it talks about topics people want to shut down).
>This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with.
It is worth noting that it is a right-wing tactic to capture the meaning of words. "Woke" used to mean "being aware of social and political issues and injustices," but right-wing usage of the term has diluted it to the point where it can't be used for its original meaning anymore.
I think the thing to consider is that the right-wing is focusing on the things that are the most likely to produce outrage amongst a certain part of the population when they talk about being woke. They'll hyper focus on one protest gone violent rather than thousands of peaceful gatherings in town squares, for example. They've always been very successful at creating this division through their rhetoric and selective focus.
If you're aware that structural discrimination and social injustice exists, then you already are woke. The expression of it might be different for you -- more MLK than Malcolm X, say -- but that doesn't mean you're not woke. We shouldn't let them muddy things when the goal is helping all beings be awake to reality.
I don't recall the term "woke" being all that useful. I really only started noticing it as a right-wing pejorative, often times being used by straight up racists, and to lesser extent by people pointing out performative solidarity, and this is not a recent thing either.
The meaning of "woke" changes depending on the person saying it, and the one listening, which makes it hard to tell what the person is _really_ trying to say.
Edit:
Apparently it was recently popularized by BLM activists, but then took on a different meaning [1]. So it seems ambiguous, which to me makes it not that useful.
You have come to the realization that systemic racism exists, and it grants privileges to the dominant socioeconomic groups. Congratulations, you are now "woke"!
That's what the term originally meant, before it was turned into a strawman for "anything I don't like" by the conservative media machine and weaponized to divide people.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now
If Trump were a black woman (or man), he would have never survived the release of the Hollywood Access tape and therefore would have never gotten elected.
Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
> Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
Nope. Though you also missed the part where the manufacturing of "felony" charges was so novel they had never been attempted before. The closest parallel is probably the case of John Edwards who was acquitted: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/us/edwards-jury-returns-n... But you probably think it's because he was also a white man and not because there was no criminal act.
I'm curious if you can even sum up what exactly was the felony that Trump was convicted, or even better, who's the victim? Because all I saw was an overzealous DA in NY with utter disregard for the actual law.
> You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
Yes. And clearly people of DC would rather elect a Democrat crackhead over any Republican.
My point was about surviving scandals as a candidate. Trump survived the Hollywood Access tape, where it would have buried most candidates. Your example was "whatabout Barry" -- but they're not comparable (and Barry did not survive his scandal, but went to jail).
Why would you expect Trump to go to jail for a manufactured felony charge? Even if it was a legitimate case, the sentencing guidelines would not have recommended jail time.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
It sounds like you're aware of the present reality of race and how it impacts how one is treated in America just for being who they are.
> I have never been a "woke" person
I have news for you!
Edit: to be clear, I'm certain you don't match the the adversarially bastardized caricature of what a "woke person" is, but it sounds like match the original, well-meaning definition.
It's not cognitive dissonance, or bad faith. Of course.
If you let Harvard do "merit-based hiring", they'll move a little in the direction of actually complying with employment law, but not much. If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades (i.e., if you don't have "enough" black people, you need to show how your recruitment pipeline means that's necessarily the case, like not enough get the required type of degree), you'll get much better compliance.
Frankly no. I don't think they actually care in the way that equal outcomes was baked into what it meant to be Blue Team for a while, and the bureaucracy ("deep state") is against them, especially in Massachusetts, and I don't think they're competent enough.
How is this a no brainer? How many of their faculty identity as believers in a flat earth? Are we concerned about that viewpoint being underrepresented as well?
We're talking about going from 2.3% to maybe 13%. And this isn't a reflection of attitudes among people who are potentially employed there, it's a reflection of overt, rigid filtering on the basis of political beliefs.
Typically, in order to be employed at a college, you have to be smart and aware of the world. This qualification disqualifies basically all conservatives.
That's not true. Painting the "other" as some sort of one-dimensional malevolent retard isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. I promise.
There are real people, even smart people, on the other team. They have thoughts, kids, impressive degrees, goals unrelated to politics. They enjoy sunshine and hiking. They think they're doing what they're doing for good reasons. They believe themselves to be good people. They might even believe you to be a good person.
So pick one or the other: having a broad representation from many walks of life is important or it's not. You can't mix or match depending on which group you like.
And that is what I'm commenting on. I'm not a fan of Trump's "war on DEI" but if it was applied with some consistency I could take it as a genuine difference in viewpoints. That would be okay. But the movement is railing hard and vitriolic against anything with even a whiff of "DEI" while applying wildly different standards to themselves. This is hard to take as a genuine difference in viewpoints.
Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.
"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally).
Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world.
Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
From my European pont of view, I think the definitions of left and right have shifted a lot.
Sure, in Europe left and right may be more closely matched in academia, but most "right"-leaning Europeans would not be anywhere near the "right" in US-terms, so your argument is comparing very different things
Depends. German Burschenschaften, though not massive, strike me as very far right. IIRC one of them had a big row over whether they can accept a member who was ethnically Chinese. (That guy was a full German citizen born in Dortmund, but of Asian ancestry.)
IDK how it is today, but last decade the US was considered to have many of the best educational institutions.
>Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities.
Yes, because EU "left" would be accused of socialism, whereas the EU "right" would mostly be the US's existing left wing. the US right wing was always on a far side and these days fell straight to the AfD levels of extremism.
It's not one sided, but the spectrum is completely different.
>And Asian universities are a completely different world.
I'm sure they are. a history fighting within the eastern continent and a rule of emporers will shape differently than from a land of conquerers puahing for conformity who eventually tried to make nice as their regimes fell and created this hybrid of individualism and trade amongst one another.
> Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
I agree generally, however you should be aware that American republicans are not referring to these people because they don't know anything about them. While the American left is typically extremely US-centric, the American right is even more so. So, while you have a point, you are giving them far too much credit. Their view of American education IS their view of education in general, because that's all they know. If they wanted to know more they would have to educate themselves, but they're ideologically opposed to education, so...
And, to be clear, it only takes a small look through Republican policy making to deduce they are ideologically opposed to education. They outright say it, usually.
And it makes complete sense when you think about conservatism as an ideology and education as a concept. Education is the processes of breaking down thought processes, destroying preconceived notions, and seeking truth through evidence. It denounces the idea that what is correct is what is common. It denounces the idea that wisdom is just a given, and not something to be worked towards. This is directly antithetical to conservatism. Conservatism values maintenance and blind belief, keeping stability for the sake of stability. It values faith in things working, and not evidence of why it's working. It denounces the notions of explanations and reasoning being required. It upholds the status quo because it is the status quo. It's naturally risk-averse, anti-creative, and small-minded.
This is the reason progressiveness, whether it be in Europe or anywhere else, thrives in education whereas conservatism struggles. It is, however, important to note that this does not perfectly line up with American politics. But, the American political system is associated with these underlying ideologies and thought patterns.
> Most professors in non stem departments are Marxist
So, as I alluded to before, the issue here isn't the education - you are delusional. I don't know how to help you because what you're saying is just not aligned with reality and that's not something I can fix.
For the record, you can analyze the text of various scholars even if you don't agree with them, and that's a huge part of critical thinking and higher education. Understand the historical, social, and economic context that lead someone like Marx to his ideology is important. We do this for Hitler and Mussolini all the time, but I don't see anyone claiming that educators are fascists.
Meaning, you, and others, have a severe bias here. You're missing, looking past, the instances that disagree with your perception. So then all that's left is the stuff that aligns with your perception, and such you've constructed a perfect delusion.
This idea that conservative socioeconomics and the "invisible hand" is the One True theory of everything and nothing else should even so much as uttered, lest you be a communist, is, in it of itself, as you say, "fashionable nonsense". In fact, you cannot truly understand the context for 20th century fiscal policy without understanding the impact of Marx and other ideologues that came after him.
American conservatives are increasingly not grounded in facts and reality. This isn’t partisan, it’s just an observation of reality. I used to identify as a conservative, but they have become less and less grounded as a party.
- In 1989-1990, when HERI first fielded this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right.
- in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right
Now you say it's 2.3% conservative.
The universities argue they haven't changed, it's the politics of the right. I'd say they are correct as the right now to disavows and ridicules the output of universities on things like climate change, tariffs, vaccines, health, voter fraud in US elections ... well it's a long list. It wasn't like that 30 years ago.
The universities are supposed to be intellectual power houses fearlessly seeking out fundamental truths and relationships, regardless of what the people in power might think of their discoveries. Both sides of politics once celebrated that. Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate. They allow and encourage all types of thought, but insist they be exposed to a torrent of opposing thoughts so only the soundest survive.
Frankly, I'm amazed 2.3% still identify with a mob that clearly wants to undermine that. I'm guessing it will drop to near 0% now.
that’s the faculty of arts and sciences—is this administration going to mandate university economics and business schools —which likely lean heavily capitalist—demand ideological diversity and bring in more communists?
If conservatives are applying at a more than 3% rate then either 1) Harvard is using some method besides directly asking for their ideology to discriminate against conservatives or 2) they are being rejected on non-ideological grounds e.g. merit.
If they are not applying at a rate of over 3% then there is no discrimination.
It sounds like you don't really know if they are being discriminated against, even though you are stating it as fact. The 3% number could be biased due to any number of reasons, conservatives may not apply to Harvard for ideological reasons, or student ideologies may shift during education.
It's possible that you can identify right-wing high schoolers based on their writing, but I don't really see a problem with rejecting students if they are touting unpopular and/or discriminatory ideas. Universities have the right to maintain a culture of openness and learning, and conservatism is often antithetical to that.
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the
Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
Conduct violations at Universities are a pretty broad set of rules at universities and don't necessarily line up with what's legal or not but more with the university's cultural and social norms.
Some of those international students with their visas revoked apparently only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune. They are going after any level of law breaking in order to match their stated goal of kicking out criminals, since they are having trouble reaching the numbers promised in campaign speeches.
I’ve only seen one person expelled for support of Hamas with evidence - the doctor who went to a funeral in Lebanon of the Hamas leader assassinated in past year. The administration was super proud of that one. Show me evidence of anyone else that has any association with Israel/Palestine conflict protests that actually support Hamas. It does not have to be an either or proposition - one can be against Israel killing civilians and against Hamas.
And for other arbitrary decisions there’s several examples of people expelled for gang activity who simply had tattoos.
From the feds documents they describe the federal government as thought police:
>Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, 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.
Even ICE had a deleted tweet that makes it clear the thought police are active:
I prefer these thought police to the thought police we had previously.
The "diversity" thought police had very strong views about what the only acceptable thoughts were. These people are like, "if we could get it up to 30% that would be a huge victory". Actual diversity in thought at top American universities would be a boon.
Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?
Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent.
Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up".
Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar".
Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed.
I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university? Formal education that the government regulate has different goals from non-formal and informal education. If the goal is to be a primer for leaders, then they can be that without mixing it with formal education.
If we want the selection process of future leaders to be government regulated under formal education, then we should have a discussion on how such system should look like. The current system is a bit like the old fraternal groups, with the admission system being relocated to the university admission board. There should be better way to select future leaders.
> If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university?
There is no universal definition of what the goal of a university should be.
At the very top of Harvard's mission page it says, "Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world."
There is NOWHERE where they say anything even remotely like, "Our goal is to reward students who do well in high school coursework and testing." Nor do they say anything like, "The mission of Harvard is to teach as much academic material to students as possible."
In contrast Caltech says, "The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society."
It's much more focused on solving science and tech problems and a focus on educating outstanding students. There is very little here about leadership.
And so you tend to see that CalTech has some of the top scientists and professors in the world. At the same time, even in tech/science companies, they occupy a small percentage of CEOs. Those aren't the people they are intending to nurture.
There's room for different types of education with different goals and metrics, including admissions metrics.
And anyone can create a university and say,"We look at grades and test score. We don't ask for recs or essays. Don't care about what your goals are. We stack rank based on GPASATAPs and then select the top N." That's a perfectly valid approach. I wouldn't want to go to that school, but it sounds like there are some students who would, and I wouldn't object to it.
I am not that knowledgeable with US law, but to my understanding, U.S department of education has a policy for higher education, based on the Higher Education Act of 1965, as well as educational policies set forth by Congress. The higher education act references universities as part of what it regulate.
So if I would attempt with a universal definition of what the goal of a university, it would start by being an institution that complies with the standards set by the Higher Education Act and is accredited by the U.S department of education. As part of the formal education system, the goal of the regulations and laws will be enforced onto those classified under it.
Which returns me to my original question. What benefit is there to be classified as formal education if they don't share the intention (and goals) of the formal education system?
In reality though, Harvard actually educates perfectly ordinary physicians, engineers, etc., and I assume that the vast majority of their output consists of relatively ordinary people.
What people need isn't leaders, but the capacity for decentralised self-organisation.
Their decision to make education into finding or creating leaders is, I think, a terrible mistake and socially dangerous, and in a way exclusionary. If they are truly successful and are able to notice natural leaders and bring them into their institutions that might well channel the capacity of ordinary people away from decentralised self-organisation and into a pure elite society.
As so many people who hate the Ivies tell me, you can get just a good of an education at your local CC and state college. That option is available and they don't have the emphasis on leaders and they also tend to accept most people who are qualified.
The reasons people want to go to Harvard aren't simply because of the academics to be ordinary engineers.
I'm a Swede. I don't care about Harvard myself. But here in Sweden we some historically excellent universities, and some places that were a little second rate as we viewed it.
But the Germans don't care. If they get to be called professor they're happy, so they come, and they become professors at these once second rate universities, and then they put out research that is as good as any, and they have PhD students and everything, and the end result is that it's basically transformed our old second rate institutions into places actually producing good research; and apparently this is the way it is Germany. All their universities produce good research.
I think the future here, in the long run, is it should be that it won't matter where you go, only what you do, and I think that's something which should be, not just embraced universally, but pushed for deliberately, in all countries. If Harvard is really successful in finding potential leaders, then they are dangerous to society.
Furthermore, most of Harvard's graduates will be ordinary engineers, or ordinary physicians or ordinary practitioners of some field, whether it's what they studied.
And yea, most of Harvards grads will be ordinary. And they could’ve just have easily gone to UMass. But a higher percentage will be leaders. And that’s the reason they admit who they do.
Essentially, the Germans are turning all the schools that I would have dismissed as 'what even is this' into something respectable, churning out good research, churning out good PhD students, etc.
Because they don't dismiss the places that I had dismissed, they transformed them.
Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?
I don’t think most people are denied based on any specific thing. Asians attend these elite schools at much higher rates than their population. If there was a school that admitted based on grades and test scores only they’d probably be even more highly represented.
College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.
The thing is, acceptance at these elite universities is _highly_ correlated with academic performance. It’s just that different racial groups are admitted in different ranges. You won’t find a single Asian at Harvard at or below the median Black SAT score. The range to be accepted as an Asian is also higher than Whites, which is higher than Latinos, which is higher than Blacks. How can you possibly explain this if it’s not a quota system based on race?
I don't think this is true. First, I don't think the SAT data exists for Harvard broken down in this way (if you have it, please link it). Furthermore, there were Asian students accepted in the 2nd and 3rd decile -- this is below the average for African American students almost certainly. So, I find your claim very likely to be false.
Now if you said that admissions has favored African American students in the Affirmative Action era over Asian students then I'd agree. But Affirmative Action is also over per last year's Supreme Court decision.
It's not just Black students over Asians, it is the entire gradient I outlined, and they continue to use race in admissions, they just obfuscate the reasons now.
Again, the statement you made earlier seems almost surely false.
And how do you know they continue to use race? You have access to data that the rest of us don't? Again, if you have data to support your claims then post a link.
How do you know MIT isn’t now discriminating against Black students? How do you know what MIT metrics? Maybe it only cares about test scores and not other aspects? Also MIT is a D3 school, or a D1 school.
> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
They're objective measures (don't depend on the person applying them), created subjectively (people choosing criteria based on their preferences/ideas), and chosen subjectively (people deciding which ones they want to rely on more). I meant objective originally, as in many people claim the whole process is objective.
They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of:
1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success
2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success
3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2).
Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success.
They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1).
By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end.
The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable?
Also, bullshit on IQ tests. They do reliably predict a number of socioeconomic factors, so I suppose they’re a great way to keep the poors out. How very “enlightened” of you.
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard?
Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
When the "other side" is pretty much evil, yeah, you are the good guys. Like, by default. I would even go so far to say Harvard could do much, much worse and they would still be the good guys.
On a closely related note, you are legitimately out of touch with reality if you believe any part of this is done with the intention of "merit". This is done to strengthen allegiance to MAGA and conservative ideology.
Does that sound a bit scary and fascist-like? You decide. But it's explicitly stated as the goal of this constriction on higher education in Project 2025. So, take it up with them, not me.
Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
This administration has ZERO credibility to define what "merit" is.
> Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
Are you referring to the defense secretary Pete Hegseth? He also attended Harvard so clearly there's some intersection in how both Harvard and the Trump administration evaluate candidates.
Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.
If the Trump admin could directly control admission, I truly believe future classes would consist of close to 100% far right leaning ("anti-woke") WASP types.
It really isn't. Harvard used to be a special cultural institution now it's just another research institute. Whoopee, nothing can be special, everything has to all be the same gray sludge cause otherwise it isn't """fair"""
While I agree with this, if you read the letter of demands from the administration I don't think Harvard had any choice. I think the letter was much more egregious than what the Columbia demands were (at least from what I read about the Colombia demands). I think if Harvard had acquiesed it wouldn't have much reason to exist anymore, and I say this as a Harvard alum who took plenty of issue with the direction of the university in recent years.
In contrast, most of the demands I read for Columbia, except for the one about putting the Middle Eastern studies department under some sort of "conservatorship", seemed relatively reasonable to me if they hadn't come from the barrel of a gun and from an administration who has clearly defined any criticism of Israel and any support for Palestinians as anti-Semitism.
> Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
I'm not so sure. The Harvard endowment is huge. I might not be so much "moral fiber" as having enough fuck you money that risks don't matter as much as they do to others.
No. This fight will be much bigger than money. It’s true they have money, but this will be a literal fight of academic freedom against authoritarianism.
More of that! When a mountain of old money is suddenly put at risk, it can easily be mistaken as moral fiber. We will see if Harvard suddenly decides to defend others, or just fend for itself.
Maybe? Or maybe they realize that they will lose all future credibility with students, government and NGO's if they bow to the conservative & Christian right?
There are two outcomes for the the current American government situation - a slide in to authoritarianism (it's right there in Project 2025), or these wackjobs get voted out because they are destroying global financial stability.
If it's the former, Harvard eventually has to cave because literal Nazi's.
If it's the latter, Harvard is screwed if they capitulate.
The thing is there's really no choice. The version of Harvard we get if they cave is the same as burning it all down. It would be dead as an educational institution and would only serve to foster the same kind of insane doublethink that leads people to ask for "diversity in viewpoints" at the same time they ask for the removal of the viewpoints they disagree with.
Yes, I doubt they're cool with the ideas in the letter like the federal government auditing everyone's "viewpoint diversity" and mandating staffing changes to fit what the federal government wants.
I don't know, is it moral to give legitimacy and a platform to someone like J. Mark Ramseyer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mark_Ramseyer)? Less clear example would be keeping around Roland Fryer.
I find that very few people and even fewer institutions are consistently always on the right side of things morally, even in very clear-cut cases (never mind that what exactly the "moral thing" is, is a whole discussion in itself). It's probably better to look at the overall pattern rather than a incidents (either good or bad).
I have no opinion on Harvard myself by the way; I don't know enough about it. I'm just saying this is not an especially good criticism.
This is the only correct response, but I don't think I'm being overly cynical in thinking they're being opportunistic either.
They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to unfashionable political views being silenced, so there's a pinch of hypocrisy in making such a show of standing for openness.
It's my understanding that the issue is not that they're "espousing the right views" but rather that they have the constitutional right as a private institution to espouse whatever views their students and faculty want under the first amendment.
right, freedom of speech is free as long as it agrees with the viewpoint of who's in power. similar to how history is written by victors but this part is conveniently ignored. it's just facts in the open marketplace of ideas yay!
I mean, while this is the only correct response, it could still cost Harvard around $9 billion, which isn't chump change, even for Harvard.
And while I agree and have been disgusted with Harvard's slow slide to demanding ideological conformity over the past decade plus (e.g. https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...), I believe they have made some belated changes in the right direction over the past year.
Good. I think Harvard has faltered a bit recently with academic integrity scandals, but they are still well-respected overall. Them standing up for students is an important signal to other less high-profile schools that they can do the same.
The Federal government making funding to a university contingent on them "reforming" specifically named departments whose foreign policy views the executive branch disagrees with (Israel/Palestine policy) seems like a clear violation of the First Amendment.
They are deporting permanent residents for op-eds.
One permanent resident was sent to a concentration camp in El Salvator without due process, none over speech yet that I know of but his was for being spuriously labeled a terrorist.
We are well past the point where in a future history class a student will raise their hand and ask 'Why didn't anyone stop them?' followed by 'Why were so many people members of that party?'
All of the information is saved, it's going to be interesting to study, the first "class" of people to leave are the ones from tech, you know, the backbone of USA services, it's going to be interesting, it's going to be an economy fall that didn't happen in Nazi Germany
No mention of anti-Asian discrimination? It made big rounds in all the American media circles a few years back, and if memory serves, MAGA boarded that train too.
MAGA loves to say how universities screw over poor hard-working Asian students, and then they turn around and defund universities and fire researchers. Their pity on Asians is not sincere, because they detest higher education in the first place.
And I'm saying this as an Asian father whose kid is going to a US college this year.
Harvard was one of the universities "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students", so I'm not sure the criticism holds, especially when the government's letter is asking for merit based admissions reform.
Are there other universities that weren't discriminating against Asians that the government has or has moved to defund?
> Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What came out of the documents in that court case was used as research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was published[2], so we can see very well how they were screwing over poor, hard-working Asian students.
> Data on admissions—particularly at elite universities—is tightly guarded, making it challenging to identify both the students who benefit from racial preferences and the importance of race in admissions decisions… The data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC lawsuits are important because they make it possible to look behind the admissions veil to see how racial preferences operate.
It wasn't just Harvard, the University of North Carolina was included. The poor part is handled right there in the abstract:
> Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs [under-represented minorities] from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Echoed later on:
> Those who benefit the most from racial preferences (at least in terms of advantages in admissions) are those who come from higher socioeconomic status homes.
Asians weren't and probably still aren't benefitting from this, as:
> Looking first at the applicant columns, African Americans are most likely to be labeled disadvantaged followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites.
So not only do these "diversity" policies hurt Asians, they don't even help black Americans from lower socioeconomic classes, which seems to me to make all of it racist, including against black Americans - the ones most purported to be helped by this - and even against disadvantaged whites, who lose a whopping 25% of their chance to be admitted:
> a white, male, disadvantaged applicant with a 5% chance of admissions would only see his admissions probability rise to 32.1% if he were instead treated as an African American applicant
But the easiest misdeed to see is that done against Asians, hence the lawsuit.
These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. Once they got the SCOTUS win and affirmative action was toast, they quickly moved on from fighting anti-Asian hate to a new fig-leaf/tool to useful for fighting the next ideological battle, which was prominent protests against government policy, which happened to be pro-Palestine, so this is the best tool for the job.
The messaging is very similar too, conflating pro-diversity with anti-whiteness, or anti-asian when needed, and now redefining being pro-Palestine as anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas. It's dumb, lacks nuance, but effective when the Fifth estate is pliant, co-opted or otherwise ineffective.
Asians are not a uniform block. They forget, often, just like every other ethnicity. Or they convince themselves that the values are actually still being held.
Good points. But they did open themselves up to this by blatantly discriminating against Asian students. I mean, "you have an ulterior motive in arguing against our hugely racist policies" is not a great defense.
Harvard, as an institution capable of sustaining itself without relying on federal funding, bears a heightened responsibility to champion academic freedom and intellectual independence. Its financial independence positions it to defend these principles more vigorously than universities with fewer resources, which may face similar pressures but lack comparable institutional stability to resist government overreach.
I predict a surge of alumni donations in the weeks and months to come, not just at Harvard but also at other institutions that are showing their willingness to stand up against the creeping fascism of the current administration.
I think people who value education, academic freedom, and understand the economic and societal role that universities play, were hoping to see one or more of the major institutions stand up for these principles.
I found harvard’s letter a poor attempt to articulate just how authoritarian the demands are, and how they undermine the very idea of a university. How leaders of such a prestigious university refuse to place what’s going on in historical context is sad. But it’s educational: now I have a better understanding of how the nazis came to power.
not a perfect comparison, but a useful starting point.
Why is it any more necessary to fight "leftists and muslims" than it is to fight righties and MAGAs?
That's the question that the Trump people never seem to acknowledge that the rest of America is asking itself?
What's the difference between muslims bombing whatever and MAGAs shooting up or torching a black church? The rest of us are finding it hard to see the distinction.
In fact, recent events have served to crystalize the dangers posed to the republic by ill considered MAGA policies. And to concentrate minds on the problem of how to extricate ourselves from the crises they have gotten us into in as efficient a manner as possible.
If efficiency is even possible at this point? Maybe "in as minimally painful a manner as possible" is a better way to say it?
I was struck by how many of the people whose ages are named in that article were in their late thirties through fifties. Both as alleged perpetrators of violence, and victims.
Yeah. Sometimes college students are older, but that article isn't really evidence that student groups are hitting the streets bashing people based on ethnicity.
I am sure you can read, but apart for the very numerous mentions of violent attacks against Jewish students, we have this quote:
Kates, the head of Samidoun, and leaders of other hard-line pro-Hamas groups, say they don’t randomly attack Jewish people at demonstrations. Rather, they said, protests turn violent due to clashes with the police and run-ins with Jewish counterprotesters who carry Israeli flags and become targets.
“If you were to carry other flags of countries and nations that have committed genocide, one might expect them to be taken away,” Kates told NBC News. “That’s really a very low-level of confrontation for actively going out and supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
That's a pretty straight up claim admission of violence during demonstrations by a student group. This group that was part of the "student's" demonstrations in the universities was later on designated by both USA and Canada as affiliated with the PFLP terror group [1][2]
I am lost for words, what kind of evidence will you deem sufficient?
Surely the two students attacked at the start of the article due to wearing yarmulkes in public by a man wearing a keffiyeh is not related to subscribing to a specific ideology
The keffiyeh bit reads as really suspect (not saying the student was lying—mistakes are common in these situations) given all the other details of that incident I can find in other sources covering this. That claim appears to be the only connection to the pro-Palestine movement of the attack by a 52 year old white townie whose mugshot reads "homeless"—all of which paints a very different picture.
Maybe, I actually believe that the many instances of obvious non college participants does not cast these protestors in a good light
In any case, another example, A US court ruled an organized attack by a leftist group on Jews by physically blocking them from entering the campus if they refused to declare they agree with the "leftist" group
I believe there's ample evidence that campus life in many american universities was hostile to many jews, and it is enough to watch Claudine Gay congressional hearing to understand they were reluctant to do anything about it
> Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel
So, just to be clear, it was because they were pro-Israel, and not because they were Jewish.
If it was because they were Jewish, Jewish students that oppose Israeli occupation wouldn’t be allowed through.
Conflating the Jewish identity with support for Israel is a subtle ideological trick, one that Jewish antizionists consider to be antisemitic.
I know that Jewish people are attacked by antisemites. No one is questioning that Jews face race-based hatred, just like Muslims do. Especially after 9/11, Muslims face a lot of antimuslim sentiment here.
I am questioning the notion that leftist groups on universities are doing antimuslim or antijewish activities.
The article you linked writes this about the perpetrator of the attack you're referencing here: "The man, whom police later identified as Jarrett Buba, a 52-year-old white man from Pittsburgh"
That doesn't really sound like a leftist student protestor to me. I was told that leftist student protestors are attacking people based solely on their ethnicity, so I'd like some evidence of this.
Reading this without a side, all they're asking you is to prove what you said, which is that leftist student groups are being racist/violent/antisemitic in an organized way.
You haven't shown any evidence to support your notion that "both sides the same" in regards to left/liberals banding together to promote their hateful ways.
There is, however, widespread and constant organization on the right to enact hateful/racist/antisemitic rhetoric. One can just go to foxnews for that.
Your argument is weird and I think the majority of people wouldn't buy it.
I don't think it really matters if it was organized based on hate for a specific ethnicity, I think for one that the western tradition of antisemitism is so embedded in the culture it is still pretty rampant, but racism is hard to prove today when everyone is disingenuous about it.
What actually matters is that some of the same groups that organized these protests celebrated the massacres in october right afterwards (google SJP october 7). When a student organization supports a massacre that kills a thousand civilians with the added atrocities or further calls for genocide of that group (but only in Israel!), obviously members of that ethnicity will feel threatened
Is that worth restricting free speech for? that's a different question, but the protests could have been done in a less restrictive way for other students and when you compare it to some of the more extreme cases of Title IX investigations, and university administrators saying that calls for genocide of jews is not violations of Harvard policies, you have to ask yourself is free speech really the issue
The claim was "Organized groups of Lefists and Muslims in the US became increasingly violent and started to attack a group of people based on their ethnicity."
I asked for evidence. It has devolved into the message you just wrote, which still does not supply evidence that "Organized groups of Lefists and Muslims in the US became increasingly violent and started to attack a group of people based on their ethnicity."
If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
Well one thing is for sure: it's not a coincidence that after they determined that it was impossible to get him back, they've changed the narrative to "no mistake was made" (and begun throwing around the magic word "terrorist" which justifies all sorts of things).
> after they determined that it was impossible to get him back
This phrasing buys into the Trump admin's narrative.
They did not determine that it was impossible to get him back. They have chosen to not pursue it. They refuse to define the agreement between the US and El Salvador sufficiently for anyone to know what is or is not possible through that path. They also seem to refuse to use political or financial influence to go beyond whatever that agreement may define.
If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
No society is free where government makes one person's liberty depend upon the arbitrary will of another. Dictatorships have done this since time immemorial. They do now. Russian laws of 1934 authorized the People's Commissariat to imprison, banish and exile Russian citizens as well as "foreign subjects who are socially dangerous."' Hitler's secret police were given like powers. German courts were forbidden to make any inquiry whatever as to the information on which the police acted. Our Bill of Rights was written to prevent such oppressive practices. Under it this Nation has fostered and protected individual freedom.
The Founders abhorred arbitrary one-man imprisonments. Their belief was--our constitutional principles are-that no person of any faith, rich or poor, high or low, native or foreigner, white or colored, can have his life, liberty or property taken "without due process of law." This means to me that neither the federal police nor federal prosecutors nor any other governmental official, whatever his title, can put or keep people in prison without accountability to courts of justice. It means that individual liberty is too highly prized in this country to allow executive officials to imprison and hold people on the basis of information kept secret from courts. It means that Mezei should not be deprived of his liberty indefinitely except as the result of a fair open court hearing in which evidence is appraised by the court, not by the prosecutor
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.
Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.
Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
Respect for rule of law and democratic norms. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
As soon as you carve out exceptions for who should and shouldn't have their basic rights, you've lost the plot. Someone with a little bit of authority only needs to claim that you are a part of that group that shouldn't have their rights, and then you get to experience a flight to El Salvador wondering where it all went wrong.
Question for you - if you don't exercise due process, how do you know if any individual is one of those 10 million you speak of, or someone who is here legally, or for that matter, a citizen?
How do you exercise due process on the 10 million people imported into the country over the last 4-5 years?
The court system simply isn't built for it, nor the detainment facilities to house them while the courts take months to process each person. The housing market is already under too much stress and low cost housing and free housing has gone to them instead of citizens who were already here and in need.
...?
The same way you exercise it for 320 million other people. The same way it has been exercised for every person who immigrated to American soil. Including your ancestors.
Let's be clear about what you're actually saying and you're advocating for, you are advocating for the suspension of due process and fundamental rights to an entire class of human beings you see as the other.
If history has taught us anything, the definition of who and what is other changes over time. One day, you too shall be the other. And that day you will beg for the due process and fundamental rights you wish to deprive these people.
When the Benjamin Franklin said, "... if you can keep it." This type of thought process is precisely what he meant.
Just to be clear, you are suggesting that it is fine to kidnap and send American citizens, ANY AMERICAN CITIZEN, to foreign prisons. They could come take you or any family member for any reason, and all they have to say is they thought you are a dangerous gang member. They don't even have to say anything! Once you are on that plane, it is a black hole, and they are grinning about the fact that you can't do a thing about it. That is why we have due process. This isn't about immigrants or cheap labor or anything. This is about disappearing political enemies for any reason. Flick off a Tesla driver? Gulag. Post on facebook that maybe we should be nice to gay people? Gulag. Trying to enter the USA on vacation with too much melanin? Guess what, gulag.
You realize that the 'First They Came' poem was literally targeted towards people like you, specifically? By the time it happens to you, it'll be too late.
If you want to reverse exploitation of cheap labor I suggest you turn to strategies which do not treat human beings like cattle or some kind of infestation to be shipped en mass elsewhere.
An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage, eliminating the benefits of bringing in illegal labor and maintaining a humane society. Furthermore, we should probably only trade with countries which have equal labor protections as our own, so as to ensure that jobs aren't offshored to save money, at least at the expense of human rights.
I'm sorry, I just can't buy that "treat a bunch of people like animals" is the humanist, labor friendly, perspective.
>An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage
Do you think that the law has a cut-out to allow for paying illegal immigrants less than minimum wage? This is like solving the murder rate by making murder illegal -- it's already illegal to employ these people and pay them below minimum wage.
Yeah, but maybe we should deploy the national guard to make sure its happening. Even that would be a better use of our resources than rounding up a bunch of desperate people in a dragnet that might catch the innocent.
Like these people are victims of a system which is exploiting them. Treating them even more like shit isn't going to make the world a better place. Target the exploiters.
> because Wall Street wanted cheap exploitable labor
totally a ton of illegal immigrants running across the trading room floor yelling put orders and putting the real, American stock brokers out of jobs they deserve!
Bernie Sanders put it best: "open borders is a Koch Bros scheme"
You saturate the labor market with workers, it depresses wages, plain and simple. It's in the interests of shareholders to saturate the labor market to increase profits.
Companies exploiting labor to maximize profit is as old as this country itself. Slave labor, child labor, god awful minimum wages, union busting. What's your point? Why is this an issue now when it has always existed?
The point is we have laws in place to prevent it, unless you're being trafficked and forced to pay off gangs that transported you over the border, and no rights to ability to deal with an abusive situation.
The fact that you are okay with the defacto slavery/trafficking because "its always happened" says a lot, and why I generally dismiss these arguments, because at the end of the day, you just want to pay less for things, while you live in the nice part of town.
I didn't say I was ok with anything, don't put words in my mouth. I was asking why the thing that has always existed is a big issue now. For this administration specifically, the thing that has always existed wasn't an issue that demanded these actions the last time they were in office, just 4 short years ago. See what I'm pointing out? There are other reasons that things are being done.
>For this administration specifically, the thing that has always existed wasn't an issue that demanded these actions the last time they were in office, just 4 short years ago
Immigration and border security were maybe the #1 policy front for Trump in 2016 -- am I missing something here?
> The point is we have laws in place to prevent it
And the current administration is flagrantly violating and ignoring the laws and the courts of our country. What is the point of laws if they're not followed? What is the point of your argument saying we have laws in place if laws no longer matter?
the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
And University of Washington and University of California on the west coast, although he's not directly threatening them. Rather, his HHS appointment has just quietly pulled all of the funding for their medical and biological research programs.
> How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling LLP, and Elias Law Group are fighting Trump's executive order. Those are 3 of the biggest law firms in the US. As far as I know only two major firms have made deals with Trump while many are sitting quiet but not everyone is cowering.
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
It would have been water under the bridge if him and his cronies all got perpetuity starting jan 7th and we never heard of them ever again. Instead the dems chose a demonstration of weakness, and showed that an attempt on our democracy would be punished by a strong worded reprimand, at best.
Plenty of blame to go around including for the Democrats.
Responsibility for Merrick Garland's failure to adequately pursue Trump lies at Joe Biden's feet and will likely be the thing he is remembered for most in the history books* despite the fact that he had some decent domestic policy (and some horrific foreign policy).
* (assuming we work our way out of the current mess, if we don't he will be remembered for far worse things given that he's Trump's reflexive whipping boy despite the fact that it makes Trump look weak to keep droning on about Biden)
> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
I think people frequently forget that the North didn't actually have the firepower to stamp out the ideology.
Like any ideology, you can't actually destroy it with force any other way than burning books and, eventually, men.
And whether or not that would have been wise: the war was extremely costly for the North and there was a non-zero chance that if they started dropping every third Southerner from the gallows the federal government would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the survivors on both sides of the Mason-Dixon and that'd be it.
The good things (and the promises of more) are what make them compelling for a while. Fascism is appealing because top-down directives from an absolute leader can work… for a bit.
Eventually you run out of the low hanging fruit that can be messed with by executive fiat, and then you have to find enemies to blame.
Apologies. Did by no means try to mean it as a compliment to the Nazis - I just intended it as a comparison to help explain the justification at the time.
Nope, it didn't. The Nazis started a war economy almost immediately and yes, they hiked employment, but the Nazi economy was boom or bust. They couldn't sustain it long term without the war.
The nazis just robbed minorities and used slave Labour to prop up their economy and rich certain people/ethnicities
Which, again, is a parallel to Trump. If the peoll,e he deports to El Salavdor start to have their assets taken by the state/their neighbours/the people that dobbed them in, good luck.
I was speaking in probabilities, not making a judgment myself (I wouldn't be qualified to do so anyway). Numerous mental health professionals have made the assertion that he is, and he has a family history of it, so at the very least it can't reasonably be claimed with 100% certainty that he's not in the early-to-mid stages of dementia.
Furthermore, my statement was very clearly presented as a massive stretch in the first place; noting that it might slightly increase the chance that he'll be unable to make an attempt at a third term (even if by 0.01%). Sometimes squinting hard enough that the resulting bokeh resemble a silver lining is all you can do to muster hope.
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
I get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
So you're fine with them arresting dissenters as long as you disagree with the dissenters? That's fairly antithetical to the ideas expressed in the US constitution.
I'm fine with stopping the flow of federal money to people who hate me in particular and who take a salary to convince others to do so too. Those who defend the conduct of universities need to pause and consider that the public has noticed the radicalization of academia, despises it, and will support state action to reverse it.
Who hates you in particular? What do you mean by that? Also, that's fine to have a conversation about funding, but it's fairly different from arrests, deportations, and shipping individuals to foreign prisons. Rather motte and bailey to earlier suggest that the government was going to go "Henry VII" on universities, and then say that you just want to change funding. These are very different positions.
Well you claimed they are violating "the fourteenth amendment" which hardly makes sense. How could they be doing that? Is Harvard a Government agency? A state unto itself?
Can you please elaborate on the “radicalization” of academia? What “radical” actions have they been taking, exactly? And are these actions pervasive or situational?
Yes we all know what good defenders of truth and knowledge the Trump administration is. Surely the same people who seem to have made a habit of causing constitutional crises and have directly challenged the 1st, 5th and 14th amendment have our best interest at heart.
If you really believe that then I don't know what to tell you. You've been successfully brainwashed. I hope one day you're able to hold a 5 minutes conversation with an actual student and clear that bullshit out of your head.
The arabs of the Abbasid Caliphate braided a rope by unifying Greek, Babylonian, and Indian mathematical and scientific works after translating original works into Arabic and extending them.
Since my example was apparently poorly chosen due to my own ignorance, and you're finding it worthwhile to have this discussion, I'll conclude that studying mathematical history ("decolonizing mathematics") is useful.
Well you do have a point. It would be absurd. Just like the opposite. Both decolonizing and "further" colonizing maths makes no sense and is a waste of time at best...
You should really read those articles that you linked instead of ignorantly pointing at them in outrage, against something you clearly never engaged with other than through conservative media. At least read the Nature one, damn. It's directly addressed to people like you, who might think they have issues with this stuff, for reasons.
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
It's dangerous because of post colonialism and earlier post structuralism is in its basis.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
> *At least read the Nature one, damn.* ~ @thrance
> *I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.* ~ @ConspiracyFact
> *Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?* ~ @myself
Do you have _ any _ meaningful critique of the contents of, say, maths historian George Joseph’s book The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1991) ?
This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
I read the Nature article, and I read the seminal work on the subject Orientalism by Said. The context of the article is post-colonialism, a very established philosophical movement. This is shown when they mention whether mathematics is socially constructed and in the actual title "decolonization". I then proceeded to criticize that movement and explain why it is a problem for mathematics.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
What? Have you really read the Nature article? You're talking absolute nonsense here. No one is out to redefine mathematics, fuck!
You want real politicization of science? Check out the GOP's pomicies. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to foreign scientists for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
75% of scientists that ever published in Nature are now considering leaving the US [1] from fear of the administration. Is that not a concern to you?
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
Fair enough, I am simply baffled that some people can still believe the threat to science comes from the left in the face of an overwhelming and unprecendented anti-science crusade from the right. Now I wonder what the current administration would need to do for you to change your mind. Behead scientists? They're already detaining them, so that's the next logical step.
You're beyond saving then, if basic historical research is "dangerous nonsense". What's the risk there? Discovering a theorem was known at an earlier point in history? Big whoop.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
I agree, each UK citizen is infused with the original sin of being a colonizer and their opinion should be discarded until they purge this sin from their bodies through appropriate cleansing rituals.
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
Goodness gracious. Invoking religious self-harm imagery in response to mild criticism feels wildly out of pocket. Do you genuinely think anti-colonial activism demands this or anything even resembling this of post-colonial states?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Do you not find it out of pocket that you made a judgement about the validity of someone's opinion based on their (not even birth) nationality? Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
> Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
I'm not sure. They did supposedly organized "Decolonization in Mathematics" conference. I have no particular interest in figuring out what that means exactly on a non superficial level because it would be a waste of time.
I googled the term you put in quotes and found a lovely article in Nature that seems to indicate that it's mostly about correcting common lies in Mathematics history.
""
Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1)
""
or:
""
It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2)
""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
It's significant because we already have patterns of thought where we credit civilization and such to white people and it causes problems.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
I agree - trying to show that other people may have discovered things that we believe we did exclusively is abhorrent and those people deserve all the sanctions that we can impose on them.
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.
You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.
You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.
Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.
I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.
Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.
Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.
I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.
I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.
The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.
Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.
In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
> universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds
Agree. I don’t think they should accept federal funds to the extent that they do. Maybe it’s time for elite institutions to get past the 70s camp era and start behaving (and wielding the power of) being elite.
It’s current year. They might hobble along for a few years without federal funding but they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions.
> they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions
Why? The funding chased their reputations during the world wars. There are plenty of ways of collaborating on expensive research facilities with the federal government while keeping a boundary between church and state within the elite halls.
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
> there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population
Not in any meaningful way. And not in a way that would have mattered.
The elite universities got into this hole by trying to court pedestrian approval. Trump is at war with the professional managerial class, not the elites. Harvard’s brand remains unimpeached among the latter. Return to serving that group and ignore the broader population.
$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
Is there any evidence that we've been "blindly" pumping money into academia? Funding agencies are part of the federal budget and don't just get everything they ask for. Then those agencies have all sorts of review procedures for choosing grant awardees.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa
edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument isn't good
When the guy lifting your TV starts quoting Marx at you, it's not actually an invitation to engage in philosophical discourse, and no amount of sound economic reasoning is getting your TV back.
The Trump administration is not, has not, and will not be arguing in good faith. Stop pretending we're working collaboratively towards a shared future - they're either stealing your television or stealing your neighbor's television, and attempts to interrogate the merits of their television relocation policy aren't shedding any actual light to the situation.
@TimorousBestie (I can't reply inline due to comment depth)
I didn't say fund harvard xor fund local schools, I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets. The comment I'm replying to is who implies I must support harvard funding xor I must support trump, "the people who want to hurt harvard", I don't think that's true. I'm allowed to think federal funds for academia are too high and also think Trump is bad for the country
A place that has all the facilities, faculty and pedigree to pull some of the best researchers from all over the world. It's in fact crazy that Harvard, or any R1 university, wouldn't get a large amount of research dollars from the federal government.
Sure, but you can understand the perspective of someone growing up with zero access to those resources and lives in a rural part of the country hearing your argument and then voting for someone like trump, I would argue that sentiment is one of the forces driving regular people away from democrats and lost them the election in 2024, it is an "ivory tower" perspective and regular americans don't buy it (even if it's true that harvard is a great investment for public money)
I agree the democrats have terrible messaging, but what would really help 'regular' Americans is universal healthcare, free education, and maybe even UBI. As departments get DOGE'd a lot of 'regular' Americans are starting to find out where a lot of federal money goes, to those rural parts of the country.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.
The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
> More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
1) Granting that giving more power to tenured professors would be a good thing, in what way is it legal, wise, or good for the executive branch to achieve this in the absence of any law by strong arming individual private institutions that it has decided to target on ad hoc basis?
2) You are reading selectively, it says "fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter" [emphasis mine]. So in other words, it is a requirement that the university give power to those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration. This is a very clear and alarming violation of the first amendment.
In toto, the letter is an attempt to impose ideological reform in a private institution, and is part of a wider attempt by the current administration to browbeat or subvert every institution that might act to curtail (or even speak out against) its actions.
I read "the changes indicated in this letter" to mean "removing power from non academic activists"
While I kinda agree that can also be taken to mean "those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration", it still means those calling the shots are the non academic activists not aligned with an ideology of promoting academic merit....
That sentence (from the letter) makes no sense. An activist isn't someone with power to do something. If they had that power, they wouldn't be advocating it, they would do it.
What that insisting the University do is shut down people talking and protesting with viewpoints they disagree with. They list those viewpoints in their letter: "..., Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild". The pro Israeli protests that happened aren't mentioned. If they get away with this, I'm sure a lot more viewpoints will follow.
This isn't about powers. It's about controlling what people can and can not say on a University campus.
>An activist isn't someone with power to do something
Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
> Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
Nope. They literally spell out the activity they want banned in their letter. Have you read it? LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
Yes, discontinuation of DEI is one thing they are asking for. But they aren't (yet) the calling for banning "hispanic homosexuals" or any other DEI group on campus. They aren't asking for discussions about them to be banned. That would be a little awkward, as I'm sure they warn to encourage discussions disparaging them. Nowhere in the section on dismantling DEI do they use the term activists.
Kicking out activists is another thing they are asking for, in a different section. They list the sorts of activists they want kicked out. Right now it's a short list that boils down to protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza. DEI is not mentioned anywhere in the section, nor are any of the groups DEI typically encompasses. I have no doubt that if Harvard did acquiesce the list will be expanded to everything the administration disagrees with - for example protesting about abolishing DEI. But that's for the future.
It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues they want dealt with in different ways. One is a policy they want dropped, the other is a group they want shut down. What is not so clear is why you are so keen to conflate the two issues. Are you keen to get "hispanic homosexuals", and any other sub-group you don't like banned from campuses?
Just for clarity, do I have this right: You think people who protest Israel’s handing of Gaza are mostly people favoured by DEI, you think "hispanic homosexuals" are favoured by DEI at Harvard, and you think someone who is a "hispanic homosexual" and others that fall under DEI invariably have zero academic credibility?
I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class are mostly the same racist dumbasses that think being black or hispanic or sexually deviant automatically qualifies you for additional tax payer funds.
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
that's 10 cents per american (still crazy!), but not $30, and $30 is only for Harvard much less how much federal funds go to other schools
Obviously I'd rather that 10 cents go to something productive, but on the national stage trump golfing feels like just a distraction from much more important topics
> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
Small towns overwhelmingly get more federal dollars than they put in. Big cities subsidize small towns.
>it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Because Americans in small towns overwhelmingly vote for people who lower taxes for rich people and promise not reduce the scope of government. Instead of blaming Harvard, why don't you ask your neighbors why they like to vote for people who refuse to help them?
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Are there world-class research facilities in your small town? Why would it be hard for you to see it makes sense for billions to be spent on research at world-class facilities with world-class scientists?
FWIW, chances are whatever local state university nearby also receives quite a bit from federal grants as well. But it probably scales based on the research facilities and staff actually there. Do you think it would be better management of federal resources to instead spend the same amount at facilities that don't do nearly as impactful or nearly as much research?
These are grants for specific research. Researchers put together proposals to study things, the federal government decides that's something worth looking into, and funding gets cut (simplified). Harvard has a lot of people doing pretty fancy research, so it makes sense they'd have a lot of grant proposals requiring fancy and expensive things. Complain to your state legislature for not focusing on making your local university a research university if you feel your area should be getting more of these grants. But let me guess, you probably voted for people who argued for lower taxes. Gee, I wonder what they found to cut...
And FWIW the federal government spends a bunch on a lot of small-town America. FEMA grants for emergency preparedness comes to mind. A higher percentage of populations of small-town America live off federal aid programs. Small-town America also sees more of its school funding from federal sources and grants.
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
The democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare and free higher education it feels like forever. UBI has even come up a few times. Nothing that Trump is doing is for anyone but himself and his rich friends.
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.
Even if Harvard wanted to comply with the government letter, it's full of so many non-sequiturs and self-conflictions that it reads more like a piece of satire:
> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity
> In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023
> Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming
The letter is a complete joke. Giving it any sort of compliance would be giving validation to a set of rules that are literally impossible to follow by design. There is literally nothing Harvard could do to not be in trouble later.
Also buried in the letter is this gem:
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
This is Maoist-style social reform through and through.
Ah yes I've heard of that, it's one of the "Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias" which most fuels antisemitic harassment and reflects ideological capture!
It seems like the government has a soft Monopsony. There are many universities willing to sell research, but the government is the biggest buyer and controls the research grant market
Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.
When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.
Research is often (usually?) the property of the host university, though. Yeah labs are independently managed but the university is in at least one sense, and imo many more, still the institution both doing and selling the work
By default, research belongs to the researchers. That's an essential part of academic freedom. The main exceptions are research funded by grants and contracts that specify otherwise, and when you start looking for patents and other commercialization opportunities.
In other words, the university may have some property rights to your work if you deal too closely with for-profit businesses or national security interests. But if you are just doing normal research with normal grants, you'll probably never see those exceptions in your career.
This isn't close to a monopsony but it's more directionally correct than it is wrong. Keep in mind research institutes can be funded by private foundations, state and local governments, industry (e.g. pharma), venture, or even foreign governments. The federal government is undoubtedly the largest buyer though. I do think there are other motivations to rely primarily on federal grants beyond number of dollars. In particular, funding sources other than federal grant money is often looked down on from an academic prestige perspective. Until now federal money came with very few strings attached compared to the perceived loss of objectivity that could occur when receiving money from other sources. The current situation may alter or relax the prevailing view on which sources of research money are perceived of as potentially compromising.
It's not a very good analogy because federally-funded research is a public investment, a public good like roads. The research is supported by the public (the government) and becomes available for anyone to use, learn from, and build off of. And in fact most successful U.S. business are built on the backs of technological innovation that was originally funded by the government, or at the very least, innovation from PhD's whose educations were largely federally funded. (Disclaimer: federally funded researcher)
You couldn't replace that with a private company "buying" research and expect the same societal benefits.
Anyone whose research is profitable is free to work for a private entity. The government is a "monopsony" in "buying" unprofitable research the same way it's a "monopsony" subsidizing any industry that would otherwise fail in a free market. That is not typically how the concept of monopsony is meant.
The world should never forgive Americans for what they let the man they call their president get away with. Sending people to concentration camps, among many other despicable acts. "Wir haben es nicht gewußt".
Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.
This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.
I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.
However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.
> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.
According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.
Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.
Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.
It’ll be nice if an institution finally decides to oppose some of the recent government overreach.
It’s really shocking to see an institution in our country take action that is not in its immediate financial best interest (assuming this letter translates to an action)
and they've been painting political enemies as criminals. It's pretty much the same situation as Russia/Putin but at an earlier stage of its development, and people want to avoid being the tallest grass that gets mowed.
It's good that some institutions are standing up but I don't expect it to go well for them.
He also said Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor may have committed treason for criticizing him as president after signing an executive order to investigate them.
These people (not only MAGA) perverted the very meaning of antisemitism to the point that it means nothing today. I am saying that as someone who's lost a family member to Holocaust. When I hear someone mention antisemitism today, 90% of the time it is to punish someone's views critical of Israel.
Which is, of course, deeply antisemitic of the people claiming antisemitism when they are talking about only criticism of Israel, to equate all Jewish people with the Israeli state.
When I was active on the Politics Stack Exchange site years ago I was "reported to the ADL" for merging the [jews] and [judaism] tags. Right out of the gate after I casually mentioned it in another discussion: not even a big fight about it. But the same person outright ignored the Trump-supporting holocaust denying user who harrassed a Jewish user with antisemitic slurs such (e.g. [1]).
Sadly antisemitism obviously exists, and sadly some pro-Palestinian activists have veered off into antisemitism. But the selective outrage is hard to take serious.
Remember, Caesar subjugated Gaul and killed or enslaved about a quarter of all Gauls in the process, to "protect" them from invading Germanic tribes. "Top kek", as I believe the old Latin saying goes.
> Where are the pro-Palestinian activists who are standing up for the Gazans who have the courage to risk their lives by protesting against Hamas?
If you can find me a western government or institution they should be protesting for actively collaborating with Hamas then I'll grant you that hypocrisy. They don't need to because it's already a federal crime to materially support Hamas in any way whatsoever.
If the Palestinians are risking their lives to protest against Hamas in Gaza, why can't the alleged pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate in support of this viewpoint?
> If you can find me a western government or institution they should be protesting for actively collaborating with Hamas
The BBC (which frequently quotes Hamas verbatim without attribution and which has employed many openly racist correspondents), and Associated Press (who rode with Hamas during the Oct 7 massacre). You should already be aware of this.
Governments have a monopoly on violence in exchange for protected and upholding our privileged rights. When any government start disregarding that contract, so too can the populous.
Can someone confirm that if Harvard turned down Pell Grants and Federal student support, they could admit whoever they want?
>Private clubs are generally exempt from anti-discrimination laws under certain conditions. For example, being genuinely private and not engaging in business with non-members. However, there are exceptions to these exemptions. For instance, when a club receives significant government benefits or operates as a commercial enterprise.
They could. Look up Bob Jones College or Hillsdale College, both of which operate without any federal funding. It appears that the elite universities are going to find out the same thing that the small Christian universities found out in the 1970s, which is that the federal government Can control you if they fund you. I believe Bob Jones in particular won a case in front of the Supreme Court giving them the right to racially discriminate in their admissions if they refuse to take any federal funding.
>It’s more like a patchwork of locked treasure chests, each with its own key and its own label: this one funds scholarships, that one supports cancer research, another pays for upkeep on a library.
Explain why direct donations cannot accomplish the same. I suspect that universities want endowment donations because they grow tax free.
My understanding is that a large part of endowments comes from large (really, huge) donations.
If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
It's not entirely about what the organization wants, but also what the donators/sponsors want.
>If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
You can make that restricted donation outside of the endowment. I thought endowments were for the support of students, not research.
As information, the current administration is doing similar demands to foreign universities, trying to impose the point of view of the world in a president we didn't vote for.
Here is an article about the Trump administration demands to our universities.
Wasn't Harvard's president a woman who wrote her PhD thesis on DEI? I vaguely remember the news about this (fraud or something). If this is what Harvard considers that the person for the job, I think the sense making apparatus of Harvard personnel is specifically tuned to not bend the knee in this case. The instrument would likely fail at the input validation step and not proceed to the sense making portion.
> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.
While I am not a friend of a mask ban, universities should absolutely teach their students to stay home when sick. Going to work sick is an abomination that should be rooted out. And it is a nice liberal cause too.
If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.
What if they have pollen or other allergies that masks help mitigate? What if there’s a huge forest fire that’s polluting the outside air with acrid smoke?
There are so many possible scenarios. What if the campus is infested with face-huggers from the award-winning movie Alien? What if there are still Jewish students and faculty members who need to be harassed anonymously?
I'll leave those to people more familiar with the subject. And as for the pneumonia scenario, I reiterate that the only sane course of action is to seek treatment, not to walk around public spaces, masked or not.
There really is no incentive to compromise with the Trump Admin on anything. Even if you cave, they just go for more. You need to act like a cornered animal and not expect honest negotiation.
OTOH if Trump admin WAS at all rational partners they could be extracting historic changes from these institutions. But they won’t.
This is a larger idea, just tangentially related to this particular case.
In 2011 there was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement that argued that many of the financial problems we saw in 2008 were a result of a 1% of wealthy business people who were prioritizing their own wealth over the needs of the populations of the countries they operated within. I mean, they created a financial crisis by inventing obviously risky financial assets based on peoples housing. They knew it was a house of cards that would fall in time but they did it anyway with callous disregard to the inevitable human cost.
It was in the wake of that the "wokeness" became a buzzword, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, corporate policies were amended, management teams were upended, advertising campaigns were aligned to this new focus. Women, minorities and marginalized groups were championed and ushered in to key public positions. In a brief 14 years, then entire garbage dump of modern capitalism was placed like a hot potato into the hands of a new naively optimistic crew. This coincided with huge money printing and zero percent interest rate, the likes of which we haven't seen. That new elite grew in wealth, stature and public focus. They became the face of the "system" as if they had created it instead of inheriting it.
And now that the zero interest rates are done and suddenly everyone believes in the scary size of the deficit and the ballooning debt, the people sitting in power as we are about to actually feel the crash instead of just kicking it down the road yet again, those people are the target of public ire. I actually see people in these very comments acting as if the looming crash was caused by the DEI departments which formed just a little over a decade ago.
And guess who is coming back to claim they will save us from these DEI monsters? The people who created the actual mess in the first place. Yet now, instead of calling for their heads on spikes like the public was in 2011, we are literally begging them to save us from these DEI proponents.
Our anger has been redirected away from the wealthy and towards the minorities with such skill I almost admire it. The collective anger at DEI is at such a level that we are willing to cede core rights just to damage them.
This is spot on. The US has enjoyed enormous wealth and prosperity, but it's been mostly captured by the top 1% of private individuals. The GOP has done a masterful job redirecting the blame to China, DEI, immigration, etc... when the real problem is that we have not spread around the prosperity through programs like universal healthcare, free college, and heck, even UBI.
Ooh, I am jealous. A close family member has been branded egregious by various acting members of the current administration. I guess I am going to need to up my game if I want to be able to hold my head high at family gatherings.
What jumps out at me is the paragraph: "Governance and leadership reforms." in the original letter sent by the government to the university.
The other stuff is hard to make sense of, but this part is crystal clear: The authoritarian government is asking the university to restructure itself along more authoritarian lines. ...essentially Trump wants continuity of reporting lines ultimately leading up to him, and going down to the individual faculty member, student, and foreign collaborating partner. That sort of thing could come in handy for all kinds of things in the future, not just the silly demands of the present.
The preponderance of academic and philosophical disingenuity — which could only be equally well explained by immensely subpar raw intellect (doubtful on HN) — in this very comment section perfectly illustrates why DJT was elected POTUS.
My father works for a big pharma company, which means they have to listen to the federal government or risk being shut down by the FDA (which would be easy for Trump to do).
He uses this an excuse for the company's complacency, and by extension, his own. I'm glad to see some institutions take a stand.
> As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”
This is already a shift on Harvard's part. When the ruling first came out, they announced they'd be finding ways around the ruling so they could keep doing what they'd been doing (i.e. discriminate against Asians by systematically scoring them low on "personality.")
The current administration have interrupted the pipeline of students to research - current research funded or partially funded by federal government is stopping or will be curtailed and future students will question whether is a rational decision to go into any sort of path that leads to research because it would only be stable for maybe two to three years, assuming a sane, science respecting House, Senate and President were in office and used the regular norms to pass bills and implement programs. I do not see a recovery path from this unless American public gets a similar thrashing like the Great Depression and decides to not elect nut jobs for 50 years. I keep seeing interviews with those who vote for Trump and are hurt by his tariffs or immigration changes and insisting they still support Trump. Those (mostly older) people are going to have to die of natural causes and be replaced by demographic shifts before things change, but the last election showing young men shifting to Trump and this administration trying to suppress the vote of women does not point to this.
I think it's also important to point out the auditing and spying the government is asking the universities to comply with including the whistle blower section and things like - "report all requested immigration and related
information to the United States Department of Homeland Security".
It appears that because it's easier to bully, punish and disappear individuals than an institution the Trump administration is doing everything it can to find out who these individuals are so they can be targeted.
General strike when >50% of those who voted wanted this? What world are you living in?
Edit: I stand corrected, 49.81%. It doesn't change the point much. Especially when that ~49% includes many "working class"[1] voters. Who's going to participate in this general strike? A bunch of office workers?
> Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
You're describing a coup or revolution. Isn't that highly anti-democratic considering this president just won an election? Why should the 50% be under the thumb of the 3.5%?
If the 50% can't or won't promise me that they won't ship me to El Salvador in a few years, I don't much care about abstract political principles until their power is broken.
It's a weak response, in that it accepts the Trump Administration's position on antisemitism. This is tied to the broad definition of antisemitism which includes acts by the State of Israel.[1] That definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. There's a more balanced definition called the Jerusalem Declaration here.[2][3]
This will lead to a controversial discussion, so I'll stop here, with the comment that getting involved in religious wars of other countries hasn't gone well for the US. The US has constitutional freedom of religion partly because the drafters of the constitution knew how that had gone in Europe.
"Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson
It's bad rhetoric. Using stronger, more direct language would have been much more effective at making their point and having their point reach a broader audience. We need leaders who refuse to comply with an authoritarian government and do so with proud defiance. This message was meandering and weak.
Harvard has "fuck you money". They should go ahead and make it clear that they know they have this power and are expressing it (not necessarily with the vulgarity, yet)
Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.
There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.
> I'd guess bad-to-good ratio is at least 10 to 1. Should we fix that?
Should we fix... what? Your unsubstantiated claim? You didn't even bother to do napkin math about it, you just asked a bunch of leading questions and then claimed inaction by the masses.
The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.
Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.
Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?
Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.
Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.
Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.
The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.
It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.
Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.
As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.
I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.
It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).
Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]
Do you have money in the bank? Do you have income? If so, you don't really need any help from the government. If you value your personal independence so much, then cut the cord.
Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.
Sure, that's the narrative to manufacture consent from the naive, but I don't buy it at all. Perhaps for very small fledgling universities that makes partial sense; even then I am skeptical. For Harvard, definitely not.
At very least, if your endowment is growing on an inflation-adjusted basis, it does not appear to me that you need further subsidies; your primary business is to be an hedge fund and the treasury of an empire, not education for the masses. Gains should be taxed like a hedge fund at that point.
If you want to subsidize education as a society, there are much better ways: fund research directly and cut through the indirect cost crap (which was popular among academics up until the moment the current administration started advocating for it).
> Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
I agree. Gulf monarchies will probably come in a give even more billions to these institutions anyway to make up for the losses. No strings attached of course...
Harvard probably already secured some more funding from Qatar and what not.
Trump is about making money for himself so he can boast. He doesn't care about this. I wonder who's really calling the shots, because, this is just the beginning.
At the same time, he feels he can (or he's testing) ignoring court orders. Where this meets in the middle will not be a good place.
Soooo you want freedom of speech but if you don't like what someone else is doing, you want to censor them?
And even the reps don't mind this?
How hypocratic do you have to be to want to get rid of the 'Wokeshit' which is freespeech while also advocating for free speech?
Btw. the real term for what type of speech radicals and nazis is abusive speech and yes there are good reasons why abusive speech should lead to consequences
They recently closed their Middle Eastern studies department. Absolutely insane tbh. Imagine closing a center of Asian or African studies because the president wants to make his Jewish daughter and some rich donors of his happy. How can we be okay with any of this. They caved there. The only reasoning for this response is it infringes on their sovereignty. But make no mistake, every institution rolled back DEI and other initiatives for this admin. Hoping Alan will do what is right. Reinstate that department. Double down on fighting the admin in court. America will not be held hostage by a wanna-be autocrat, a foreign power or those who swear allegiance to Isra-el over American ideals and education in these United States. Silencing dissent in institutions of learning is tyrannical.
> Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
So alongside antisemitism, The other demand is for changes in intellect. For some reason this reeks of Christian evangelical movement to purge wokism and anti-Zionism, both of which have run counter to evangelical dogma.
Except homeland has been Egypt before it was Palestine. And Jews lived in both places peacefully after the Arabs established peace.
Antisemitism is not what you want to make it out to be. It is as much a hatred against Arabs as it is against Jews, as Zionist Christians want to fill the land with Jews just so the end of the world is near, without any consideration for what happens to the Arab natives of the region.
Arabs never ‘established peace’ - historians largely agree that Islam was spread through conquest. Under Arab colonisation Jewish people either lived as Dhimmis, which are second class citizens, or were subject to outright violence (you can find many incidences of this before 1948), or both.
Yes, peace happens after conquest. Colonization never occurred. And if you want to know what happened to the Jews after Arabs conquered, listen to this historian speak: https://youtu.be/9bBlv0hfj5c?si=JVi7tMYTPwBI97gT
No, it doesn’t. This is discussed in the comment you responded to.
To deny the Arab colonisation of the middle east is simultaneously hilarious and disgusting, the one does see this occasionally amongst arab nationalists that have recently infiltrated the American left and caused the issues at Harvard and elsewhere.
You can’t block anyone on here. And you can’t be here to argue if you don’t make an argument. And you can’t attack anyone just because they don’t agree with you. Roy is a historian unlike yourself.
I could knock anything from Ray from Austin Community College out of the park. His video on the creation of Israel is full of falsehoods that are easily proven wrong, that's where I recognised him from. If he's an historian, I am too.
Which reminds me I need to click the block button.
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.
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.”
Harvard isn't the first to be targeted, nor will they be the last.
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
> What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
Amongst others, legacy admissions and discrimination against Jews, Catholics and non-whites. Let’s not pretend that Harvard’s admissions process, or American society more generally, was some kind of perfect meritocracy in 1925.
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.
A university research lab is controlled by usually one professor or a very small number of professors. They can decide to move to another university and take the lab with them.
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.
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.
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.
Universities and colleges are hotbeds of political protest. Take young people with poor impulse control, expose them to education and political literature, and let them freely associate (e.g. form student groups). They're going to question authority and government policy, often in an unruly manner. That's just how it goes. The thing is, when students are right, protests often spread to the rest of the population. That's why the letter makes explicit a concern about non-students being invited onto campus. The last thing any administration wants is for student groups to spark a big protest that sticks around for a bit and pulls in protesters from off-campus. That stuff will make the news every time!
Most governments recognize that large protests can influence public opinion against them. If you let such a protest occur and do nothing to satisfy the demands of the protesters, then things can get ugly quick. Freedom of speech and association are powerful things! There's not much an open, democratic government can do except respond to protests by addressing the underlying issues or crush the protest and hope that the public decides the protesters were wrong. What the Trump administration is trying to do here is reduce their risk by infringing on freedom of speech and association. It's fascist or totalitarian. Take your pick.
As for their claims that they're trying to "unwind enforced ideological conformity"... You can't do that by enforcing conformity to a different ideology, as they are attempting here. This is a case where you should pay less attention to words and more to actions.
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.
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.
> For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities
yep. stop doing that. your university is nearly half a millennium old, and everything from the last century will be a footnote. you are a networking ground for upper class society, not an upwards mobility machine for the plebians. just go back to your roots and you won't have any of these issues.
> These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history.
privately fund it now that its a proven method. this obviously won't be controversial in the future. if its economically impossible then it won't happen, the end.
This is welcome change, to they defend admisions discrimination on race, sex is beyond me.
They will fold, if federal funding is not enough, they will find other pressure points.
I think the only way for the universities to escape this blackmail trap is to bind together in their response, refuting the Trump's claims that they're not doing enough to "stop antisemitism" (obviously a cover chosen by the WH because it immediately gathers public sympathy), and reject Trump's demands. If they cave in now, it will be used against them again.
Take the haircut and wait for either the next presidential elections, or maybe midterms if the GOP gets pummeled because of this and starts standing up to Trump. One thing we've seen about Trump is that he fairly easily reverses course when the right pressure is applied.
Granted Harvard's in an easier place than most, but I predict Columbia will come to seriously regret their decision.
So, many of these universities were taken over in positions of power by people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries. They did this while describing themselves as open-minded institutions commited to everyone's success.
In the degree programs, they forced these beliefs on students in "diversity" classes, rewarded those on their side, and canceled or limited people with differing views. Those who make it through the process are more likely to force it on others in government and business, which they often do. Worse, being federally funded means taxpayers are paying for students' indoctrination in intersectionality and systematically discrimination it claimed to oppose.
Yeah, I want their funding cut entirely since theyre already rich as can be. I also would like to see those running it take it back to what it used to be. That's a Christian school balancing character and intellectual education. Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture. That is worth federal funding.
On top of it, how about these schools with billions in endowments put their money where their mouth is on social issues and start funding high-quality, community colleges and trade schools and Udemy-like programs everywhere? Why do they talk so much and take in so much money but do so little? (Credit to MIT for EdX and Harvard for its open courses.)
> people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries
Just like all people connecting to "Kevin Bacon", and all Wikipedia pages first links connecting to "Philosophy", every idea can be connected to mass murder if you're willing to manufacture enough links.
"Intersectionality" is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, idea. It promotes nothing.
More like it's two philosophies with similar elements originating from places where both were taught. In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
There's also large groups pushing this stuff in businesses, forcing it on all employees, under the banner of ESG. That includes Blackrock and World Economic Forum. There's billions of dollars behind forcing thus stuff on America. Yet, we still see voters rebelling against it, like by electing Trump, because they don't want our country to keep being ruined.
> In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
I think it is speculative. I haven't seen this happen beyond a small number of isolated cases, that generally are met poorly within the organization where it happens.
To my observation the association between "believing that intersectionality accurately describes the world today" and "attempting to force others to believe similarly", is about as strong as the association between "frequently voting Republican in the US since 2016", and "attempting to carry out a mass shooting".
Could you describe what you believe "intersectionality" to mean, as a philosophy?
"Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture."
...before "that is worth federal funding."
Such cherry picking in ways that misrepresent what is said, also common in liberal media, is one reason distrust in liberal politics is at an all-time high. Put the truth of what others said side by side with your own position, like I mentioned intersectionality with my counterpoint. See if your ideas stand up to scrutiny.
It's really not necessary since you had already invoked the notion that separation of Church and State isn't particularly important to your evaluation of what the government should fund. Everything else sort of falls by the wayside.
We can debate about specific requests from the Trump administration, but it is pretty clear that Harvard has been horrible. The previous administrations completely failed to fix it.
- Harvard has been discriminating against Whites and Asians in admissions for decades.
- Harvard deliberately refused to protect Jewish students against intimidation and harassment. Students camped in school property for weeks against Harvard's official rules. They chanted that they would bring islamic terrorism to America ("intifada, intifada, coming to America"), established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews, and remained there for almost a month while the school simply refused to remove them. [1]
- Harvard's president stated that calling for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily constitute harassment. This is particularly bizarre when contrasted to Harvard's approach to other groups, like when it considers "misgendering" of trans individuals to be harassment.
Being anti-Israel should not be conflated with being antisemitic. After all, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for a reason.
Trump is using “antisemitism” as cover for the imposition of authoritarianism. This comes from Putin's playbook. Putin used denazification as an excuse for invading Ukraine.
Trump himself has espoused antisemitism from time to time, see below.
An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” are still on the shelves but “Memorializing the Holocaust” was removed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/naval-academy...
If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass. Hamas engaged in terrorism, but Israel's response was out of proportion. Saying that aloud doesn't make one antisemitic. The ICC and UN are not antisemitic organizations for ordering arrest of Netanyahu and condemning Israel's use of excessive force.
What would have been a proportional response? Is it a numbers game? lets do 2x? 5x? 10x?
In the gilad shalit deal Palestinians established the proportion of 1 Israeli to 1027 Palestinians.
So on Oct 7 - 1,195 were murdered, by your standards Israel should have killed 1,227,265 Palestinians.
First of all, the proportional response should be delivered directly to the source: Iran. There are lots of bad guys in Gaza, but there are lots of innocent people too. Indiscriminately killing everyone is not the solution.
You still didn't define what's the proportional response.
Come on armchair commander show us your battle plans for Iran. Do we nuke it? Do we destroy all the dams? Do we hit just the nuclear facilities? Or do we eliminate their oil industry? Maybe just all the military bases, oh we forgot all the subterrains rocket facilities, do you want to invade Iraq style?
If the IDF would have Indiscriminately killing people then the number would have been 10x, and you know it.
A) It's hard to argue that the war in Gaza was indiscriminate when the IDF achieved the highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio in the history of urban combat, despite Hamas hiding in tunnels underneath population centers.
B) When soldiers flood across your border from a neighboring polity by the thousands, it would be an abdication of sovereignty not to defend against that immediate threat, regardless of the enemy's funding sources.
> If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass.
I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
> but Israel's response was out of proportion
Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
> when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
And where it gets disturbing is when you make the claim of different standard without any evidence, and launch accusations of antisemitism.
Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas. As of January 2025, at least 46,707 Palestinians have been reported killed, including about 18,000 children. Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas, but those 18,000 children were not Hamas.
Well I obviously don't believe they are committing genocide.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why are there more Gazans alive today than this time two years ago? Israel could turn Gaza into a parking lot overnight; why didn't they?
Please backup your claim of more Gazans alive today. Gaza is a parking lot. In fact it is worse than a parking lot... it is not possible to park many cars there because of all the fallen buildings. (I am going by what I see on TV... not a single building is seen still left standing.)
Unless there have been zero births since this article was published, even if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value, the population has increased since the start of the war. Of course, there is reason to suspect the Hamas figures, since they have been systematically manipulated, don't distinguish combatant deaths, don't separate out deaths from natural causes, and don't call out deaths caused by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993 (article is a few months old but this is still true). And even outside of these camps, 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza despite serving as terror HQ.
This is not what the article says at all. An in any case, if the IDF knew where the hostages were held, why wouldn't they surround these areas and liberate them, instead of terrorizing civilians over and over again on all the territory?
> if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value
Looking at the following:
* the scale of destruction visible on satellite images, drone footage - shown by both parties in the conflict
* the quantity of bombs (29,000+ air-dropped bombs according to US intelligence, plus the tank and artillery ammunition)
* the population density in the whole Gaza strip
* the lack of resources and safety to rescue people and recover bodies from under the rubble after bombing
* the lack of food, water, medical supplies, medical staff, ambulances
Can we realistically think that the number of casualties could be that low?
This is the second time you write a comment where you argue that stable birthrate/population numbers contradict genocide.
The ICC issued a warrant for Netanyahu on (among others) the grounds of using starvation as a method of warfare [0]. Starvation as a method of warfare is consistent with genocide [1]. These are international legal facts/definitions.
1) Hamas run health ministry numbers are not trustworthy
2) You do know that Hamas uses children soldiers right?
3) Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas true, but most of them (pre war) and most west bank Palestinians (currently) support them
4) If Egypt allowed non combatants to flee, they would be safe, however they closed the door or asked 1000s of dollars in bribes, but then they couldn't be used against Israel like the Arab nations always do.
>I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
What different standard is being applied?
>Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
A proportionate response is not denying food, water, and medical aid to civilians. It's not destroying every school and hospital in the region. It's not committing genocide. You look at the situation as a zero sum game where only Israelis or Palestinians can live. Hamas is not all Palestinians and destroying their homes and families does not make them righteous or productive.
Maybe taking some effort to address the issues that have created the circumstances of the attack in the first place would be the better option. Like giving Palestinians either their own country or at least equal status in Israel. Maybe not taking their land and settling it. One cannot maintain inequality and peace. 50,000 Palestinians lost their lives for 1,000 Israelis. Does that seem proportionate to you?
1. OK, great: this is a legitimate argument against the existence of Israel. So we can then expect Israel to be the focus of 0.5% of anti-nationalist protests, since it is one of ~200 countries.
2. What is the "correct" number of fatalities when fighting a defensive war against an enemy committed to annihilating your country? And besides, even Hamas now admits that 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men.
3. I never said carte blanche; I just find it curious that people find so much time in their day to protest against Israel, but when Alawites are massacred in Syria, civilians slaughtered in Sudan, or hundreds of thousands of children starve in Yemen, nobody says "boo". Surely you value the lives of innocent Muslims everywhere the same?
> 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men
I don’t think this is the point in your favor that you think it is. “Combat-aged” excludes children and elderly, which are the most reprehensible deaths. And this means that over a quarter of combat-aged deaths were women. Women in this situation are quite unlikely to be combatants.
Certainly seems it ought not to be, but evidently the will to provide "the same protections" is lacking. The unavoidable conclusion is that antisemitism is policy even if it's not official and documented. That truly defies logic considering some of the university's brightest lights have been Jews who've made major contributions to their fields, the school and the country as a whole.
Harvard said most of the demands were not actually about antisemitism.
> Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
Israel is violent against Palestine and receive more guns, why don't these students received a few too?, they are doing the same, or the guns only come after a few thousands of killed innocents?
I've visited a handful of encampments. Super peaceful, mostly kids educating each other about colonialism and the history of Israel's occupation and apartheid.
If you're looking for violence, the attacks on the Palestine encampments at UCLA were by far the most horrific violence on campus of the last year, and that was funded by Jonathan Greenblatt (CEO of the ADL, which is a racist org)
A demand letter that said only "Harvard may not use race, gender, or national origin as criteria for admissions and hiring" would be a lot more defensible, and much harder to oppose.
But the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith. And we have seen enough already that any independent organization would be very irresponsible to assume good faith.
I would go so far as to say that any institution trying to make decisions based solely on merit is required to resist this kind of pressure very forcefully. There are many examples of the administration using "DEI" as a buzzword when firing meritorious women and minorities, all the while promoting totally meritless white men.
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.
Insane
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Insane
> reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship
Is even insane if you think about it for two seconds; nobody wants the government deciding what counts as activism and what counts as "real" scholarship. A good heuristic: do any of the proponents want a Bernie Sanders or AOC wielding this authority?
This sounds very similar to all the DEI stuff which they didn't have an issue with before. Forcing them to not be aggressively hostile towards Republicans does not seem like an unreasonable ask.
I had to take critical race theory classes for my grad school program, I'm sure they can find a Christian to make a powerpoint on avoiding hate towards Christians.
This is all stuff which has been happening in reverse for decades. The real solution is for schools to find a funding route other than government, but until then these shinanigans have been happening for decades and this isn't suddenly "insane".
1. Universities aren't "incredibly hostile towards Republicans"
2. CRT: critical race theory is a real study. It's just understanding the historical context for the current socioeconomic landscape of America. Do you think black Americans were magically fixed after slavery ended? No? Congratulations, you support the fundamentals of CRT. It just became conservative spooky buzzword.
3. Avoiding hate towards Christians... who is out here hating Christians? This fetish for persecution is getting very strange. At absolute worst, people are asking Christians to avoid passing legislation using their religion. Which is happening at an alarming rate and should be concerning to every American who respects our Constitution!
4. "reverse"... yeah no, it's really not. Nobody has been silencing conservative voices, it's just difficult to hold a conservative voice while being in higher education. Because conservatism as an ideology is naturally opposed to higher education and new ways of thought. It's the same reason conservative pieces of media suck. Conservatism as an ideology is naturally opposed to artistic expression and radical creativity, so of course the media sucks. Nobody is doing it to them, it's just that the way they are is largely incompatible with that thing. There's other fun example of this, too. For instance, why does Christian Rock suck so bad? (Christianity and Rock as ideologies are antithetical).
I don’t care at all. For what it’s worth, yes, Harvard and other elite universities should be more welcoming to conservatives. But turning to the federal government to enforce “viewpoint diversity” is just an obviously bad idea.
I don’t want the government deciding what viewpoints need representation. And again, if you think about beyond the immediate case you may have a personal emotional investment in, I don’t think you do either.
I don’t want a future administration trying to enforce “viewpoint diversity” on oil and gas companies, investment banks, or rural family farms either, regardless of what federal contracts or subsidies they have. Exxon, Goldman Sachs, or an Iowa hog farm would be insane to submit to that.
Also, a mask ban enforced by suspension is just plain stupid. That’s not even viewpoint diversity, it’s just partisan chum, and it gives away the game on whether this exercise is in good faith.
I agree in that I'm not thrilled that federal government is enforcing viewpoints, however the original post was saying their requirements were insane and impossible to implement. The requirements laid out are very similar to prior requirements thrust upon them, the only difference is these requirements require right-wing viewpoint alignment instead of left-wing viewpoint alignment.
If you think 'viewpoint diversity' is any level of sane with the current administration then you haven't been keeping up with their actions:
> By August 2025, 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.
This sounds like the federal government is demanding that they adhere to a department of Policing Wrongthink.
The federal government cannot attach conditions that limit free speech onto federal funding.
There is precedent for the federal government expanding into areas it has no direct constitutional authority over through conditions on funding. But e.g. 'regulating commerce within a state' is not something the constitution explicitly forbids. Whilst 'abridging the freedom of speech' is very much explicitly forbidden.
Importantly, the Civil Rights Act is a (well-litigated) law, not an ad hoc decree from the executive branch. If the current administration wants to strong arm universities, they should go through Congress.
I agree. Congress has allocated funds to Harvard. It’s not up to the executive whether to disburse them, unless that was specifically stated in the law.
As the Harvard letter says, "I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government..." This goes far beyond a demand to follow existing civil rights law. It's a demand for a full-on, government-monitored cultural revolution that will punish Trump's enemies and bring in his supporters. It's also hilarously self-contradictory. The government demands an END to all DEI programs, yet in the same breath, "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity..."
> The Federal government has always attached conditions in exchange for Federal funding and Federal contracts. This is not dictating.
It effectively is. Just look up the history of the drinking age - a classic example of the federal government using extortion tactics to override state rights.
> Which was also a law passed by Congress. Congress passes laws.
Indeed, but this was a clear evasion of prior laws. I don't like such workarounds in principle - either Congress should have gone the proper way and go for a constitutional amendment, or it should have buried the fucking bill. This created the nasty precedent that the current admin is using to push through the SAVE Act.
I don't think most people would consider "You can't discriminate based on race", to be extortionary. Instead, its a well accepted principle in most of society.
I agree on the matter, but pressuring states with financial strings is not the way to go for it.
All other democracies on this rock just go and modify their constitution, that's the proper way. Y'all just are so completely gridlocked that this is all but impossible...
>3. Testimony before Congress that equated opposition to war crimes to antisemitism [4].
Can you link to a specific line of testimony that supports this allegation? "war crimes" isn't even mentioned in the article. Far too often claims like this devolve into a game of strawman/motte-and-bailey, where each side tries to paint their position as maximally charitable, and accuse the other side of rejecting the maximally charitable position.
I'm a scientist and I've spent a lot of time at Harvard, including working there for years.
These demands seem on point to me. I see a lot of uninformed opposition in this thread, but I think most of you all don't have any idea how it actually is at elite universities.
- Political tests for employment, or continued employment. The UC system (a public system!) is one of the worst offenders here, but Harvard is really, really bad.
- Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof). The number of academics who aren't even aware that this sort of discrimination is illegal is mind-boggling. I would say 9 months ago it was 80% or more. The number of emails I've received either indicating a candidate isn't viable because of his genitalia or skin color, or telling me this is the reason I didn't get the job is crazy. They literally don't know and don't care.
- Compelled speech. This is a bright line we have so far, as a society, successfully succeeded in not crossing. Harvard and other elite universities were crossing it, and the Biden admin's Title IX rules overtly crossed it. A bad look, to put it mildly.
- Widespread censorship, to the point where we (social scientists) have developed code to talk about certain things "nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus" hahaha...dear lord.
And these aren't small effects. It's not 55% / 45% type scenarios. You have to view the Administration's requests in the light of: Harvard is 95+% Blue Team, and that's largely because they actively filter. There are plenty of people who aren't willing to bend the knee who don't have jobs because of it. Harvard has created an intellectual monoculture. They want "diversity" in the sense that they want people who look different on the outside, but who are all the same on the inside.
Asking for monitoring to make sure they're no longer illegally and immorally discriminating in hiring and admission is warranted, indeed it would be kind of crazy to not monitor. They'll just continue racist and sexist hiring otherwise.
What's in this letter is a reasonable set of asks in response to a situation that is so off the rails it's hard to describe.
Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed.
I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine.
I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding.
Trade schools cater to the lower income, are much more effective dollar for dollar, and get a lot less federal funds. If that money were to be poured into trade schools instead of universities, it would help create a better middle class.
Why should Harvard be so entitled?
EDIT: IMO, The reason youth go to college is to have fun. The real reason the parents are willing to pay, is because their children will forge connections with other wealthy families that is worth the money. It may be good for the wealthy that the money stays in their circle, but IMO this is not something the Gov should subsidize.
Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.
Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.
If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.
Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.
Good. Trump is simply trying to see what he can get away with and the answer as it turns out is a lot. Everyone need to stop capitulating to this nonsense. People, universities, companies, all of them.
I initially engaged in these comments by asking questions in good faith in an attempt to better understand what was going on. I was trying to address my own ignorance by asking questions, and I was mostly attacked for it (mass downvoting).
I had more luck copying the scenario over to LLMs and asking them the questions.
It's disappointing to me, because I come to HN instead of other social media for intellectual discussion and nuanced perspectives. To be attacked for asking questions is frustrating and disheartening.
That said, after significant back and forth with the LLMs in an attempt to untangle several key issues, this is the summary I was left with. Somehow I suspect this will be downvoted like the rest of my comments, but I will share it here just in case it helps someone better understand why some right-leaning people may condone the governments letter and also why the letter is so concerning....
Good-Faith Policy Concerns Potentially Addressed in the Letter
Title VI Compliance:
Seeks to ensure that race, gender, or national origin are not used as explicit criteria in hiring, admissions, or funding decisions.
Merit-Based Standards:
Advocates for transparent and non-discriminatory evaluation of faculty and students (e.g. ending race-based preferences, enforcing plagiarism rules).
Viewpoint Diversity (In Theory):
Attempts to correct ideological homogeneity that may stifle academic freedom or lead to one-sided discourse.
Antisemitism Response:
Responds to documented or alleged incidents of antisemitic harassment post-October 7th, which could fall under Title VI protections if based on shared ethnicity or national origin.
Governance Reform:
Calls for clearer lines of authority and accountability in complex academic institutions, which is a reasonable administrative concern.
Key Issues and Overreaches in the Letter
State-Enforced Ideological Engineering:
Viewpoint diversity audits and mandated ideological balancing per department move into compelled intellectual conformity, which risks violating academic freedom and free speech.
Suspension of Institutional Autonomy:
Replaces university-led decision-making with federal oversight, annual audits, and direct hiring/admissions intervention—a level of control inconsistent with
traditional norms for private institutions.
Targeting of Specific Programs:
Selective audits of programs like Middle Eastern Studies or Human Rights centers signal ideological targeting, not neutral application of anti-discrimination principles.
Guilt by Association / Collective Punishment:
Calls for discipline and de-recognition of entire student groups (e.g., Palestine Solidarity Committee) based on political stances, even absent direct policy violations.
Mask Ban and Protest Crackdown:
Mandated suspension for mask-wearing and harsh punishments for past protests go beyond civil rights compliance and verge into authoritarian control of student expression.
Foreign Student Loyalty Screening:
Requiring ideological screening for “American values” and reporting foreign students to DHS raises civil liberties and due process concerns.
DEI Abolition Blanket Order:
Calls for total shutdown of all DEI offices and functions, regardless of their form or function, eliminating even neutral or inclusive programs not tied to race-based quotas.
Summary Judgment
The letter does address real legal and policy issues—especially around race- and gender-based preferences, antisemitism, and bureaucratic governance. But it leverages these issues to justify a comprehensive, ideologically driven restructuring of a university. The result is a state-imposed orthodoxy enforced through threats of defunding, loyalty tests, and discipline, extending well beyond what’s required for civil rights compliance.
One framework I like to use is, “If this thing didn’t exist today, and someone proposed it, how would people react to it?”
I think it’s fair to say that if none of this existed today, and someone proposed that the federal government simply give universities like Harvard seemingly endless billions, it would be laughed out of existence by republicans and democrats alike. All of this is the product of inertia at best, corruption at worst. It’s a different world today and we don’t need our tax dollars going to these places.
They are already are spending billions a year from their endowment, which covers nearly 40% of their operating revenue, which is around the maximum they can sustainably spend.
Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.
Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.
Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.
Harvard received the "worst score ever" clamped at 0.0 in 2023. By the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The actual score was -10.69.
They were particularly oppressive on anyone espousing opinions on the political right...Both leaning toward Individual liberty & stateist inclined.
While I believe that freedom of speech is a right not to be infringed on. Their current stance is selective. They have a massive endowment. So Harvard doesn't need subsidies. Since their endowment benefits private parties, Harvard can be funded by private parties.
Unless you're speaking about the high overhead rates, that's really the wrong framing. The public funds at issue are buying things like research, or hospital services.
Whats the problem.. just get your pal Soros to give you the money instead..
With $36T debt, Federal Government cannot continue splashing out money like there is no tomorrow
Trump is increasing the debt tho and did in his first term.
Republicans only care about debt when it can be used to either bash Democrats or used as a talking point to eliminate something they don't like. Lookup "Starve The Beast".
Republicans do not care about the debt. They care that it can be used as a tool. That's it.
They run up the debt when they want and then turn around to blame Democrats for the debt they ran up.
Nobody is really concerned with the US debt outside of silly wanna-be patriots and the politicians who use it to scare them. Now, one way to make the US debt a much bigger deal is to cause a recession...hmm...wonder if anyone is trying to do that...
Almost every economist believes there is no serious and immediate problem with our current debt level (which is actually increasing under both Trump administrations, despite their fake expressions of concern). Why do you believe you are right and they are all collectively wrong?
The law in the immigration act to disallow people who espouse support for terrorism is a good one.
We protect freedom of speech for citizens because we have to. They are part of our country.
I don’t believe this extends to foreigners. We should allow only immigrants who do not support terrorism and want to be productive members of society. This isn’t too much to ask.
This is not a right or left issue. This is a pro-America vs con-America issue.
The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang. Also, the government of El Salvador confirmed this.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
I believe that setting Teslas on fire is domestic terrorism. They were politically motivated to specifically target a political figure to intimidate other citizens. I think setting ballot boxes on fire is also domestic terrorism.
"Congress shall make no law" is not unclear, nor is the idea from the declaration that " all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". There is no spot in the founding philosophy of this nation that makes a home for "rights of citizens" only, and there was copious space to fill that in if they wanted. You made that shit up.
What you're doing is scriptural prestidigitation. It's the equivalent of christians deciding that Satan and the serpent in the garden are the same entity, even though it's very clear that they aren't[1]. You're doing it because it makes your world view seem like less of an incoherent mess, not because it's true.
The evidence presented to the judge that allowed the deportation was that he specifically supported Hamas. He wasn't just pro-Palestinian. This is why he is being deported.
The university, as a private institution, has every right to hold whatever views and enforce whatever policies it sees fit within itself.
The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It's best when the bargaining about such conditions happens with mutual respect and without overreach, but respect and sobriety are in very short supply in the current administration. Even better it is when a university does not need to receive the government money and can run off the gigantic endowment it already has, thus having no need to comply with any such conditions.
(It's additionally unfun how the antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem, in a very muffed way, and any other kind of discrimination based on ethnicity, culture, or religion is not mentioned at all. Is fighting discrimination out of fashion now?..)
> The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It really doesn't. There are both normal laws and Constitutional restrictions on how the government can make decisions, and the reasons it can have for making those decisions.
I'm very much not an expert here, but this includes restrictions on viewpoint discrimination in funding.
I agree! The government is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions. But it's entitled to set some. I suspect that some acts of Congress require the government to set some conditions on providing governmental funding, as the Constitution prescribes: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46827
Indeed, but most of these conditions _are_ arbitrary and often mutually-conflicting. Mask ban? What is the scientific basis for this?
The government already set numerous conditions on research funding relating to accounting, ethical conduct and so forth. Attaching conditions that are only tangentially related to the purpose of the funding is almost arbitrary by definition.
I think this administration never had the intent to be "reasonable".
If they were concerned about out of control diversity efforts, I might even semi agree with them.
But this administration and the GOP doesn't value free speech. Despite their complaints they're not the least bit opposed to the government enforcing their viewpoints on people, in fact they just want to do it in spades.
Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning? I'm sorry but the continuously faithless positioning of the Trump administration right now makes me believe the antisemitic accusations are a pretext.
I'm not an expert, but definitely there were Jewish thinkers who opposed the idea of rebuilding Israel (Mt Zion and all) and argued that living as a diaspora is a better way. A quick web search / AI inquiry gives a variety of examples.
Yes, they are called Neturei Karta, and there are maybe 100 of them out there.
But it doesn't matter who is espousing the idea: just because a Jew says something doesn't make it _not_ antisemitic. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that it is not bigoted to selectively deny the Jewish people a right to a state from which to defend themselves.
Depends on what you mean by anti-Zionism. It's not a natural congregation point -- even those that don't think Israel should exist don't generally call themselves anti-Zionist. As a label from the outside, it's thus very flexible. A lot of mere criticisms of Israeli actions gets labeled anti-Zionist.
Zionism to me means that the Jews are entitled to self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of that promise.
Anti-Zionism is the negation of that idea; namely that Jews are not entitled to self-determination and therefore should live at the whims of the countries where they are a minority for their security.
Merely objecting to an Israeli policy or even a Jewish value is not intrinsically antisemitic. But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I think I agree nearly 100% with this. The tricky part is always selective-enforcement:
> But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I do believe that (a) in aggregate, Israel has far more vitriol directed towards it for any given action vs comparable actions by other nations. However I also believe (b) that there aren't actually any materially more significant penalties attached to them than other nations.
I also believe that (c) most of (a) is due to Israel having a higher salience. People get informed more about Israel's bad actions than comparable ones in other nations. When informed of comparable things, people are generally upset about those in similar amounts. Further (d) Other nations should get a lot more complaints about their bad behavior. Finally, (e) comparisons to other nations in these discussions is useless, because it's whataboutism. The bad behavior of Israel is indeed often bad, but saying someone else does it too isn't a good response unless you actually think the standard is wrong. That has to happen in another discussion.
The government does not have all that right tho. First amendment and all.
I would invite you to read the government letter if you have not, but look at each demand and put yourself in the position of the recently affected but also try to see if you can hold a "controversial" view of the world that should be fine but would be put in danger by these demands: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Civil rights, suffrage, they were all the controversial opinion at some point. Some people still argue that they are but anyone against those can go pound sand.
I don't think that the government's demands are all reasonable, or even permissible. Some things read like they were written in the height of the civil rights movement in 1960s:
> By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement
merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices
Some though read as if they were written in an advent to a totalitarian dystopia:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the
Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including
those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
To my mind Harvard is right in bringing this to the public attention. It's also free to walk away from governmental financing programs that stipulate such conditions (if they are even found legitimate), and is even in a position to do so.
Because it's very obviously being used as a cover to exert control over universities which are deemed to be too "woke" (which has nothing to do with anti-semitism).
Yes, antisemitism exists, like many other social ills. But is it a major problem at Harvard and these elite institutions? No, it is not.
The government's list of requests is reasonable, moral and necessary. It's the taxpayers' prerogative to demand a merit based system that, in
conjunction, upholds the values and freedoms they hold dear.
The elitist and morally detached Harvard and its fellow privileged, largely useless, institutions can exercise their right to refuse the demands and the money.
Related ongoing thread: Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684386
The aggregate demands of the administration are confusing and contradictory. They seem to be simultaneously asking for:
- an end to diversity initiatives
- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
- a new policy of not admitting international students with certain points of view
- ending speech-control policies
- auditing the speech of certain departments and programs
- ending discipline of students who violate policies related to inclusion
- disciplining particular students who violated policies related to inclusion
It is easier to understand their thinking when you combine each pair of demands: what they want is reversals, they've just split each into two steps because they think that will be more palatable. It makes it easier to sell to their own base certainly, because they can concentrate on whichever half has the most emotive effect in any given speech, and easier for their base to parrot: they just repeat the half they want and don't need to think about the other.
The end to current diversity policies and the start of others combined is a demand for u-turn: stop allowing the things we don't like, start allowing the things you were stopping.
Same for speech: stop auditing the speech we want to say, start auditing the speech you were previously allowing.
And so on.
In the minds of the administration it makes sense, because they think of each item separately where there is conflict and together where there is not. Such cognitive dissonance seems to be their natural state of mind, the seem to seek it.
Much like their cries of “but what about tolerance?!”¹ when you mention punching nazis. They want the complete about-turn: LBTQ out, racism/sexism/phobias in. You are supposed to tolerate what they want you to tolerate, and little or nothing else.
--------
[1] My answer there has often become “you didn't want tolerance, you specifically voted against continued tolerance, what you voted for won, intolerance is your democratically chosen desire, who am I to deny the will of your people?”.
The quotes seem to be from the famous book "1984" by George Orwell. We had it in English literature class in high school.
There are some other famous quotes from that book or one of his other famous books, "Animal Farm".
Writing from memory and googling, so may be wrong:
"Some people are more equal than others."
The society that Winston finds himself in puts forth the slogan, "War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength." The meaning of this phrase is to force confusion upon the members of the Party. It is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party.
According to the article, the original version with "2 + 2 = 5" suggests complete submission to the oppressive regime, with the protagonist's mind being irreversibly altered.
Technically part of the Ministry of Love, Room 101 is the most feared place in all of Oceania and Winston learns far too well that it is here that the …
What is the final message of 1984? … a warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the ability of a repressive regime to manipulate and control individuals to the point where they betray ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm
Animal Farm is even more creepy than 1984, going by my memory, which may be wrong, since it is quite some years since I read both those books.
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Could you please cite some examples? This reads like a bunch of strawmen set up by someone aggrieved by trans rights and racial equality.
The first Harvard one that comes to mind is Carole Hooven, an enocrinologist who was pilloried for speaking obvious truths:
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/02/15/carole-hooven-wh...
I think a clearly ideological actor leaving by choice after being ostracized for representing blatantly false and unscientific ideological claims is good, actually, and that providing this as an example is shifting your goalposts. For context, Carole Hooven is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing "think-tank," and an associate of notable transphobe Stephen Pinker. The personal costs of her self-created ostracization seem minimal (perhaps negative).
The statements that she made hinge on a supposed "strict sex binary," which relies upon forced ignorance and denial of the existence of intersex people. This is a weaponized claim used to gird the foundations of an ideology which has successfully sought to engage in human rights abuses, initially directed by this administration at denying children social acceptance and access to life-saving medical care as well as directly impugning the moral character of US military service members while attacking their access to life-saving medical care and discharging them from service. Simultaneously, Harvard has come under attack from the administration on a purely ideological and fascist basis. It seems like her critics were right to view her as a threat to science, human dignity, and the institution they mutually-represented.
Sex is binary - for all species that reproduce sexually, including humans - because there is no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg.
What you're referring to with "intersex" is actually a set of disorders of sex development which affect each sex differently. For example, consider 5-alpha reductase deficiency: a mutation in the gene that encodes the enzyme for converting testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, causing loss of enzymatic activity, may be present in anyone of either sex, but will only impair male sexual development.
None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.
The dramatic moral harms of this Engineer's-Disease-based reasoning on public policy are already visible and are only expected to dramatically accelerate for the foreseeable future. There's no point in engaging an off-topic and inflammatory line of discourse that attempts to paper over this undeniable reality with smug appeals to authority.
Hold on—we're being a bit taxonomically lazy here, aren't we? You're applying a species-level classification (based on gametes) too rigidly to individual-level variation. If you look at actual developmental outcomes, there's a non-trivial set of cases that don’t map neatly onto a system of just two categories (which is not a lot of categories). Calling all of those 'disorders' assumes the categories are already correct, rather than testing whether they fit what we actually observe.
Ps. The Overton window is such an interesting concept; Imagine arguing our case before the head Eunuch of the Ottoman Court in the 16th century or so.
> None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.
True, but nor is it generally controversial amongst the un-indoctronated that sexual reproduction and gender identity are NOT (as claimed a couple of posts above) orthogonal concepts. I don't know about you, but while my biology and mental identity happen to nicely match up, I consider myself to be more than my testicles and can accept that others don't share my cis status.
>None of this is controversial among biologists
Nope, but it is among people who can't tolerate different kind of people.
Wanna guess which books the Nazi's burned first? Yep the ones about transgender research from the Institute for Sexual Research. I'm sure they acted in good faith like they usually did.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
idk if there's much I can do here. Carole is a respected scientist. So is Steven. Carole is a fellow of this institute as a result of having to find new patrons because of her cancellation, not the other way around. Your understanding of the situation re sex and gender is completely incorrect.
>idk if there's much I can do here.
Good? You made a claim and had one point disproven because there's a difference between voluntarily leaving an institution and being kidnapped by the federal government.
No one really asked about your opinions otherwise. We're just establishing 2 very obvious lines in the sand.
You could attempt to provide citation for your initial claims. Carole Hooven does not meet the criteria, providing her is only suggestive of a disingenuous ideological motivation.
Here's a database of cancellations, searching for the word "fired": https://www.thecollegefix.com/cancel-culture-database/?gv_se...
Obviously other words like "terminated" may be appropriate too. Of course, most situations like this don't come to firing--like with Carole, the bureaucracy simply takes away everything you love and makes it clear you will never advance. It's much simpler when people "choose" to leave.
So your position is -
- Egalitarianism is newspeak/doublethink
- McCarthyism is was an end to egalitarianism, until the 'previous regime' (which I take to mean a regime since 1959, whatever 'regime' that means).
- Stating some people are lesser gets you fired from empirical institutions.
In short, people being equal is soviet style communism, the old regime which included Regan and Nixon is over, and only now you can say what you want because something changed?
This here is a fantastic example of newspeak, doublethink. Thank you for that
I am strongly reminded of my own governments (Sweden) attempts to introduce diversity programs into the school system, only to have each attempt ending in the court system that then finds the programs as discriminatory. In a few examples where they then went and tried to circumvent the anti-discriminatory laws, those attempts tend to favor the wrong demographic and get canceled shortly after. The very concept of favoring or hindering one demographic over an other in terms of grades or admissions are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which is the basis for those laws. It is somewhat understandable why politicians tries to work around laws that protect human rights, but the rulings of the courts are not surprising in the least. For now it seems that most those initiatives has died off with fewer attempts to challenge the courts on this issue.
Strong fundamental laws such as the European Convention on Human Rights exist for a good reason. It prevents political winds from undermining the very pillars that society is built on. It also forces those that want to create exceptions to design their ideas in general form, which has some nice side effects of illuminating contradictions and false premises. If political demonstration on university grounds are disrupting education, then it doesn't matter what political message they are shouting. Either you allow it all, or none of it. If you want to give women higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority, you got to give men higher admission credits in programs where they are a minority. If the consequences of such general rules are not fitting the political winds then the default is return back to the foundation that is human rights.
Sadly America was founded on principles that too 200 years to try and undo. And given the last year alone, they are still stripping rights as we speak. I don't know which fork we turned on that made us so reliable on racism and sexism to function and band together as a country that much of the EU seems to have navigated better. Maybe reconstruction should have had an actual Nuremburg trial instead of "forgiveness" (aka pushing the can down the street until someone could assassinate the one trying to compromise).
the main thing is that it's acceptable, meritorious even, to resent the privileged white male. But a jewish white male, that's racist. Also most white males in the ivies are jewish - the so-called privileged (non-jewish) white male is in fact underrepresented now vs. the general population.
Hello, 55 day old account that's definitely not a troll
Authoritarian governments are arbitrary governments, all decisions are made arbitrarily. Consistency is unnecessary. That's the trouble with choosing power as a guiding principle over reason or consent.
Consistency is undesirable, because if everyone is breaking a law, you apply the hammer of justice only if they aren't a friend.
It's one of the best ways to look good to certain people as well,because you can claim to be just following the law.
This comment and the parent’s are the best retorts I’ve seen yet to the “these people are just stupid” idea we hear all the time. These “rules” are not calculated and brilliant, and that’s the point. They’re controlling at any angle they want.
No, it's still stupid. High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states). Nepotism looks like winning right until it sinks your company.
> No, it's still stupid.
It doesn't serve the goals you think it should, that's not necessarily stupid.
> High corruption leads to weaker economic performance (eg compare red vs blue states).
Yes, but the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance" and, to the extent that it related to economic performance, doesn't have any necessary relation to a broad aggregate, its more concerned with very specific aspects of relative distribution.
> It doesn't serve the goals you think it should
I maen, what are their goals? To make more money? Yes, stupid to crash the economy just to insider trade. Power and influence? Yes, it's stupid to overextend too fast. Ask 99% of regines from human history (Rome, Soviet Union, Great Britian). Ideaological warfare? Yes, it's stupid to outright declare constitutional war on day 9x out of 1400.
What are their goals?
> the people who are pursuing corruption don't care about maximizing aggregate economic performance, they care about maximizing their power over others, which is isn't the same as "economic performance"
well they should have. Again, Bread and circuses. Mess with people's money and they get neither.
Again, stupid move. This could have been an easy, silent, calculated takeover in the course of two years. Instead they just swung a hammer at the house and are frustrated that people are yelling at them.
Who is "others"? Who is "aggregate"? You're being vague because your idea doesn't make any sense.
Let's be clear:
1) Trump very clearly - very obviously - cares a lot about broad US economic performance compared to China.
2) This is at odds with his desire for unlimited power within the US, because corruption and oppression doesn't do very well economically.
That's why it's stupid - it doesn't serve its own goals. One of those two has to give.
He and his voters don't understand "Woke" is great for the modern economy. You want everyone working at their absolute full potential. Slaves don't invent chips, corruption drives away business investment, etc. It's very simple to understand if you're not a racist, but the South has been stuck on this point for generations.
They're not selecting to maximize performance, they're selecting to maximize their own control. Pete Hegseth isn't SecDef because he's good at it. He leaks war plans and can't get through a press conference without being seen with a drink in his hand. He's SecDef because he'll do what Trump tells him to do regardless of whether it's legal or a good idea. The tariffs aren't meant to bring manufacturing back. They'd have gradual and consistent and the money raised would be earmarked for developing that industry at home if they were. They're arbitrary because they're the way the people in charge punish countries and companies that don't bend the knee. Everything they're doing is about removing the institution of government with its pesky rules and procedures and bringing everything under the control of one guy who can reward and punish arbitrarily as he sees fit. Overall economic performance simply isn't a factor.
It's changed my outlook a lot to make an arbitrary decision to stop assuming people are stupid when their stated goals don't line up with their actions, and to start assuming the easily predictable results of their actions are their actual goals regardless of what their stated goals are. Once I did that, I started being able to understand and even predict what these previously inscrutable people would do next.
?
I look forward to your article about Americans obviously being pro-obesity, and finding heart disease super attractive.
their stated goals (avoiding obesity) don't line up with their actions (food choices that promote obesity), so they must have different goals (enjoying food regardless of whether it promotes obesity). not the opposite of their stated goal, just a different one.
Then I can agree with that: short-sighted decision-making on both obesity and Trump's tariffs.
I think you're equivocating between the value of the actual goal itself and the value of the actions they're taking in the context of fulfilling that goal. Blowing up the economy to maximize your personal power is short-sighted, I agree, but once you accept that as Trump's goal you'll see that arbitrary tariffs (and other financial manipulation, look at how he's using federal funding to thought police universities and punish dissident state governors) is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to [federal funding]. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
>is a ruthlessly effective strategy. If you don't do what he wants, he'll starve out you and your underlings until either you give up or the people beneath you revolt and replace you with someone who'll do what he says.
He really screwed up the "people beneath you" part with his "effective strategy" . The people beneath him wanted at best lower prices and at worst stronger deportation. As it is, they are the ones suffering the most from these economic policies (because blue states tend to have more funding to weather this BS) and he decided to go full mask off on the idea of deporting US citizens. These aren't popular actions nor views, outside of the most fringe supporters (who aren't enough to carry such a narrative).
The people beneath him aren't just not part of his plan, they're the lever he's pulling to get the powerful in line behind him.
Ok so you're a fan of aggressive stupidity. That's certainly on-brand American. Not relevant to this discussion though, you do you.
You're taking everything I discuss and projecting my moral approval on it. I've purposely expressed no opinion either way, but you can't fathom the idea that Trump might be good at something. You have to live in a world where he's just a flailing idiot, and I'd caution you to take some time with the fact that that flailing idiot is currently batting a very prescient .666 against those of us who'd like the USA to at least last out their own lifetimes.
lol you think .666 is a lot? The entire South has been stuck on this point for generations. They keep voting for tribalism/racism/nepotism, and the poorer they get the angrier and more aggressive they get.
Voting is just one big popularity contest, and 54% of American adults read at or below 6th grade levels.
I'm just not a good bootlicker. I call stupidity wherever I see it. You can keep your "caution", I'm moving on from this conversation.
It’s not about the economy! They don’t need that anymore. It’s about POWER.
They already have more than everything money can buy, and more than the GDP of most countries.
It’s not about the “company” anymore. They want _everything_. And will do whatever they can do get it, even if we think it looks stupid.
“Whoopsie doopsie we said something contradictory, anyway you’re all wrong and deported - don’t call back ever, and your school doesn’t get your taxes anymore but bombs for killing people in the Middle East does!”
Right, this is why fascist governments tend to fail. In the meantime, though, normal folks will be hurt.
And in the meantime, the people in power in these fascist governments tend to make out like (literal) bandits.
This is fine if it ends by being subjected to that convenient device they developed in France somewhere in the 1800s.
Very unlikely in the first place, but second, that way lies far worse chaos.
Similarly, when Julius Caesar turned the republic into an empire, and was subsequently assassinated: it did not mean the empire reverted back to being a republic - rather that centuries of increasingly despotic emperors lay ahead.
Agree that it's unlikely, but while knives in the back still led to centuries of imperialism, the guillotine cleanly ended absolutist monarchy in France once, and then some ships and exile ended the second time, and it generally stayed dead afterwards.
Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
It's iterative republic development. Release a republic, test it in the field, make improvements. Makes sense to me.
:D I don't know why, but something about this made me giggle.
Nazis again? We did Nazis remember? End of the Third Republic, all of that? Everybody agreed Nazis were a bad idea, why the fuck are there more Nazis?
> Note that modern France is the Fifth Republic so that's a whole lot of turmoil given how relatively recently they killed their last king.
Their last king wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England, and was one of three (or four) kings (Louis XVIII, Charles X, (arguably Henry V), and Louis Phillippe, who reigned between the First Empire (and consequently also after the First Republic) and the Second Republic (and consequently also before the Second Empire.)
Their last monarch was even later, and also wasn't killed by the French, but died in exile in England. The series of governments after the last monarch includes only the Third through Fifth Republics (and, depending on how you look at it, the Vichy regime between the Third and Fourth Republics.)
And IIRC there wasn't much substantive difference between the Third and Fourth Republic; the latter was basically a restoration of the former after France was freed from German occupation, not a change in governing philosophy by the French people, so you could argue that there were as few as two substantively different French systems of government after the last monarch was deposed.
You also have to consider that the guillotine ended up killing more revolutionaries than nobles though.
French model was largely a failure in every way. This is the 5th iteration of their republic now, and it's gripped by internal issues that can quickly approach those US is dealing with.
The important difference that you mentioned in your comment as well is: the French problems lie in the realm of possibilities, while the US problems are in the present. So the comparison doesn't really hold. Maybe it's also helping that the French iterated 5 times, a concept we are all taught in agile 101.
Based on this thread I'm starting to believe that any static governmental system is a failure and it's the iterations that bring about prosperity.
That is a divisive issue.
By “divisive” you mean dividing heads from bodies, right?
Yeah. Also called "air gapping".
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Looks to me like a legitimate and democratically elected regime. There are many unsolved issues in the world, having sympathy for people getting exactly what they want seems like a waste of a finite resource.
It is not a waste.
(1) It is still an interesting topic, because in this case, it has world-wide consequences.
(2) Many of the problems of the world can only be solved if people are convinced that those are important problems. You need to fix people's closest problems first, like their bread and perceived security. Each individual has just one life, I wouldn't say it's selfish to want an OKish life, and only then think about what's best for the human race.
(3) Most of the right voters were convinced (and might still be) that they were doing what is good for them. But it isn't. They voted wrong, they were tricked against their actual will.
(4) This is not a singular event. The same may happen somewhere near or around you maybe sooner than later, so analysig how it happened, which groups exactly voted against their own advantage, and how to make the consequences clear and understandable beforehand, and how to prevent it in general -- all this is important.
Not wasted resources at all. The opposite. We need to remember that this is not a boring news topic.
Until america experiences the full consequences for their stupidity they will continue being stupid. Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, with a responsible person nearby and then never again.
The sooner that happens the better for everyone it is.
OK, burning is happening right now, so mission accomplished, I guess? Are you sure people will learn from it? And who is the responsible person nearby in this reality?
> Children get told 100's of times they will burn their hand if they touch the stove. In the best case scenario they touch it once anyway, ...
That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove.
Also, this is not an individual Darwin problem like the stove example -- this has consequences for many bystanders who did know better, and many more bystanders who had no say in this.
beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."<
So you really have no idea! Sad!
I suppose you have also never been hungry and bitten into a wonderful-smelling and -tasting hamburger only to find that a finger (yours, to be clear) is in the bite, and thus you become at one moment both ravenous attacker and fearful prey struggling to escape?
Such experiences are part of life, to be embraced only afterward.
> beeforpork says >"That is not the best case. I never burned myself on a stove."< > So you really have no idea! Sad!
Is this like "you're not a strong man unless you've been this stupid at least once"?
Strong vs. weak does not seem like a desirable way to structure society. It's no fun. Yes, I also find football competitions really boring.
It isn't strong vs weak. But the lack of such experiences sets you apart from others and marks you as literally inexperienced. It does not mark you as smarter or stronger, but as one who simply "has no idea!" You'll never know (until you do!8-))
I revisited the "stove experience" several weeks ago. While at a convenience store I entered the restroom to find the sink water running full blast. This only increased my urgency and aided the process (as flowing, dripping, or running water often does). Once relieved, I walked over to the sink and plunged both hands into the cold whirling water in the basin. At once I was caught between my (vividly-imagined) thought of cool swirling relief and the sensory reality of boiling hot water - the former wished to enjoy the pleasant ice-cold flowing water in the sink and the latter could not withdraw fast enough.
Life provides you with a sequence of such experiences:
- a pre-adolescent viewing with puzzlement his older siblings as they mature and begin to participate in courtship,
- falling in love,
- making love, etc.
Some people never have certain experiences. We're all different to some degree b/c of that.
Go ahead, put your hand on the stove. But be careful about touching that woman!8-))
P.S. Yes, I turned the sink off, depriving the next poor soul of my worldly experience.
> OK, burning is happening right now
Nowhere near it, the hand is hovering near the fire - people are shouting "don't put your hand in the fire" and the kid is saying its nice and warm and see nothing bad has happened, I am going to put my hand right into the fire and it will be great.
Trump term 1 they bailed out the Farmers for 20bn when they messed around on tarrifs and blew it up. They learn't that there are only two outcomes to fucking around 1) you win, 2) you find out and they give you 20bn.
If those are your outcomes the only rational choice is to vote for Trump and cheer him on in fucking around as much as possible.
Let them burn their hand.
12 hours later: White House is considering a tariffs bailout for farmers
Dismantling the current world hegemony might have a few unanticipated impacts. When little Timmy responds to burning his hand by evaporating the world economy we might not be so smug.
The smug little so-and-so here is the USA. Dismantling their hegemony and releasing the 95% of the world that are not Americans, I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm as MAGA chants "lock her up".
The problem is that dismantling their hegemony in too fast of a fashion will cause the rest of the world _a lot_ of trouble.
Normal folks vote for the fascists.
How many Americans despise the liberal universities and their students? How many Americans think the US should be a Christian nation?
Fascism is popular. Many people will fall for it. Time and time again. The US is not special- it happened in Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal. It can happen in America.
Not stupid, just careless. Trump has fuck-you money, he doesn't care about the rest of the country. He wants means of extortion so people have to lick his boots to get a reprieve.
For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
Is there any political tool to prevent rampant rule breaking and making the disliked rulebreaker specially vulnerable? Rule breaking is common and apocrypal form of strike involve following the rules to the letter and paralyzing the business. The prevailing principle is "you cant defend yourself by pointing to other rulebreakers" while reality is "its legal if a hundred businessmen do it".
> Is there any political tool
It's a social problem. Smaller democratic political arenas work closer to the ideal. Larger political arenas have more noise and less concise agendas, because of the disparate groups being appealed to. The US is too big. Large societies, across time trend toward authoritarianism (sometimes leading to full-fledged) until revolution and dissolution. Then the remaining states fight amongst themselves within a region, assembling into a singular organization due to practical and political factors, until it starts over again. Eventually you get something like europe and most of southeast asia. States tend to be more stable if they roughly match their regional terrain boundaries and aren't too large.
The whole society functions on a set of agreements. Some get codified in laws, many not. And as soon as some of those rules, laws or habits, get constantly broken, it means the society has changed. Now what? Do you accept the new change, or do you try to change it again? Remember, you can't enact a new rule - if it's not agreed upon it will simply not be applied.
The normative government continues to shrink while the prerogative government grows.
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It makes sense if you understand that they aren't focused on general principles. Diversity is bad when it involves non-whites, women, gay people or research involving these groups. Diversity is good when it involves "race realists." Free speech is bad when students are advocating for divestment initiatives. Free speech is good when a professor calls somebody the n-word online.
The goal is white supremacy and antifeminism.
The goal is power. Suppressing DEI, etc is just a simple way to find a group of people that have different values and eliminate them from the power structure.
When these people use "freedom of speech" all they mean is they want to say their vile Nazi stuff without people complaining.
Also called freedom from consequences. Free speech makes sense in a free society, freedom from consequences does not. Yet that's what they're calling for.
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Sigh, no. Obviously, just about any argument from nazi immediately gains credibility nearly instantly. It surely approaches the merit of 'think of the children' in terms of its ease of use while maintaining its flag waving functionality.
And no, when people talk about "freedom of speech", it is not about just saying that. It is about saying anything. The problem is, and always has been, people. Why? Because when you defend it, you tend to defend ones that are, at best, edge cases.
Defending all speech however deplorable would be consistent and defensible. The administration isn’t doing that. They are targeting speech they don’t like. Don’t speak out against our genocide in Gaza or be deported/expelled. Don’t share your pronouns or lose your job. Etc.
HAMAS is a designated terrorist organization. It is the U.S. government's job to keep out foreigners who overtly do things like support terrorist organizations, do human trafficking, etc.
It's quite simple, IMHO, and not a free speech issue. Americans don't owe entry to everyone who shows up at their borders, nor do they owe them a full suite of rights and legal protections once they're admitted.
Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism? Since no due process is being followed what gives you any confidence that the accusations against these people are true?
> Do you really believe that most of the people being deported or imprisoned by ICE this year are truly supporters of terrorism?
I don't think that's what's at stake here. I would assume the vast, vast majority of deportations are some version of "You're here illegally because you snuck in / overstayed your visa / lied on some form. Here's a ride back to $COUNTRY"
I think what is at stake is the small, small % of deportations that are because of particular speech or actions that aren't transparently crime (e.g., stealing a car is transparently crime).
And to answer your question, I don't know. While it doesn't appear to me that the Americans are reaching the highest possible standards of due process, "no" due process is pretty obviously false. And I don't think it's an issue of the accusations being true or false, either--my impression is the facts aren't in dispute, it's what happens based on the facts that is.
OK, all of that said: my guess is the people being deported for supporting HAMAS aren't HAMAS supporters in some sort of deep, true, essential way. They're kids or young people who are swept up in a fad.
How does that relates to the parents post ? For sure you can understand Hamas is a terrorist organisation AND any the same time that some wants to talk about the genocide in Gaza.
Also, using a terrorism judgement as an argument is a bit weak because it’s subjective, and because our western gouvernement do trade times to times with terrorist organisations. Heck my own countries is classified as a terrosist and I’m totally free to come visit the USA (which are themselves a terrorist state).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_terrorism
> For sure you can understand Hamas is a terrorist organisation AND any the same time that some wants to talk about the genocide in Gaza.
Totally. The pro-Palestine protesters at U.S. universities are often overtly pro-HAMAS too (or instead).
care to substantiate your claim?
"Protester outside Columbia University seen yelling ‘We’re all Hamas,’ ‘Long live Hamas’"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/protester-outside-colum...
I was one of the people who briefly tried to take right wing “free speech” arguments at face value, eg when Elon Musk bought Twitter. Almost instantly he began allowing white supremacists and actual declared neo-Nazis back onto the platform, while kicking people off for any speech he didn’t like. I don’t think the claim “the recent right wing enthusiasm for ‘free speech’” does, in fact, selectively benefit Nazis and white supremacists” is actually wrong when you evaluate the effects.
This is a general argument and has nothing to do with Elon Musk. He capitalizes on a weak position some of his political opponents bring forward. Not giving him the opportunity for that would have cost nothing... on the contrary.
Would you argue that the "kicking off" is more or less intense under Elon vs. the other guy?
My impression that the rate of censorship overall has plummeted. Pre-Elon, it was easy to get banned for wrongthing. People would gang up on wrongthinkers, mass-report them, etc.
I wonder what the rates of actual bans have been.
https://fortune.com/2024/09/25/twitter-x-account-suspensions...
tripled.
They just want to protect nazi speech, like I said in the downvoted comment.
I don't care what your vibes are here.
They aren't even against actual anti-semitism. Happy merchant memes, george soros conspiracies, protocols stuff, that's all A-ok because it's nazi stuff.
If you have the wrong opinion on israel palestine, it's the concentration camp for you.
The first group the nazis sent were social democrats, peace activists, journalists ... The famous nazi book burning was at an lgbt institute. I mean they're just doing nazi shit. I don't know why this isn't clear.
Thanks for looking that up.
Without knowing the denominator (# of accounts, # of posts, # of new accounts), I'm not sure what to make of it.
Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech). According to the actual report (which can be found here: https://transparency.x.com/content/dam/transparency-twitter/...), of 5,296,870 account suspensions only 2,361 were for "hateful conduct", while 57,185 were "violent and hateful entities" and 1,102,778 were for "abuse and harassment". Eyeing the categories, those are the only ones that seem plausible for political motivation.
So it's some subset of that 1,162,324 (22% of total) that we're interested in. I would bet the vast, vast majority of those either aren't politically motivated, or are politically motivated but in such a way that virtually everyone would agree (e.g., torturing puppies for fun).
And, of course, among politically-motivated bans, not all will be in support of Red Team / against Blue Team. Some will be bans of Red Team supporters, and for some the valence won't be clear.
> Even then, we want the subset of bans that were for political reasons (i.e., supporting Labour is fine, supporting Reform is hate speech).
Do you have any examples was banned for supporting Reform? I ask because I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard someone say they were banned for their political views and then checked to see that what actually got them banned was something like targeted harassment of a political opponent.
I didn't mean this as a real example, I meant it as illustrative. I've never seen anyone banned for supporting Reform (I've never seen anyone banned at all! I try to limit my internets).
If you're a free speech absolutionist (your argument was simply "kicking off got more intense"), it shouldn't matter what speech was said to get kicked. Politcal or not, it's all speech.
So the only way to retort the bans tripling is if you think Most people banned are not humans. Which is possible, but unlikely given current speculations that Twitter is 80% bots.
> Politcal or not, it's all speech.
This is a fair point. If I concede it, we still need some denominators.
> So the only way to retort the bans tripling is if you think Most people banned are not humans.
Denominators.
That's all speculative. Musk Twitter brought a bunch of far right provocateurs like Alex Jones Back on and increased the bans by 3x. There's more people leaving than coming to the platform.
That's what we do know.
As far as "Red/Blue" that's not current.
Instead we've got an establishment party, the Democrats, a disempowered left, a disempowered conservative party, and a party that does Nazi shit, the Republicans.
That's why a bunch of the Bush era conservatives lined up behind the Democrats, conservative and right wing are Not the same just like liberal and left wing are not
Nothing in my grandparent comment is speculative. I literally type out the data and discuss what additional information we would have to have in order to arrive at something approaching a meaningful estimate of the quantity we are both interested in.
As for Red/Blue not being current, I'm not an expert. The only bone I would pick is the Republicans aren't doing "Nazi shit". Nazi / Fascist used to mean something, you know. It seems like people are starting to use those words to mean "authoritarian" or something along those lines.
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> Diversity is bad when it involves Whites, men, straight people or research involving these groups.
If you think that's what the "other side" is saying, then you've completely misunderstood what the diversity idea is about. You can't compare one idea with the misrepresentation of the opposing idea. That's just making things up.
It even has a name: strawman argument. And it's so popular!
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and yet when fields with a dearth of White Men offer recruiting events tailored to them, the "other side" is up in arms about it. Its clear that no part of DEI wants to include Whites, Men, or the doubly dreaded White & Men combo.
https://journals.rcni.com/nursing-standard/comment/a-focus-o...
The problem is- they are not anti-racist honest. You are either nurture or nature, but if its all nurture, they refuse to discuss that part, compare those parts, work out the problematic parts and compose better societal models. They just idealise, bigott stay quiet and adverse engage only with those who respond civilized. Its all lies and damned lies and statistics.
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Unfortunately, unlike the post above mine, my list is grounded in reality.
Again, both sides play this game, both sides claim to have "reality" on their side.
As loathe as you may be to admit it, there is such a thing as truth. Both sides claiming something doesn’t mean both sides claims are true (or conversely that neither sides claim is true).
You don’t seem to be thinking very well.
Whoosh, my point exactly. This is an r/selfawarewolves-tier comment.
You don't seem to be thinking very well.
Come on man this isn’t Reddit.
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Nit: race realists tend to agree with the Palestinians. I’m not sure what you’re referring to?
I'm not sure what "agree with the Palestinians" would mean. Like they are not happy with being genocided? I think that would be most people's feeling in that situation, though that doesn't show any proximity in belief, value or principle.
Yeah I guess this is what happens to censored viewpoints. Most people have only heard a caricature of it.
The world is really a lot more interesting if you try to understand everyone’s actual perspective. It also becomes much more coherent. Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
In what I’ve seen of “race realist” writings online, they tend to be very anti Israel. So to associate the admin with “race realists” for cracking down on anti Israel protests strikes me as lacking an understanding of either the admin or of the “race realists” perspective.
> Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
If you're arguing a fairy-tale definition of "evil" as an inherent property were people do evil for evil's sake, or simply can't help it, sure - almost nobody is "evil", if having actual, realistic motivations automatically disqualifies "evil".
I think evil can still be a useful, moral concept, if you give up the need for it to be absolute and objective, while accepting the ambiguity that comes with it. Still, it's likely possible for a lot of people to agree what constitutes evil, especially when seeing examples.
I would certainly like to keep considering things, actions and sometimes even people, to be "evil", _especially_ after considering their motivations, views and justifications.
>Nobody is evil, they just have different interests and viewpoints.
If your interest is in killing me on account of how I look and nothing else, I would indeed consider you evil. Your "viewpoints" end where my rights begin.
as for the admin, I don't care about their views. They have a constitution to follow. Which is specifically aobut what the government cannot do to its people. We tolerated KKK and Neonazi rallies under those principles of freedom of speech and assembly. While citizens can counter protest, the government stepping in to quash either of those people is illegal here.
"Race realism" is just a meaningless label Neo-Nazis use, because they are still trying to fly under the radar, or they are slightly embarrassed of being what their grand-parents fought. They might try to butter up their standing by (falsely) citing stuff like the Bell Curve, but it is still the same vile and evil ideology it was 80 years ago.
But not all fascists are neo-nazis. Just because a subset of today's fascists describe themselves that way, doesn't mean they are fundamentally different from other fascists. Look at Steven Miller; he's jewish, and quite obviously a white supremacist. He's all about dehumanizing people he thinks of as leser, and he welcomes the new fascist America. AfD, the german far-right party, is both very pro-Israel and loves to play "tread the nazi line and extend it"-game. Anti-semitism is a common, but not necessary prerequesite to fascism.
When I was younger I also thought the opposite of good should be bad, and it is silly to describe things as evil. I disliked the religious connotation, but have changed my mind. There are people committing absolutely horrible things, and calling it anything but evil is underestimating the depravity of those characters. To quote Captain G. M. Gilbert:
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
of course "race realists" tend to be anti-Israel; many of them are genuine neo-Nazis. the term arose back in the '90s among white supremacists, who tend to be heavily antisemitic.
the Trump admin aren't (for the most part) "race realists." or antisemitic. or philosemitic. no, the Trump admin is cynically indifferent to the plight of the Jewish people. they're using antisemitism as a cause celebre, a useful cudgel to attack their enemies on the Left. Republicans are using Jews the way the Democrats used trans people - as pawns in a game of identity realpolitik. at least until our political liability outweighs our usefulness, then we get left holding the bag.
you can spot false allies like this because they will amplify the most extreme voices, the most divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, when speaking for their charge. I guarantee you, most trans people didn't want Canadians fined for using the wrong pronouns, and most Jews don't want grad students deported for writing an op-ed. the loudest voices aren't ours.
It's a bit more complex.
Neonazis tend to like the idea of Israel while hating the occupants. They hate sending aide there but love it if Jews move there.
The notion of a Jewish state was an OG Nazi idea (see Madagascar plan). They wanted a place to send their unwanted citizens.
On top of that, core to most fundamentalist Christian belief is that utopia will happen after a strong Israel gets involved in massive wars. That value is why you may see neonazis cheering on Israel as an aggressor because they believe it'll lead to utopia.
This is why mixing support for Israel with whether or not someone is antisemitic is silly. Israel isn't the Jews and Jews aren't Israel.
And it seems to work quite well in the current political landscape and the use of such tactics certainly got more common in recent years. It seems to work better with reactionary groups since they would accept any and all reason for their animosity anyway.
You say that as if the "admin" is one person. It's a loose collection of interests.
"Race realists" tend to be anti-jew but not anti-Israel. Israel provides a few key benefits for their belief system even if they hate jewish people. It means that there is a place for jewish people "over there" and not here. And it provides a starting point for their ethno-nationalist project in other countries ("if Israel can be a country for Jews then why can't Germany be a country for Whites").
Further, the Trump administration is committing violence against people simply advocating for no more bombing in Palestine. Despite the administration's claims that these people are "Hamas supporters" and "anti-semites", the bulk of these people are not actually advocating for violence to be done to jewish people that might put them in concert with far-right anti-semites.
Yeah, Nazi seen themselves as heroes building better future for the Germany. Stalinists seen themselves as heroes too. They just had different interests and viewpoints. And those different viewpoints indeed make them indeed "evil". And dangerous.
Also, seeing people whose goals are cruelty to others or harm to me as neutral is wrong.
Genocided is certainly the wrong term. It is not on all Palestinians but the government of Gaza did attack Israel. It fired an insane amount of rockets before their latest attack too, but that has already been seen as normalized. Which is ridiculous as well.
If oppression justifies these rocket attacks, a lot more than some rhetoric can be justified as well.
No it’s absolutely the correct term. What are you a BBC anchor?
I am not learned enough on this topic but:
>the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
I don't know how you say that isn't aa textbook definition of genocide.
Israel has security interests after it was attacked by Hamas. It did withdraw from Lebanon, Gaza and quite a few other places that immediately filled with militant terrorists. And this latest escalation only happened because of an attack as well, otherwise Gaza would look quite differently now.
To say their goal is just killing people is way out of context and blind to the facts.
Either these places find peaceful solutions like Egypt or Jordan, or they will face military consequences for their aggression that will also hit innocents, which is what is happening now.
The demands of the administration are the demands of a bully who doesn't want your lunch money, he just wants you to know he can take it away at any time.
"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
Any organization is probably in violation of any number of rules and regulations due to the sheer number of them.
Just wait till the sniffling Marc Andreessen shows up to explain why this will save his small town brethren.
It’s a good strategy. Even if Harvard had attempted to satisfy every bullet point, the govt could still retort that their demands were not satisfied.
Like the whole initial excuse for the tariffs on imports from Canada "because of fentanyl" despite <1% of fentanyl coming into the US arriving via the Canadian border https://www.npr.org/2025/02/02/nx-s1-5283957/fentanyl-trump-...
If you don't measure you can just assume all valies are 0.
But assuming it's a large number is not possible, of course.
I assume it's a large number because the fentanyl superlative the Canadian police raided had literal tons of precursors.
so you understand how much "tons" is with regards to a population of 330m Americans? Now consider that China probably has gigatons and is where all of NA gets most of its supply.
Hmmm, is this akin to what Russia means, when it says "we do not negotiate with terrorists"?
Typical mafia technique ensuring perpetual extorsion.
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They want to have the old system (deliberate bias and vehement denials of there being any "bias,") but working for them, and the way to demand that without describing it is to require all of the results and "forbid," by name only, the necessary methods.
Nothing they do makes sense until you accept that hypocrisy is a feature, not a bug, for them and their base. They know that what they're asking for is impossible to meaningfully comply with...
because they can use as excuse to stop the funding nonetheless, it's impossible to 100% comply with contradictory requests
It could be a feature not a bug. Inventible violations can be used as leverage for future requests/mandates.
You see the establishment of separate, unwritten classes of things here, right? It will be a case-by-case basis which of these rules is invoked, that way no matter what happens they're "just following the rules we all agreed to" but they get to hand-select which thoughts are compulsory and which are forbidden.
and the irony at the beginning of the demanding government letter:
"But an investment is not an entitlement."
I don't think it's confusing. It's classic "my way or the highway" stance. "Free speech for everyone! (except for things I don't like...)".
It all makes sense with a fascist power logic. The goal isn't to implement consistent policy to reach rational targets. The goal is to wield power and slowly errode any opposition with divisive actions that support anybody that is loyal to you. Importantly being loyal doesn't guarantee you will be spared. In these goals consistency is irrelevant, in fact being inconsistent and acting with arbitrary despotism is a feature since it produces more fear.
If you ever find any fascist critique of their enemies you will quickly realize that all of which they accuse their enemies of doing, they will do themselves. Decry freedom of speech as no one is "allowed" to say sexist/racist things anymore? Be sure they will go in and ban books, political thoughts and literal words. Hillarys emails? We literally operate our foreign policy in signal groups.
Quite frankly I am a bit puzzled by the neutrality with which some Americans try to analyze this absolutely crazy political situation. It is like pondering over the gas mixture in the smoke while your house is on fire, absolutely unhinged.
I’d like to get out while I can, but to what country? Any suggestions?
By the way the answer to your question is simple: the American people are fascists, not just the president.
First I think people who recognize there are problems is what is needed now. You leaving makes things worse.
Then again, it is understandable not everybody has the luxury to be in circumstances that allow adequate forms of resistance.
If you ask about which country, I'd say it depends. It depends on who youaare, what your skills are, which climate zones and cultures you prefer, whether you're willing to learn a new language and so on.
Canada.
The demands only seem inconsistent if you don't look at the actual principle underlying them. Political discourse tends to present opposing ideologies as being about principles like "free speech" or "free markets" - it's really all about power, who has it, and who wants it.
In this case its strengthening particular social and economic hierarchies - america vs the rest of the world, and white christians over non-whites or non-christian.
What's interesting is that this is not necessarily a struggle between the top of a hierarchy vs the bottom of one, but between two different hierarchies. The democrats support cultural non racial and economic hierarchies, while the republicans support racial international and the same economic hierarchies. So while they both support the rich over the working class, there is a struggle over whether to support racial and international hierarchies. Democrats tend to support globalization, i.e unifying of the power of the top of the economic hierarchy across international boundaries, while eliminating racial and sexual hierarchies as they are seen as "inefficient" from a neoliberal perspective. Republicans are more focused on the "national elite", the rich people that depend on america being a global hegemon specifically, energy industry, military industira-complex, etc..
Plenty of Democratic voters are on board with taxing the rich and flattening those economic hierarchies.
The problem has been that the Democratic party is the neoliberal wing of the establishment. Its purpose has been to create the illusion that economic progress is possible while working hard to maintain the economic status quo. Cultural diversity was the distraction and consolation prize.
Now the establishment wants full, unquestioned, totalitarian control now and no longer cares about maintaining the illusion of choice.
Ultimately it wants a country run on plantation lines with voting rights restricted to wealthy white male property owners, a "Christian" moral narrative (really just racism, greed, supremacism, and sexual opportunism dressed up in bible rags) and no independent sources of intellectual dissent.
Which means the bare minimum of public education, no science, no difficult or non-commercial art, no free thought in universities or academia, and as little free travel and contact with the outside world as possible.
The most comparable country is North Korea. So the likely end will be a heavily militarised and even more heavily propagandised country, run as a pampered inherited monarchy which tolerates a certain amount of education when it's useful, but is violently hostile to all dissent.
It's quite hard to get there from here. The shock-and-awe of the last few months were supposed to establish dominance, but it's not going to happen without resistance. Harvard is one example. There will be more.
Ultimately the military will be used to force compliance, and - absent a not entirely unexpected medical event - they'll decide which way this goes.
They go after their enemies (liberals, trans, pro palestinians, brown migrants) and help their friends (right wing white people).
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What the demand is, is institutional fealty to Donald Trump. Trying to interpret it as anything else is going to lead these institutions into poor decision making. Harvard is doing the right thing.
>>- a new diversity initiative for diverse points of view
I'm sure we both know what this one means though. Forcing the university to hire people who think the earth is flat and that climate change isn't real - for the sake of diversity of course.
But also diversity is banned.
On that point they mean anyone who isn't white, male, cis, straight, and currently able-bodied.
It makes sense when you realize that their true position is "free speech for me but not for thee". The contradictions are about censoring speech they disagree with and promoting speech they like.
it's pretty clear. it's twitter's policy. neo-Nazi rhetoric must be allowed, empathy must be banned.
To the fascist regime, "diversity" means "hiring black or gay people". Likewise "diverse points of view" means "viewpoints that think it's okay for black and gay people to be hired and for transgender people to pee". And "speech control" means "kicking out people who shout Hitler did nothing wrong in the middle of the library". And "inclusion" means "letting black or gay people study". It's all newspeak.
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I was brought up as an American to believe that most important American value inscribed in the constitution was that the government cannot control your speech. So regardless of what Harvard does or does not do that quote, coming from the government especially, is simply unAmerican on its face.
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Whether or not they should is irrelevant. What is relevant is the government cannot infringe on Harvard’s speech.
Also this has nothing to do with immigration. It would be the same situation if everyone at Harvard were 10th generation Americans.
> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
Sure, why not? Everything should be open to criticism at our institutions of higher learning. If not there, where? That which is above criticism is dogma.
> including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism
In Trump administration code, this means "has ever said anything positive about the Palestinian people." So yes, them too.
1. First off, yes they should.
2. We both know and understand that's not what's actually happening. When you have people peacefully protesting for the genocide in Palestine to end and they get disappeared by the state, then the situation is different. Please, at least try to be honest.
There are 2 issues here. The first is that it's not consistent with ending speech control policies.
The second is that hostility to American values is actually pretty subjective. For instance, the January 6 insurrectionists were very hostile to American values and used violent terroristic tactics to try to destroy the constitutionally mandated transfer of power. But Trump pardoned them all because it improves his ability to wield violence against America in the future.
It's impossible to take any of this document seriously in that light.
> Do you think Harvard should admit students that are, "hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence
I'm not sure you thought this through—if Harvard stopped accepting Republicans like you're suggesting, I'm not sure how many people would be left.
Harvard's admittance policy should not be up to the government outside of preventing discrimination along protected classes. If Harvard admits students that are bad consistently, and they turn out to be bad hires/professional connections, then Harvard the institution will lose its competitiveness with other schools for the best talent and previous alumni will pressure/complain that recent admittance policies are devaluing their degrees.
that's an odd take, given how the orangefuhrer treats the C constitution.
It’s fairly clear they mean an end to racially discriminatory diversity programs and an acceptance of diverging viewpoints.
They're so "accepting of diverging viewpoints" they mandated Harvard to devote effort to monitoring the viewpoints of foreign students so they can be deported for wrongthink...
Weird how many people with "diverging viewpoints" are getting grabbed off the street by masked ICE agents then.
Zero? I’m a visa holder in the US and I’m aware that supporting terrorists and celebrating violence against Jewish people is probably not going to make the country keep me here.
Weird how wide the definition of "supporting terrorists" seems to be. Especially given that State has now said that people's "expected future beliefs" can be used to disqualify them.
Have you no hesitation, even at this late juncture? Read everyone elses comment above, and try to stretch your critical thinking ability just a bit.
Trump is our Caesar, we have ceased to be a constitutional republic, and you defend this with blithely pretending that 2 months of pure power-madness have not been occurring in plain view of the entire world?
I suspect that such discourse as we have will not be "permitted" indefinitely.
No, I have no hesitation. How are you not finding it obvious that the government are trying to end racially based admittance programs?
Because I read the letter from the government to Harvard. Did you? Racially-based admittance is only one bullet out of ten. The government isn't demanding specific policy changes, they are demanding cultural and ideological control of the university.
Did you? As you can read, they tackle racial bias immediately and follow up with preventing advocacy for terrorism and racism, then viewpoint divergence. At no point are they arguing for a single viewpoint to exist, they are CONSISTENTLY doing the exact opposite:
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
> The people we must be concerned about that are arguing for a single viewpoint controlling American universities are those like yourself that oppose pluralism.
I'm all for pluralism. I have no objection at all to the existence of as many conservative academics as you please or whole (private) universities explicitly committed to conservative ideology. But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds. And it's also a super-ultra-clear first amendment violation to compel the speech of a private institution.
Finally, I'd like to point out the rank hypocrisy of calling for "merit-based" hiring and admissions in one breath, and then in the next demanding a quota system for ideology: "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity." The government, as conservatives are so fond of saying, shouldn't "pick winners."
If there are a "critical mass" of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber professors out there looking for a position they should start their own university and admit that critical mass of "viewpoint diverse" Harvard-caliber students.
"By August 2025, 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."
They are calling for Republican commissars in universities and accusing you of being the one who wants to enforce a single viewpoint and call you the enemy of pluralism. Not surprised, but I continue to be infuriated to witness such shameless insincerity from Republicans.
Yes, because universities have shown they want to enforce a single viewpoint on students, the government is using its funding contributions to encourage viewpoint diversity. There is certainly some shameless insincerity going on, as well as a disgusting disregard for logic.
Typical conservative doublespeak - speak as though there are commissars suppressing political dissidence so you can actually have an excuse to install commissars to suppress political dissidence. Conservatives have long disdained education for decades and abandoned its institutions, and now that they aren't bowing down, you want to use the government to force them to do so. The disgusting disregard for logic here is on you.
> typical conservative doublespeak
You are projecting. We have established you prefer a ideological uniform college campus and are campaigning against plurality of thought. Don't bother gaslighting people otherwise.
I imagine you would sign a different tune if Biden admin hypothetically forced your employer via federal funding to make you say "Trans Rights!", for plurality of thought of course.
Your logical fallacy is false equivalence. Nobody is asking for compelled speech here.
And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that. That’s why democrat approval is so low.
> Nobody is asking for compelled speech here.
It's implicit, you just don't want to see it. It's literally political commissars.
> And yes, after being forced to start business meetings with a brief mention of whether anyone is transgender for the last few years, nearly everyone hates that.
What are you talking about? I never seen that or do you mean that people present themselves in a business meeting? Is this compelled speech to you? Hearing "Hi my name is Mark, call me he" is such a earth shattering trauma that you'll allow party officials in your universities?
> It's implicit
Cool, you have no evidence.
> What are you talking about? > Hearing "Hi my name is Mark, call me he"
So you know.
> We have established
No, you have accused without basis, because you know you have no defense of installing conservative Republican commissars in schools, and to privilege the Republican students and workers present, so your only hope is to gaslight and imply that your opposition is the same—again, typical of authoritarian conservative Republicans. You can keep accusing and gaslighting, but I will never submit to your dishonest narratives to justify the Trump regime's actions.
There is absolutely basis to say that you prefer an ideologically uniform college campus and are campaigning against plurality of thought. For example, your comments in this thread arguing against efforts to support a diverse range of viewpoints in higher education.
Accusing people that support diversity of thought as being authoritarian is more projection and also quite funny.
There are no Republican commissars. That is the conspiracy theory you made up.
There is no privilege for Republican students or workers. That is a conspiracy theory you made up.
The Trump administration is not a regime (in the traditional sense this word is used, ie for dictatorships) because you dislike it winning an election.
I am not a republican. I would desperately like the Democrats to become electable again. Advocating for admissions racism and brainwashing children into racist conspiracy theories about Jewish people doesn’t seem to be a good way to do that.
I accuse you of gaslighting because you speak well enough that you are probably not stupid, but rather completely aware of what you are saying is false. I suspect you think your righteous anger makes what you say true. It does not.
That is a circular argument. Your basis that I'm arguing against plurality of thought is that you have labeled my comments as having done so.
Yes, I'm calling Republican commissars authoritarian.
I'm literally quoting the letter saying that they demand an external party to audit the student body, the leadership, the staff, and their teaching units for sufficient "viewpoint diversity," which reports directly to the federal government. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see that this is a euphemism for instilling conservative Republican thought in the student body and in the classes they take. And yes, this will privilege conservative students and staff, because non-conservative staff will be fired and students will be denied admission as a result of this.
Do you think dictatorships have never been elected? Trump will not be held accountable for the laws he breaks, because his party would never betray him as their leader. He will not leave office. He will send and has sent people illegally and without due process to a confinement center in El Salvador in co-operation with Bukele, another authoritarian. I doubt there will be fair elections in red states - they'll probably claim mass fraud and throw out allegedly fraudulent votes. They already tried to send fraudulent electors to make Trump president in 2020, and a violent mob to the Capitol after that, as well as pressured election officials in swing states to find votes.
You may not call yourself a Republican, but I make no distinction among those who defend the regime so wholeheartedly. Keep playing the fool; it will not justify your authoritarian apologetics.
> But there is no legal basis for the government to tell a private university who it should hire, fire, promote, or admit on ideological grounds.
That's true. Harvard can absolutely continue to hire for, advocate for, and grade for a single political viewpoint, provided it does not take federal funding.
They can also continue to racially discriminate as title IX only applies to organizations that take federal funding.
Harvard should also lose their current non-profit status per Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983) if they continue to racially discriminate.
> it's fairly clear they mean
"It's fairly clear that Herr Hitler only means to instill properly virtuous German educational values."
No, we've seen more than enough to know exactly what kind of administration this is, and how it lies.
FFS it's just 3 months in and already they're kidnapping people from America into concentration camps for the rest of their lives (however short that might be) with no trial nor even the pretense of charges.
Come to think of it, what's The Hacker News policy on storing user information? Is it time for people who aren't fans of the current administration to make new accounts?
So long as they're their viewpoints.
You don't see letters going out to conservative institutions demanding they hire gender ideology professors or communists.
I’m not sure the government is funding many conservative institutions.
You'd be hilariously incorrect about that.
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> I asked an LLM
A half step from "I asked a magic 8-ball" on this type of question.
The demands are simple and not confusing at all.
- Stop promoting Democrats' agendas as the ultimate truth; stop bullying people for non-Democratic views - Allow Republicans' agendas to be equally represented
Is it really so difficult to understand?
Out of many bad things Trump has done, this isn't really bad for anyone except core Democrats voters.
The US academia has become hostile to anyone except one particular culture. This should stop.
Conservatives should start their own universities, if they aren't happy with the existing ones. The federal government has no business enforcing conformity to certain ideological demands in private institutions. It's right there in the very first amendment.
If the university was founded by the government, it should represent Americans. All of them. Half of Americans are conservative. Approx. half of academia should be conservative.
Harvard is older than both parties. There is no good reason why it should cater to only one half of Americans.
Why should any university go out of its way to "cater to" conservatives and liberals in equal measure if those ideologies don't equally value things like reason and truth? The mission should be providing education and facilitating research, not keeping political partisans happy.
So, we should have merit-based hiring with respect to race and gender, but then have a quota-based system for political affiliation? How do you even measure this? Who counts as a "conservative"? MAGA-only, or do we get to count RINOs? Won't people just lie about their political beliefs to get a job? Do you detect any irony in the way your agenda exactly parallels that of structural racists who see racism in any job where the racial distribution doesn't match that of the general population?
The reason that academia is overwhelming left-leaning is that those are the people that choose to go to grad school and pursue academic careers. For whatever reason (whether ability or inclination) conservatives do so in much smaller numbers. You want conservatives in academia, go get a Ph.D.
It was founded by a government, not the federal government, let alone this government. It was founded before this government existed.
And it's been a private institution for hundreds of years.
Are you arguing that _all_ universities that receive government funding should cater equally to conservatives and liberals? Given that Texas Christian University receives funding from the government, would you argue that it too should stop receiving federal funding until represents America equally?
If they receive federal funding, they should represent Americans. If 100% of Americans will be Democrats, then it can be this monoculture. If more people shift to Green politics, or Libertarian, it should represent those more too.
If there is a Christian university, it should either be sponsored by Christians only, or similar funding should go to other universities representing other major American groups (for example Jews).
Discrimination based on political views should be treated the same as discrimination based on sexual orientation or race.
So you do think that Texas Christian University should lose all federal funding until it proportionally represents all Americans' political beliefs?
Conservatives have started their own Universities. No one likes going to those schools, and they end up bankrupt, with students who are functionally uneducated.
So, there you go, the market has spoken.
So the existing ones don't need government money, then, right?
Stanford for example.
> Conservatives should start their own universities
They did. Remember Trump University? It got shut down for fraud.
I don't think Trump University was ever indented to be a real university. Wasn't it basically the Trump-branded version of those late night infomercials promising to teach you how to get rich in real estate? You know, the ones where ultimately they basically just sell you a bunch of tapes for $5000?
If you're looking for an actual conservative university, a better example would be a place like Liberty University. I think the problem is starting an institution is hard, it'll only really hit its stride like 100 years after being founded, and it's hard to keep an ideological project on track for such a long period of time.
With their endowment above $50 billion, combined with Federal plus Non-Federal sponsored revenue at 16% of operating budget, it makes sense to me they just forgo Federal funds and operate independently.
If all 16% is canceled, then they'd need to draw an additional $1 billion per year from endowment at current budget levels.
That would put them above 7% draw so potentially unsustainable for perpetuity, historically they've averaged 11% returns though, so if past performance is a predictor of future, they can cover 100% of Federal gap and still grow the endowment annually with no new donations.
Republicans Are Floating Plans To Raise the Endowment Tax. Here’s What You Need To Know : https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/11/increasing-endo...
Proposed College Endowment Tax Hike: What to Know : https://thecollegeinvestor.com/52851/proposed-college-endowm...
Other article: When hacking the government rules is used against you.>A new proposal seeks to increase the endowment tax rate to 14%
That would be great that Harvard pays %14 on investment income on its 50 billion fund, considering I pay a minimum of 20% on my 'way less than $50 billion' in taxable investments, which was funded by my already taxed earnings, where as Harvard gets much of its endowment funds gifted to it.
But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Same goes for religious organizations, but it would be extremely hard to enforce, as they might say "government is interfering us practicing our religion", as practicing religions helps to not pay taxes and protected by the Constitution.
>But I don't understand why 14%? It should be the same as you, 20%.
Taxing donations is really thorny. If people realize that the government is taking money they want to give away... they stop giving away money. It's a self-terminating cliche in action. So you either leave it alone if you want to encourage people stimulating charities, or you make the tax very small.
>Same goes for religious organizations,
I don't fully know. Some attempt at separattion of church and state. The government tries to maintain that except when other boundaries are crossed.
It does sort of fall into the same umbrella though, when regarding tithes.
There are several proposed bills, including one that raises the tax to 21 percent.
https://nehls.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/nehls.house.gov/f...
because then those churches and schools will just leave the US! /s
People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education. You and I are not chartered as an educational endowment; things like Roth IRAs exist for us.
> People already paid their taxes on all of the principal before they donated it to fund education
That's not true, the donations are tax exempt (deductible).
I think the point is that money for many was taxed before the paycheck ever came in. And you have no control over it. Part of your W-2 goes to fund social security, part of it to fund the federal, part of it to fund the state.
Taxing donations is just double dipping on your money. That's how you discourage donating.
if your argument is "but they're not getting screwed equally" then its a completely flawed argument benefiting the government
you should be questioning why you are getting screwed at all. it doesn't solve the government's revenue problems or even make a dent.
holy shit dog, you make over $533,000???
Expletive aside, I think they’re talking about their total investment rather than their income.
"funded by my already taxed earnings"
Why did you even try that? Blew your whole argument.
why do you disagree? Most people working a job do have taxes taken out. That's why you get a "return" when the IRS realizes they took too much or you provide other means to deduct your taxes.
Eh, colleges were originally religious institutions. (Harvard was founded to train clergy [1].)
Converting the Corporation to Harvard Church is about the least shenanigany thing I could think of in this tale.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Harvard_University
This is genius. Next up, Apple could easily convert into a church with its many disciples.
And this is why I believe governments should tax nonprofit organizations!
In France, we ran an NGO whose music festival got a bit big… a million or two of beer sales. Tax office came in and put that part of the NGO under the business rules, ie we paid and received VAT, paid the corporate tax at the normal rate, etc. We ended up putting the entire charity under the business rule because it was more profitable (saving VAT on all providers, while our donations were exempt of VAT).
I’m surprised USA doesn’t have a rule that industrial/commercial sections of any org is liable to all corporate tax laws.
we "sorta" do. It's an all in or all out matter with 501c3's. You declare a non-profit and essentially all your money needs to be funneled back to the company. There's many other regulations to prevent the most obvious means of fraud.
Well, a nonprofit cannot have owners. Apple has owners.
OpenApple, a privately owned public benefit corporation.
Public benefit corporations have to pay tax.
If they become a church they will have to buy private jets for the faculty.
No skin in the game, but curious to know why any Republican would want to raise taxes. Is this some sort of power play like the tariffs? Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz.
They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
> They don't care about taxes - they are happy to implement regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the middle class and poor, such as sales taxes, Social Security, etc. They just don't want to pay taxes themselves.
A very large portion of the country vote Republican, and I would be surprised if they are by and large the most well-off part of the American public.
The voters are not the party and the party is not the party leadership. The actual policies that end up being supported have little-to-nothing to do with the stuff that gets talked about while campaigning, and this only gets more true the further away from the actual voter the position is.
Yeah. You can implement any policy you want if you can always blame the other party for it (and have your voters eat it up).
These voters were scammed. Many still don't realize or believe this, and they avoid real news for the purpose of keeping faith in the easter bunny they voted for.
And you are right... that's why "The Party" instead appeals to "the party" with various single issues (you know all the hot topics) and implement (or perhaps, pretend to implement) those while the real bills "The Party" want are passed under their nosess. "The Party" spends a dollar on "the party" while grabbing hundreds from the vault they all pitched into.
Worked for decades. Not so well when Trump so publicly tanked the economy and snatched one of the 3 untouchable things.
It's about punishing their enemies.
> Feels like they’re ghost riding the economy for the lulz
Yes. The abstract of "the economy" doesn't matter. The priorities are "owning the libs" on Twitter and other media, and their own personal bank accounts which can benefit from insider trading the tariffs, state-sponsored memecoins and so on.
Easy, Harvard is essentially a training center for their ideological enemies on top of providing an actual education. They're just putting the boot down and saying stick to teaching instead of implementing and advancing a specific ideology. If taxes are the tools, so be it.
Harvard is a private instutution. If they want to teach underwater basket weaving, there's not much you can do to stop that. Anymore than Trump can raid apple and tell them to start making Androids. I thought a billionaire businessman would understand that much; imagine if Clinton back in the day tried to seize Trump Towers.
And while we long forgotten: don't forget that all of this is illegal. to retract congressionally appropriated funds that were already budgeted. The time to yoink this stuff legally was a month ago.
LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
The current admin is openly anti-intellectual.
Edit:
"We need to attack the universities in this country"
"The professors are the enemy"
Specific clip https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1ichg58/ya...
If you want the full speech it's on YT so if you reply with "context" you should back that up
I'd agree with you that the current admin is anti-intellectual, but this speech is not a smoking gun.
For those who need spoonfed, here is the full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FR65Cifnhw
It's JD Vance's keynote speech at the 2021 National Conservatism conference. The speech, which I've just skimread, is mostly well-worn US conservative complaints about US higher education. He also talks about red-pilling because he's down with the kids, and he adds Jesus sprinkles in case you forgot he's Christian.
The speech is dull but it's bookended with two spicy statements, both of which you mostly quoted. The latter statement is not his words but a quote from Nixon.
Opening statement: «So much of what we want to accomplish, so much of what we want to do in this movement in this country, I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country and so I'm excited to close this conference with this particular set of remarks, because I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country, and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.»
Closing statement: «I really want to end this on an inspirational note [...] and the person whose quote I ultimately had to land on was the great prophet and statesman Richard Milhous Nixon [...] there is a season for everything in this country and I think in this movement of National Conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is we need wisdom, and there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40-50 years ago. He said, and I quote: "the professors are the enemy".»
EDIT: And for the context of the Nixon quote, it comes from a private conversation Nixon had with Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on December 14, 1972, recordings of which were released in 2008: «Henry remember... we're gonna be around and outlive our enemies. And also, never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy. The professors are the enemy. The professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.». It's worth noting that Nixon was already keeping an "enemies list": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon%27s_Enemies_List
It doesn't matter what Nixon's context was Vance was quoting him literally by proclaiming it a piece of wisdom.
Posting the entire speech only bolsters my view. For example
"[To accomplish goals].. I think are fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions - specifically the universities..."
I'm confused about your argument. I don't consider it a smoking gun just a concise example of what Vance and MAGA Republicans belive. There's no context confusion, it's on video, and it being dull only shows how comfortable he is exposing insane views.
The spicy soundbites on their own are scary and do suggest the state wants to destroy intellectuals.
The speech they're from doesn't.
The speech defends and praises universities and their role in society. Vance even claims some academics prefer to ignore evidence that refutes their positions, and he's against that; that would be a valid pro-intellectual position if true (but it's completely nebulous and unsourced)
The thesis of his speech was he doesn't like the content of what academics profess and he thinks they ought to teach his political views (and his audience's political views) instead. That's not anti-intellectualism, i.e. "don't trust those book-learning types, look to the common man for answers". This guy still wants ivory towers provided his cronies are in them.
Also it's interesting to see where his quote came from. He clearly picked an on-theme Nixon quote just to appeal to his audience, and he seems to miss the context of the Nixon quote in that Nixon is a paranoid nutter saying it, not coming from a rational place like Vance thought he just did.
Current universities are openly anti intellectual.
What evidence do you have of this?
What evidence does the parent comment provide?
Just edited my comment. How many quotes do you need? I can supply many
[flagged]
>You are simply defining intellectual as “whatever universities do and say
Definition of anti-intellectual
"a person who scorns intellectuals and their views and methods" from oxford
Intellectual
"of or relating to the intellect or its use", "given to study, reflection, and speculation", and ": engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect" from MW.
I didn't define anything. If I said the administration was anti-education would that be better?
> the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.
> the University must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof, throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs.
In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education? Is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?
>In what way is hiring faculty and and admitting students based on merit instead of their identity anti-education?
It's not. Calling universities and professors the enemy is. The government taking away funding because you want international students to adhere to an ideology is wrong.
>is your position that you get a better education from a professor who was hired because of their race instead of the quality of their scholarly work?
How do you rank the quality of scholarly work?
You ask other scholars in the field to read it and give their opinion on it. It’s this thing called “peer review” that is kind of the basis of all modern academic inquiry.
In the case of hiring, typically a committee of other professors in the department would evaluate candidates, not a bunch of DEI bureaucrats. They would read what the candidates have published and see if the arguments they make are sound, and look at things like # of citations that indicate how prominent the work is in the field.
I don’t know if you’ve ever met any academics, but I promise you they have no problems forming opinions about the quality of work of other people in their field.
Could different scholars from different universities rank people differently?
Sure. Research by definition deals with areas that are not settled, so different people can have different theories, and they might disregard scholars who don't like their preferred theory. On the other hand, some academics welcome debate and differing viewpoints more than most people.
Like, if you were a physics professor and you were applying to a department where everyone was a string theorist, and your position was that string theory is a bunch of bullshit, you might not get that job. Or you might, if your work is otherwise solid, you never know.
But that's a disagreement about physics, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to evaluate a physics professor on. It's not about how enthusiastically they endorse some ideological dogma that has nothing to do with physics.
If people can be ranked differently as candidates by different universities and the people at them how can you ever be sure that a person who got the job because of DEI was the worse candidate?
There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that. Every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field that are the most competitive to get published in and are the most respected, someone with a lot of publications in those journals would be objectively better than someone with no publications or with publications in crappy no-name journals that claim they are "peer-reviewed" but basically publish anything that gets submitted.
We're not talking about roughly equal candidates with similar qualifications and one getting the edge because of race. I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.
You may not be able to say that one candidate is the unequivocal best when there are many qualified candidates, but you can definitely say that a particular candidate is unqualified or not even close to other candidates when, for example, they have not published at all.
>There are objective measures like quantity of publications, quality of the journals published in, # of citations, awards won, books published, things like that
None of these are objective measures of quality.
1. The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.
2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else
3. If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.
4. Awards are a subjective judgement
Of course all of these increase the probability of quality but it's not a guarantee.
> for example, they have not published at all.
I don't think anyone going for a position as a professor hasn't published since most PHds require it. This point probably adds more weight but I think it would be rare between candidates for job.
Reading more carefully, you're just making nonsensical statements that have no connection to reality. Yes, many of these absolutely are objective.
> The more papers you write the more likely you'll be published more. This is connected to time and desire.
Yes, someone who writes more and spends more time doing research and has more desire to do research is objectively better at research than someone who produces less. There is a possibility that one person writes lots of low quality papers and another person writes a few high quality papers, but in asserting this you are admitting that there is some objective measure of the quality of a paper (which there is). Since the reviewers would be reading the papers, they could also objectively assess the quality of the papers too.
> 2. Judging yhe quality of a journal is subjective therefore can't be used as an objective measurement for something else
No, the quality of the journal is not subjective. If journal A publishes anything they are sent without review and journal B rigorously reviews everything by sending it to other experts in the field, then journal B is objectively higher quality than journal A.
> If you write a paper that more people have access to, is about a more popular subject, is the only paper for a subject, or is published in more popular journals it would increase your citations outside of the paper quality.
If you write the only published paper on a subject, then you are objectively the world's leading expert on that subject. If the university wants someone who knows that subject, the only person in the world who has published on it is objectively the best choice.
Part of a professor's job might be to communicate about their research and bring it to a wider audience, and convince e.g. grant committees that it is important and deserves funding. Someone savvy enough to get published in popular journal is objectively more qualified to do this than someone who hasn't been able to accomplish that.
> Awards are a subjective judgement
The awards can be subjective, but whether you have won an award or not is an objective fact. If the job involves doing the kinds of thing that impress the people who give the award, then someone who has achieved that is objectively better than someone who has not.
Sure, it’s not infallible, but having other experts in the field read and judge a candidate’s work is at least an honest attempt at assessing merit.
Whereas going by who can write the most enthusiastic essay about diversity, as judged by the blue-haired gender studies major in the diversity center, is a system that will only select for rabid ideologues and disingenuous bullshitters.
> blue-haired
Why does this matter?
What does gender studies have to do with this situation or DEI ?
> is a system that will only select for rabid ideologues and disingenuous bullshitters.
Why?
> Why?
Pretend you are an investment banker. You've spent the last 10 years living and breathing investment banking. You've worked 100 hour weeks. You can point to a long list of successful deals you've done. You have glowing references from every client and colleague that has ever worked with you.
Now, you're applying for a job at a major investment bank, but before your resume is reviewed by any of the investment bankers, you have to write an essay about how much you love baseball. This essay will be reviewed by a panel of baseball superfans. They will judge it on how much you know about baseball and how much you love baseball. If they feel you know enough about baseball and you sufficiently express your love for it, they will then pass your resume on to be reviewed by the investment bankers.
Now, maybe you like baseball, maybe you don't. Maybe you have no particular strong feelings about it. Mostly, you didn't have time to think much about baseball because you have spent your time obsessed with investment banking.
Do you think this is a good system to hire investment bankers? If someone said "hey, we should hire investment bankers based on their track record in investment banking and not how much they love baseball or if they are baseball players", would you call them "anti-investment banking"?
>I'm telling you there are cases where PhD candidates with zero publications, people who have not even finished and defended their dissertation yet, are hired for tenure-track positions over other candidates who have had their degree for several years, published in top journals, won highly competitive fellowships, etc, because universities want someone of a particular race. It's not subtle.
Give me examples then because how could you know this?
I've worked in academic publishing for a long while, and I can tell you from experience that:
- "quantity of publications" is a problem and directly leads to bad science, so is on aggregate a measure of anti-quality
- "quality of the journals published in" is all in the mind; prestigious journals with high impact factor have been repeatedly found not to have the best research. The rigour of the editing process is more important, but few researchers know that, and importantly they are heavily incentivised by funders to go for high impact factor, completely muddying the waters of who's a good researcher by that metric.
- number of citations would be a better measure, but unfortunately is directly linked to impact factor, in practice and in perception.
- awards won, books published - too niche and random to matter much.
- "every academic could tell you the top 5 journals in their field" haha, no, you'd be as surprised as I was when doing that research.
Academic publishers have been considering the measuring problem for decades, and no one has found a solution yet.
There is no good measure of the quality of a paper until many years after publication. It's easy to identify some true positives (high impact, no retraction), it's quasi-impossible by definition to identify false negatives (unfairly ignored papers), and most importantly this emphasis on prestige research is terribly harmful to Science. Science needs researchers who are happy to replicate studies, people who publish disappointing results, and people who study otherwise unglamorous topics, otherwise Science fails.
TLDR: measuring how 'good' a researcher is by their prestige is extremely destructive to Science. You can't do that.
I'm not saying it's only prestige, but to a first approximation, a researcher who has an article published in Nature is highly likely to be better than one who has only published in no-name garbage journal that publishes whatever they are sent. Of course, nothing is certain, but we're talking about probabilities here.
And, as I'm saying, prestige, or probable future prestige, isn't a good proxy for a researcher's value or future value, even if it could be fairly guessed, which it can't. Nature is exhibit A, B and C, as it's the most prestigious journal, but not the most rigorous in any field, and its very existence damages Science by overvaluing the research it publishes, reducing the impact of better journals and the research they publish, and wasting the time, quality of life, and quality of research of scientists who feel like they must do anything they have to to publish in it, or are pressured by funders and/or academic institutions to do so.
But you are talking certainty when you claim DEI hires means that it's possible the lesser person is hired. If you have no objective system to measure merit then it's possible to ever know this
How does anyone know anything? Why even vet candidates at all? Let’s just assign professorships completely randomly then. We’ll have high school dropouts who can’t explain the quadratic formula teach differential equations at Harvard.
I’m sure they would do just as good of a job. Because nobody could ever possibly objectively tell whether someone with a PhD in math is going to be better at teaching and researching math than a high school dropout, right?
Just want to note that I didn't downvote (I can't yet) or flag your comments. I don't think your comments should be flagged either.
Could you perhaps spell out your definition of anti-intellectual for us then?
> Current universities are openly anti intellectual.
The administration is saying “hire and promote faculty and admit students based on scholarly merit, not ideology and activism”. Universities are saying “no, we want to keep doing the ideology stuff”. That is anti-intellectual.
The people in the administration were not admitted to their universities based on merits, they paid to get in and they paid for their degree. This is especially true for POTUS who holds an entirely fake degree bought and paid for by his father.
And you’re taking words of this administration at face value, correct?
Unless you have evidence Vance is lying why wouldn't I?
[flagged]
What words? What university? Who at the university?
Edit: My comment was that the admin is anti intellectual and I provided quotes from JD Vance on all universities and professors.
Gosh, I don't know. If only there were a link to a statement by a university somewhere here.
But the Trump administration wants to punish students who don't conform to pro Israel views/ideology.
The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and then instead advocate for terrorist groups that are hostile to the interests of the US and its allies. No, that isn't the same. Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government? Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?
>The administration wants to revoke visas for non-US citizens who come here under the pretense of education and instead advocate for terrorist groups.
1. You can get an education while advocating for causes
2. The letter doesn't only say advocating for a terrorist group.
From the gov demand letter:
"International Admissions Reform. By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism."
>Why is the US government expected to fund people who want to destroy the US government?
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.
4. The US government gives money to people who want to destroy it all the time. Welfare, social security, etc is given to anti-gov US citizens with no restrictions based on those views.
5. Although only proposed Trump wanted to set up a fund for January 6th protestors who he pardoned. Some of whom attacked the US capital to disrupt a Democratic election process.
>Should you be required to pay people who want to kill you?
No. How is that related to this? You just overly generalized the entire situation in order to produce a question where I'd mostly likely to say "no" as a argument manipulation tactic.
> 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.
>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
> 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.
>How is it a punishment to send someone away from a place they hate
Name a student who was deported that hated America and provide evidence.
They are the ones asking to live in a different country. The burden is on them to demonstrate why they should be allowed to live here, not on us to prove why they shouldn’t.
Let’s say I want to come live in your house. Do you need to prove to me why I shouldn’t be allowed to do that, or do I need to prove to you why I should? If I make speeches and write articles about how you’re an evil person and we should burn your house down, does that make you think it’s a good idea for me to live with you?
>no, we want to keep doing the ideology stuff
How is this anti-intellectual?
Applicants for faculty positions are required to submit "diversity statements" expressing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This statement is evaluated before any of their other qualifications, like their standing in the field, number and quality of publications, teaching experience, you know, the intellectual quality of their work. If they are judged to be insufficiently committed to the DEI ideology, then their application is rejected without further review, regardless of how qualified they might otherwise be. That is anti-intellectual.
That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies.
>If they are judged to be insufficiently committed to the DEI ideology, then their application is rejected without further review,
Evidence
> growing number of states and schools have also begun eliminating requirements that job applicants furnish “diversity statements” — written commitments to particular ideas about diversity and how to achieve it that, at some institutions, have functionally served as litmus tests in hiring.
https://archive.is/UeZ2A#selection-5289.442-5297.27
> Chavous and her colleagues did not collect demographic information from applicants. Instead, they were asked to submit statements addressing how they would advance D.E.I. goals, whether through research into “race, gender, diversity, equity and inclusion,” “significant academic achievement in the face of barriers” or “commitment to allyhood through learning about structural inequities.” Departments were invited to nominate candidates from an application pool created by the diversity center, which then oversaw further vetting.
https://archive.is/i6Gv9#selection-1183.358-1187.413
Ohio State Reports: DEI Litmus Test
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/ohio-state-reports-dei-lit...
Thank you for providing a source.
I don't agree with Ohio's diversity statements being used as part of the selection criteria. It's wrong.
What about every other university though? JD Vance's statement called universities the enemy. Most universities aren't connected to each other, they aren't a single organization and aren't responsible for what each does.
1. If only a few were using diversity statements as a part of the hiring process, which is wrong, what's the justification in calling all of them the enemy?
2. What about the professors? Most aren't responsible for setting hiring practices. Why are they the enemy?
> That is before we even get into the explicitly racist hiring and admissions policies. [ from your original comment ]
Same as the above for this. A University is a large insinuation of students, teachers, researchers, and various employees. Harvard employs 19k people and has 23k students.
#----------------
My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.
Why I think this:
1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.
2. There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.
3. Republicans perform better with non-college educated voters [2] 2024 election:
No college 36% D , 62% R
Some college or 2yr degree: ~44% D, ~53% R
4-year degree: 53% D, 45% R
Graduate school+: 59% D , 38% R
Therefore reducing the number of people who go to higher education could benefit Republicans in elections.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-01/when-p... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls
> 1. As previously stated not all universities are doing what you claimed. Ohio for one, and the first link says "some" but there are thousands.
Not all, but most. It may have decreased as some universities have started to abandon it now that it is falling out of fashion, but it was a large percentage, I'd estimate 90% offhand, but it's not like there's a lot of sources on this. It is a movement led by an aggressive and militant minority who silences and drives out anyone who disagrees. Most professors, who just want to do their research on 19th century French poetry or the mating habits of dung beetles or whatever they care about just shut up and try to keep their heads down so they don't get denied tenure or have students protesting at their office because they said the wrong pronoun. If you know people in academia and they trust you they will tell you off the record that it is nearly universal and so, so much worse than what is publicly reported. Sorry, I can't provide sources for this. You can trust me or not, but I know what I've seen and what people have told me.
> There are private schools that receive public money but discriminate against LGBQT [1] However nothing has been said or done about this by Trump in the past or now. These religious schools are more conservative and attacks would likely anger the base.
There is a religious freedom issue, because religion is also a protected class. I don't know, religious schools are not that many and they are not a big factor in academia. If you really care about that religion, then you go there, if not there are lots of other places. I don't know why an LGBQT person would want to force their way into going to a school where everyone thinks they're sinful and destined for hell. Seems like masochism to me.
> My opinion is that Vance is attacking universities not because he cares about merit based hiring or the quality of students but for selfish political reasons.
Well, neither of us can read his mind, but he benefited from a system that espoused meritocracy and used it to improve his life from growing up very poor to becoming vice president of the United States. I think it's reasonable that he would want to preserve that so other people could also have that opportunity and not get denied because they were the wrong race.
>Not all, but most.
>I'd estimate 90% offhand, but it's not like there's a lot of sources on this.
What is your estimate based on and what is your basis for claiming "most"?
It would be pretty bad to hire someone who doesn't respect their colleagues, without even knowing them.
Yes, universities have hired a lot of DEI ideologues who don’t respect their colleagues without even knowing them and it is indeed very bad.
Well, if that's the case one of the parties didn't meet the inclusivity criteria, seemingly the DEI ideologues.
>Yes, universities have hired a lot of DEI ideologues who don’t respect their colleagues
How do you know this happens?
The administration defines what ideology is and given the current administration claims it’s based on merit and given the nonsense they do economically, scientifically and militarily they are the ideological activists. Not to mention that they are clearly hired based on gender and skin color.
RFK jr., really?
No, that's a lie and you know it's a lie. The administration specifically demanded that Harvard must submit to viewpoint diversity audits, hiring faculty and admitting students as necessary to make sure that every department has a balance of viewpoints the government finds acceptable.
So they need to have a department to ensure a diversity of views are included?
No, that wasn't sufficient. The government specifically demanded that Harvard must commission a government-approved external party to audit viewpoint diversity, and must promise in advance to follow its recommendations, for each of the next three years.
So a government run DEI department? You're aren't the original person but that's my gotcha
No, it's not a lie that the administration said universities should hire and admit students based on merit. The administration's letter is linked from the university's statement. You can go read it. It's the very first two points.
It's true they also said they want viewpoint diversity quotas and audits. I agree that goes too far. I think they would probably give that up if the university pushed back. This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation. He even wrote an entire book telling you exactly that's what he does, yet somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic. Every plumber, electrician, and carpenter that ever worked with Trump figured this out decades ago.
> somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic
This is extremely disingenous. Throughout this thread you've been arguing on the basis that hiring people simply to fit a political viewoint is wrong, but when it's pointed out that that's exactly what your team wants as well you fall back to name-calling.
What they want is to hire people based on merit, first and foremost. They say that explicitly several times.
That's not the only demand in the letter.
>This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation
Harvard rejected the demands and Trump pulled funding. What negotiation happened?
Also, if everyone knows you're just demanding more than you'd accept what's the value of the negotiation tactic? Everyone would just reject demands initially knowing this
Yes, you reject the first offer and make a counter offer. That is how negotiating works. You ask for more than you expect to get to find out what the limit is that the other party will go up to. How else would you find the limit? You don't know what the other party is thinking or what all of their priorities are. You can't just magically intuit it a priori.
If that's how negotiating works, and Trump cancelled the funding instead of delivering a counteroffer, shouldn't we conclude that Trump is not in fact negotiating? It seems like your vision of negotiation is that Trump does whatever he wants and everyone else politely begs him to be gracious in victory.
Trump made the initial offer. It was up to the university to make a counteroffer and try to meet in the middle. Instead they flatly refused everything. When one party rejects an offer in a negotiation, the other party often walks away. That’s what Trump did. If you aren’t willing and able to walk away, you’re begging, not negotiating.
>Instead they flatly refused everything
No, they had issues with some of the demands and wanted to open a dialog.
Harvard's response says they changed policies to protect Jewish students, made other changes to related to the protests, etc.
It also states
"It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms ..."
#----------------------------- Finally they said:
"Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration. "
I find I'm willing and able to walk away from this discussion. I'll keep your strategic advice in mind the next time a Trump supporter tries to explain why I should not shun them or organize a boycott of their business.
What he explained in his book is that he's an evil, dishonest person, who routinely lies and harms people in negotiations in order to get his way. I agree that being evil and dishonest is often quite effective - if you came up to me with a knife and an outlandish demand that I should give you my wallet, I'd probably concede the negotiation. But I don't at all understand the idea that I have to respect this as some kind of clever negotiating strategy. The innocent researchers whose grants he's cancelled are real people suffering real harm, and they don't become transmuted to a mere negotiating tactic just because Donald Trump doesn't care about them.
If a dishonest person tells you he's dishonest, doesn't that mean he's actually honest?
No because a person isn't "honest" because they make one honest statement.
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if you hate universities it makes obvious sense
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Do you cut off your head when you have a headache?
You think this is a good analogy?
Pretty good metaphor for the current happenings, yes.
Why not?
Chronic migraines do lead to suicide in extreme cases.
Do you consider that a cure for migraines or is it just a strawman?
I’m not half the country, but I can explain it to you. Billionaires already pay tax on investment income. Universities are exempt but now the proposal is that they pay as well, just like individuals (including billionaires) and other profit-making groups.
… or churches
Politics of resentment where elite colleges and universities are unjust scams and billionaires are just the pinnacle of self actualization.
Why do you expect a billionaire to steal from billionaires? a portion of non-essential stealing comes from respct, and of course these billionaires are all a part of the same club.
The other lens is simple as well: big fish don't go after the other big fish. That just ends in two hurt fish and no food. Trump thought he was going after a small fry and underestimated the response. just because Columbia folded doesn't mean all universities will.
lens #3: this clip explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbWnJGlyMU
He's a bully but if everyone realizes they outnumber (and outmatch him) he loses his power).
Doesn't this tax only apply to "net investment income"/realized gains? Billionaires technically already have to pay it at a higher rate. And well they generally do? I mean when they personally actually sell stock and or receive dividends and interest.
Most of the wealth being in stock is really tricky. You can't really tax stock ownership, but at the same time stock can be leveraged against business deals (Musk for example bought Twitter with largely stock, without having to sell it first and therefore being subject to tax), and you can take out loans with stock as collateral.
It's not that tricky. All you have to do is make it a taxable event to collateralize stock.
Should we similarly tax collateralizing real estate as in home equity loans?
Sure, if you exclude primary residence. We aren't trying to fuck with the middle class, just the uberwealthy. I'd be fine with only taxing collateralized stock on people with over $20M in net worth too. We just don't need to provide tax breaks to the rich to make them more rich.
Now, rigorously define "net worth".
It's such an odd argument - the wealthy always seem to know what their net worth is. We could just make them declare it. If they lie, straight to jail.
Do they? I think exactly the opposite is true - if you ask any sufficiently wealthy person, they’d need a team of people working for a bit to arrive at a very hazy net worth number. Private stock is extremely illiquid and doesn’t usually have a good mark to market, ditto most artwork. My impression is that even most public stock doesn’t generally have the depth of liquidity to absorb a founder selling any significant fraction in a short timeframe without cratering in value.
> If they lie, straight to jail.
How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
I'm not defending billionaires and I believe they should be heavily taxed, and huge inheritances should be outlawed, but what's Elon Musk's net worth, for example? He surely doesn't have $369 billion in cash. Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year? It's tricky.
> How do we know whether they lie without a solid definition of net worth?
They get to tell us what they are worth. Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud. There are some areas that are tricky, like pre-market startups, but we have things like 409A valuations that help with that. Penalties should have no statute of limitations - if you lie about it, you get to look over your shoulder forever. It's not perfect, but as you have clearly recognized, there is no perfect system that allows for a reasonable degree of freedom.
> Can we tax him based on his Tesla shares? What happens if Tesla stock goes down by 99% next year?
Not really tricky! He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2. If the value goes down 99%, you pay way less tax (or none if he's no longer wealthy enough to qualify). He can sell his shares to pay it, and I honestly do not care if he is not liquid enough to do that - that's a situation he put himself into. No he doesn't get a tax break on the loss - the rich have a sense of entitlement that their wealth belongs to them free of charge, and I think they should have to pay maintenance. Without public utilities (roads, electricity, air and sea traffic control, etc) and social stability, most of these billionaires would lose their wealth to warlords very quickly.
> He gets taxed on the value of his shares in year 1 and he gets taxed on the value of the shares in year 2.
That doesn't make any sense. If I have $8B worth of shares and I have $2B in cash, and if the wealth tax is 20% I will have to pay all my cash this year. If my shares goes down to zero next year I'm broke. I couldn't just sell $2B worth of shares in the first year either because that would have affected the value of the shares. This is not how taxes should work.
Everyone agrees on income tax or capital gains tax because they are both cash, and the tax is also in the same currency. If we can find a way to tax wealth in the same "currency" (for example 20% of your share portfolio, plus 20% of your cash) then it might work. Obviously the state may not always be able to use shares to fund infrastructure, and cashing out those shares would diminish the value. Also it's still hard to do that for, say, real estate investments.
What doesn't make sense? He'd owe $1.6B the first year, and then he'd be shit out of luck because he drove the stock to 0. Not my problem. And you should stop putting yourself in his shoes - you will never be a billionaire, and you probably won't be a mega-millionaire either. Start worrying about your own situation.
In any case, the whole thread about "net worth" is really besides my original point, which is that collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event. The only reason we got into net worth was because I said I'd only apply it to high net worth individuals, since they have almost exclusively benefitted from the economy over the last 10-20 years. This is also super achievable because to get the bank to loan you money, you have to declare the value of the assets and the bank has to agree with the valuation - super easy to determine tax on that number.
I don't feel that strongly about it if he is just sitting on the assets, but if he's leveraging them to buy Twitter, OpenAI or to donate money toward overthrowing the Democratic order, then yes, he should absolutely pay taxes for the privilege.
I'm not worrying about billionaires. I'm discussing about hypothetical ways we can tax them. They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
> collateralizing stock for loans should be a taxable event
I fully agree with this.
> They own the government, and obviously your idea of potentially making them homeless will be immediately rejected and we will be in this status quo forever.
Disagree. We've been negotiating from the middle. We got the New Deal because the alternative for the wealthy was facing a socialist revolution.
> Generally speaking, if you want to lie about your net worth you are choosing between tax fraud and insurance fraud.
Funnily enough there is (was?) legal activity about exactly this with our current POTUS.
Real estate assets when being accounted for tax purposes: "Worth: $x"
Same real estate assets when being accounted for loan collateral: "Worth: $10x".
But of course like most legal activity against POTUS, it's just been "abandoned".
When the amount of equity pulled out from the loan exceeds the cost basis, why not?
How? That makes little sense to me from an implementation standpoint.
When I bought my home I had to sell $XXX,XXX of stock to make the down payment. If Jeff Bezos wants to buy the same house, he would use a line of credit from the bank, collateralized by his Amazon shares (or whatever source of wealth) and pay with that. I paid 15% in long-term capital gains, he pays 0%. Under my plan, he would pay 15% LTCG for collateralizing his stock,. If I had to pay it, then it's entirely fair and reasonable that we expect him to pay his fair share too.
You could have done the same thing with a margin-enabled brokerage account, e.g. Interactive Brokers or Fidelity.
It's not particularly hard. Just have enough collateral to not get margin called. And, like the margin interest rate better than the tax hit. Shop around for rates. Notice, you don't have to pay the entire down payment this way.
If you have amassed 6 figures of stock and are buying a house, you're qualified to educate yourself on these topics. It's usually worth reading up anytime you incur that sizable a taxable event.
I am not saying this is a great idea, BTW. Just, it's an idea within many people's reach.
If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument - why would you suggest it? The tax laws shouldn't favor the gross accumulation of wealth, nor the starvation of the treasury, so the laws need to change to force the rich to pay their fair share.
> If it's a bad idea, it's a bad faith argument
I believe the GP is just cautioning rando HN readers that they should not rush out and make their down payment in the manner described, as opposed to liquidating some of their stock options for "real cash" like the GGP had to do.
They are just explaining a reasonable method that the (above) average HN reader could use to be in the same situation as Bezos of having a 0% tax on their down payment.
In the US, there's a pretty massive exemption (well, deferral) for capital gains tax on the sale of a primary residence, so once you have one home to work with, the down payment is (kind of?) tax-free anyway.
They definitely shouldn't. It's absurd to suggest that because a middle-class homebuyer can get a margin loan through iBroker means that we should let the richest people in history dodge taxes in this way. If no one would actually do that, then it really doesn't matter that they technically can. The obvious solution is to take away the privilege from the wealthy and make them abide the same rules as the rest of us.
> They definitely shouldn't.
Never give absolute financial advice to anyone who's situation you don't fully understand.
Nah, I’m pretty comfortable that 99.99999% of people should not take a margin loan to buy a house. Close enough for me.
A fair number of people do use margin for down payments until they can sell assets to cover the margin.
It's not uncommon when people buy deals while traveling or in hot markets.
See also Mr Money Mustache's articles on this topic. He assuredly is not Bezosesque.
Here's the Mr. Money Mustache article I referenced: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan-ibkr-...
Another very rational reason for such a margin loan for a home down payment is if the stock you wanted to sell hadn't been held for a year and therefore its sale would not yet qualify for long-term capital gains rates.
You might choose to pay margin interest for up to a year so that the stock sales become taxed at the much lower long-term capital gains rates instead of like income.
That might make sense for someone in the 24% federal bracket which ends at just under $200K of annual income, depending upon how much longer one needs to hold the position to achieve the more favorable taxation. Certainly far below the yacht-owning bracket.
And withdrawals from margin accounts should cause taxable events too. Honestly it is up to the industry to justify and propose a workable tax scheme that makes margin accounts feasible. Withdrawals triggering taxable events seems fair to me, though.
Bezos gets a much better margin rate than you or I would ever get on IBKR. And IBKR doesn't margin call, they straight up auto liquidate. Bezos's lender would never do that to him.
Lenders would have to report loan origination for secured loans where some specific asset classes are acting as the collateral.
If I get something of worth, non-related to the stock/ownership, for the current value on my stock/ownership, I should pay taxes on that amount. I am using the stocks value to gain something. If I take out a loan for businesses needs, that is in the interest of the thing I own. If I take out a loan to buy a separate thing, I have leveraged the current value and have therefor realized the current value and should pay accordingly.
Why does it matter? It eventually gets taxed through estate tax and at a higher rate than income. This obsession with taxing them _now_ only makes sense if the point is to punish the the rich.
Agreed. For the revenue tax activists want from billionaires, it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional. The non-profit tax exemption fight is about "income taxes" which billionaires already have to pay (but avoid). So it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
> it would necessitate a wealth tax, which I believe is unconstitutional
I take it you haven't heard of property taxes.
I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.
If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).
> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.
It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.
> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes
It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.
The federal government is free to assess property taxes too, except that it must apportion them between the states: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1/...
> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]
What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.
Recommend James C. Scott's "Seeing like a State" to learn more about the evolution of property valuation and rights. The systems of land rights in up to the 1500s-1800s were quite complex. The modern state imposed a uniform system of free-hold tenure which shifted the complexity to the downstream consequences.
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...
I was making a comment about radical change in the meaning of "renting" and "ownership". Did you have anything specific in mind?
(I've read the book; it didn't strike me as related to this topic.)
The concept of freehold tenure is pretty central to the book. Not sure you could get any more on-point for the general reader looking for a book recommendation.
But since you ask: the peasant's rights to land were exquisitely bespoke. No tax collector could figure out how much one family owed versus another in another county. The rules in one prefecture of one county may have been completely unresolvable with the rules of a county a hundred miles north. Everything was negotiated family to family over generations, with rights in one place having no corollary whatsoever with the rights in another area, making the tax man's duty a fool's errand.
So, I don't your first statement "European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today." is really meaningful. Because no generalization can be made about the rights of a European peasant. That problem is the whole reason for the systems of freehold tenure that prevail today: making the territory "seeable" by the state.
You're talking about something entirely different. The typical case for the renting medieval peasant is that the rent on a given plot of land is set by custom, the nominal amount has been the same for centuries, and it can never be changed for any reason. No administrative task could ever be simpler than collecting the rent.
Landowners responded to that by adjusting the size of the units in which land rents were due, which is why a major demand of peasant movements was for standardized units.
The fact that rents were absolutely nonnegotiable led to other developments, such as the lord being so indifferent as to exactly who was renting from him that the renter was free to leave his status to whoever he chose in his will.
Again, you're generalizing. To say that doesn't work in medieval Europe is probably itself a generalization. But if you read the book, I don't think this would be a point you'd be arguing.
A federal property tax is also unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court explicitly allowed property taxes in Pollock decision. They haven’t for wealth taxes (they still might allow it but they also might not).
what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?
It’s not totally clear if it would be but here’s a summary: https://city-countyobserver.com/the-constitutionality-of-a-w...
I'm not a lawyer but my reasoning is this:
- as far as I know, double taxation by any given entity (Federal Gov) is unconstitutional
- a given dollar is taxed once as income. A federal wealth tax on the remainder of that dollar would be double taxation.
That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
There are other arguments about "direct taxation" I don't fully understand.
"Double taxation" is absolutely constitutional. Tons of things are double, triple, quadruple and more taxed.
I make a W2 salary. I pay federal income taxes on it. I pay FICA taxes on it. My employer pays payroll taxes on it. I might pay state income taxes on it. One event, tons of taxes. I take that quadruple taxed money and buy a dinner with a beer. Sales taxes on the overall sale, additional taxes on the alcohol, additional sales tax riders because I bought it in the touristy night life area. Triple taxes on my quadruple taxes, good lord! Unconstitutional!
Worthless phrase, "double taxation".
> That does not prohibit the Federal Gov from taxing once, and your residential state from taxing you a second time.
Once again, the several different taxes applied to my salary income. Then on that I go buy a gallon of gasoline, uh oh, federal gas taxes on that. Or I buy a plane ticket and that gets Federal Excise Tax (7.5% of the base fare), the Federal Segment Fee (currently $5.20 per segment), the TSA Security Fee ($5.60 per passenger), and more. Oof, "double taxation"! Even at the federal level!
>> what is unconstitutional about a wealth tax?
Article I, Section 9, Clause 4:
"No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken"
A wealth tax is generally considered to be a direct tax. If you wanted to enact one at the federal level, my understanding is that it would have to be done in proportion to the census. So, given that Mississippi is around 1% of the total US population, Mississippi would have to pay 1% of the wealth tax. Mississippi is the poorest US state, so that would be a very regressive tax.
An income tax is also considered to be a direct tax, that's why it took an amendment to the Constitution to enact one.
The Constitution applies to taxes at the federal level, not state. States could enact a wealth tax the same way they enact property taxes now (depending on their state Constitutions). The problem for them is that wealth is a bit more mobile than property.
And yes there are arguments about what a direct tax really meant in the language at the time the Constitution was written, there are arguments that the income tax should have been legal without an amendment. But that's not how it went down.
Billionaires do pay income tax on investment income.
If they sell and incur capital gains. But they have so many better alternatives than you or me. And if they do incur capital gains they pay the same tax rate (or maybe 5 basis points higher, depending on your income) as you or me.
What alternatives are those, that enable realizing income without incurring income tax?
Borrowing against assets. Wealthy people get low, low rates, much lower than the hoi polloi would get on a HELOC or brokerage account margin loan. Banks like having them as clients.
Not only they get low rates, but if they have friends in the palace, they tend to be beneficiaries of large governmental contracts; during times of economic upset, they are the beneficiaries of large “monetary injections” that later cause inflation and prices to rise for all of us. During 2008, COVID, and the Mango recession the wealthy got much much wealthier, and all we got was expensive eggs and higher costs of living.
And how do you pay back the loan without realising a gain?
You don't pay back the loan. You die, your assets pass to your heirs, and their cost basis is stepped up. The heirs sell some of the assets to pay the loan back. They don't have capital gains because of the stepped-up cost basis.
That's the gist I got from reading https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
There are finer points I don't understand such as:
1. Is the stepped-up cost basis available to the estate or only to the heirs? If it's to the estate, it's easier for the bank to trust they'll be paid back.
2. If the heir gets the stepped up cost basis, what legal guarantees does the bank have that the heir will pay the loan back?
And probably a lot else. I assume there's expensive lawyering and accounting involved in setting it up, so it isn't cost-effective unless you have a certain amount to shield from taxes in the first place.
Really? They're not going to get below prime. Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns. It's going to be above prime.
Usually about the lowest rate you can get is a mortgage on your house.
Of course, if your credit is bad, you're not going to get a good rate.
> Nobody loans out money with a guaranteed prospect of below market returns
Not to you or me. Giving powerful people who can send more business the bank's way a freebie on their personal accounts might make sense as a loss leader.
An ELOC for a HNWI can be significantly lower interest than a mortgage. They can often get "fed funds rate/LIBOR + 0.5%" or so. This is because they can accept a floating rate, while mortgage rates get locked in for 10-30 years.
First of all, prime can be pretty good vs being taxed. Secondly, who knows what kind of sweetheart deal can be pulled for a small (in the big scheme of things) "loan" when banking of billions is at stake.
Adam Neumann and several others in that era famously got very large zero interest personal loans because the bank wanted their corporate business.
Not at rates anywhere near tax rates on wages of a middle class worker.
Because investment income is not the same as wage income. Nor should they be.
Why not? Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar. Why should investment dollars be taxed less than those earned through the sweat of one's brow?
Mainly to encourage people to save their money. You know, "work smarter, not harder"...
Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money though - that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists. Spending and borrowing is heavily encouraged at all levels, while investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income to prevent the poor from being able to "work smarter".
> investment opportunities are gated based on wealth and income
Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
> Financial policy is very specifically against people saving their money
No, it isn't. People who save money are terrified of risk. There's nothing stopping anyone from investing the money.
> that's why a certain level of inflation is considered desirable to mainstream economists
That's the excuse the government makes to inflate the money. You'll never see a politician point out the real reason for inflation. It's so they can spend it without raising taxes, but it does cause inflation, and inflation has to be blamed on something else. Anything but the truth.
> Anyone can install robinhood on their phone and trade using their credit card.
Buying a few stocks on an app is not anywhere near the same thing as being an accredited investor. Access to the most lucrative investment opportunities are not available to the average person, and that's almost entirely due to rules intentionally created to block anyone but the already wealthy.
Please, this thread is about the average wage-grade worker (money earned via the "sweat of one's brow"), not an "accredited investor". In this example, almost anyone in the US can open up a Robin Hood, Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc account with probably $25. You don't need access to the most lucrative investment opportunities to make money; simply buy a standard S&P 500 ETF and call it a day. Over time, the chances of you making money with your investments are high, and the tax burden is lower, meaning you get to make and keep more money in your pocket. That is a win for everyone - not just the magical "billionaire".
The average worker in the US needs these sorts of opportunities to be self reliant. You don't need to be a billionaire to make money on the market, you just need a few dollars, some time, and the will to take a little risk. Stop hating on the average worker...
To say nothing of insider trading for those connected to folks setting policies that affect the economy
Right, because the average worker has insider connections that set policies that affect the economy. /s
What are the examples?
The methods that institutional investors have, like market making or delta one strategies, aren't available because of the rules, it's because individual investors literally don't have the scale, flow and networks to do it.
Second of all, at the end of the day it's other people money's they're using, and are entrusted to manage. You can't demand people to just lend money to anyone, any sort of free market of loans will quickly coalesce into a few capital allocators.
Sorry, nothing prevents the poor from working smarter. Just because you are poor does not mean you are uneducated. And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income. Literally anyone in the US can open an investment account and get started. The lack of desire is the real issue.
> And, investment opportunities are NOT gated based on wealth and income.
What? There is literally a class of people considered accredited or sophisticated investors.
To be considered an accredited investor by the SEC you must have a net worth of over $1M -not including- your primary residence, and you must have an annual household income of over $300K.
It is quite literally a wealth and income gate.
We have tax-advantaged retirement accounts to enable the middle class to save a reasonable amount in order to retire without being a burden on society. A typical saver doesn't have additional extra money leftover for a taxable brokerage account that exposes them to capital gains taxes.
Low capital gains taxes aren't meaningfully encouraging somebody making 75k and saving 10k annually to continue with their saving plan.
So you tax the person extra who needs to eat their money, and let the person who is swimming in money keep more of it?
And you earnestly can't understand why the poor want to increase taxes on the rich?
So we can tax it at a higher rate? Couldn't agree more.
Short term dividend income is taxed at the same rates as wage income.
Thanks, I should have been more clear.
When i needed money for a house, without a good security i had to pay 1.6 and with 0.8.
Rich get richer, poor never see this advantage.
Only short term gains are taxed as income. Long term capital gains tax caps at 20%, wildly lower than the top income tax bracket of 37%. And it's always possible to defer short term gains (e.g. put your trading money in an IRA).
IRA contributions are drastically limited to a $7000 cap per year under 50. Whether they should be is another question, and one worth exploring.
Long-term investment is rightly seen as something to be encouraged hence the lower tax rates. You can make the argument that the rate should be more like 0% since the money invested and risked was already taxed most likely...20% is a reasonable value for the market regulating infrastructure provided by gov't entities.
IRA caps are low, but loads of people earning enough that they'd reasonably save more than 7k annually have access to 401ks or similar accounts that raise the annual cap to >30k, vastly more than the typical person is saving.
The middle class isn't taking advantage of low capital gains rates to earn more from their taxable brokerage accounts because they haven't even filled up their tax-advantaged accounts.
There are loopholes to roll all sorts of nonsense into an IRA though. There was a whole news cycle in the 2012 election about Mitt Romney's $4M "IRA" or somesuch. And IRAs are hardly the only shelter from income tax, they're just the most obvious.
The simple truth is that wealth beyond the ~$10M level in the US pays essentially zero "income tax". It just doesn't happen, no one does it. Short term gains are only taxed for small investors who don't know any better.
According to Google:
"Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced on social networks that this year he will pay 11 billion dollars, thus becoming the largest taxpayer in the history of the USA."
Certainly someone we can take at his word, which is why my self driving Roadster flies me to work every day
That was on a sale of Tesla stock that he'd held for much longer than the long term rate threshold. He paid 20% on it, or plausibly less. I, personally pay a higher rate than that. Big numbers notwithstanding, Elon Musk shouldn't be paying less tax than I do, sorry.
If you hold stock long term, you will pay the same or less tax.
From Google: "For the 2025 tax year, individual filers won't pay any capital gains tax if their total taxable income is $48,350 or less"
If you've got a smart phone and a credit card, you can buy stock. See robinhood.com
You're dodging, and I know you're smart enough to know how this goes. I don't make money with long term stock, I make salary. I pay >>20% tax on that salary. Billionaries make, statistically, zero salary. All their income is on long term gains. All of it. So billionaires pay 20%, and that only if they're dumb enough not to find other shelters.
You're just saying "Well, that's the way the tax code works". I'm saying "The tax code sucks", and your point is non-responsive.
You can invest in stocks, too. Over time, it will pay more than your salary.
If you bought a house, and it goes up in value, that increase will be a capital gain taxed at capital gains rates.
So how "over time" do I need to wait until I start paying the same tax rate as a billionaire? Seems like your solution to "the rich pay less tax" is "well, everyone should just be rich then"?
"Let them eat cake" makes for extremely poor federal revenue policy.
Billionaires do not get a tax exemption
No but their earnings are mainly in their companies, and those can hire fleets of tax attorneys and accountants to crush their tax burden.
Once the money is in stocks, it doesn't get taxed unless you draw on it, but the billionaires can use strategies like buy, borrow, die (which last I checked only really works if you're north of ~ $300M) to avoid personal taxes.
Billionaires benefit most from the largest tax exceptions. No tricky accounting needed it’s baked blatantly into the tax code. Long term capital gains are specifically lower than short term capital gains. Further gains are only taxed on sale allowing a lifetime of growth to pass to the next generation tax free.
They also operate at a scale where many tax breaks become viable. CEO owners aren’t paying themselves nominal salaries because they are actually working for free. Creating a shell company to own your 50k car isn’t useful but it’s damn well worth it if you’re buying a 50+m dollar yacht for personal use. Turning depreciation into a nominal loss offsetting capital gains etc.
Meanwhile people of lesser means get stuck with all kinds of crap like a 10% early withdrawal penalty on 401k plans.
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If only governments weren’t so damn useful we could all avoid taxes.
Instead it’s mostly a question around who pays what share, and there’s some massive winners and losers.
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I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
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>> College endowments are typically tax-exempt, but a 2017 law imposed a 1.4% tax on investment income for a small group of wealthy private universities.
> LoL - why it makes any sense to do this for universities and not billionaires is beyond me, but I'm sure half the country can explain it to me like I'm 5.
Because they already do it for billionaires: unlike university endowments, billionaire investment income is not tax-exempt by default, it's already subject to income tax [1].
[1] At least theoretically, ignoring the loopholes and tax-dodges billionaires can take advantage of with literal armies of accountants.
Billionaires pay 37% or 20% on their investment gains, can't really explain it to a 5 year old because congress and the IRS make it complex.
They don't pay anywhere close to that, there are tons of tricks to avoid paying that % on gains and the more money you have the more leeway for loopholes.
Very relevant in startup ecosystem as well (look up exchange funds, opportunity zones etc.)
40% of Federal income tax revenue comes from the top 1%.
Imagine how much federal revenue would increase if that 1% paid the same effective rate as say a typical plumber, rather than the <10% they currently pay. That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt.
shrug
I hear that sentiment a lot, but it doesn't seem right to me. My salary is pretty close to the median plumber's income, and my family's effective tax rate last year came in at... 1.6%. And that's with all retirement account contributions going toward Roth accounts. If we'd chosen to contribute to traditional IRA/401k accounts instead, the EITC and child tax credit would easily turn our tax bill negative.
A quick search tells me the median plumber salary is ~$60k. Your telling me your entire tax burden is ~1k? I find that hard to believe, and if true is pretty darn atypical. That's closer to what I was paying when I was making ~10/hr.
Yes. We had $50k of taxable W2 income ($63k including pre-tax insurance premiums and HSA contributions), $13k of taxable family leave benefits, $4k of interest/dividends (mostly qualified dividends, taxed at 0%), and $9k of long-term capital gains (taxed at 0%), making our pre-tax gross income about $89k. Only $66k of that is subject to taxes; the standard deduction brings that down to $37k, on which the tax is $4k. With a $2,000 child tax credit, $400 saver's credit, and $200 foreign tax credit, our tax liability is reduced to $1400, which is 1.6% of $89k.
> rather than the <10% they currently pay
I suspect you're using a different definition of "income" than the IRS. What is it?
The amount they report on their tax returns.
There's no case where that's true.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-...
For one thing, many plumbers do make it to the 1%: Trades are a profitable line of work for the industrious.
But the median 1%’er is paying 3-4X the effective rate of the overall median earner.
So if they're earning 50x as much, why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?
>> is paying 3-4X the effective rate > why are they only paying 3-4x the tax?
You have conflated the tax rate with the tax amount.
"That might actually put a dent in the trillions of dollars this congress is about to add to the national debt."
It might also result in even more spending. I don't think that there is any "natural ceiling" when it comes to willingness of politicians to spend other people's money. The only ceiling is external - how much will the system bear.
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They did! Then someone decided that was waste and installed incompetent people over it.
What percent of all income do they make?
Edit: it's an honest question. Maybe the top 1% paying 40% of all income taxes is too much tax. Maybe it's not enough. Without knowing how much of all the income they make it's a meaningless number.
According to the Tax Foundation[1], for tax year 2021, the top 1% of U.S. earners—those with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $682,577 or more—accounted for 26.3% of total AGI and paid 45.8% of all federal income taxes.
My personal opinion is that income tax should be more progressive, but I know that plenty of smart people disagree on that.
[1] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...
Your source leans right-center, so probably good reason to suspect their reported top 1% AGI is low and their reported federal income tax estimate is high.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/tax-foundation/
https://fee.org/articles/5-reasons-to-avoid-ad-hominem-argum...
It’s IRS data. You can download it from the IRS website and replicate the analysis and prove them wrong if you’d like.
1. Does not follow. Just because you don't like someone's politics doesn't mean they're dishonest.
2. Your own link contradicts you. It says explicitly that that site hasn't failed any of their fact checks and doesn't use loaded words that they say are typical of that category. It says the categorization is because the site promotes libertarian policies.
There are a lot more taxes than the federal income tax. It happens to be one of the most progressive taxes. Anyone focusing on that and ignoring all the others is trying to scam you.
This is true for ultra high net worth individuals. They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
It is also true for many “normal” one percenters. For example there is a service for incorporated anesthesiologists where you tell them where you plan to go on vacation and what dates, and they create a bullshit anesthesiology conference, including the brochure and other artifacts, that meet the letter of the law IRS definitions for a valid business expense. None of this stuff ever hits AGI.
A simpler example: social security taxes hit a cap at a bit under $200,000/year. Somebody working fast food at minimum wage is paying 6.2% on every dollar they earn, while with my fancy tech job I’m paying a substantially lower percentage.
The social security "tax" should really be conceptualized as an investment, not a tax. The typical fast food worker has probably not passed the first bend point in the Social Security PIA formula, meaning that social security is giving them 90 cents on the dollar*. You, with your fancy tech job, are likely well past the second bend point: social security is only giving you 15 cents on the dollar* (and nothing, obviously, for earnings beyond the payroll tax ceiling).
It's a progressive system overall - but it wasn't designed for the purpose of wealth redistribution, hence the payroll tax ceiling.
* More precisely, their monthly benefit at full retirement age increases by 90 cents for each additional dollar of pre-retirement average monthly earnings, whereas yours only increases by 15 cents.
That's wild. I searched, though, and this is the closest I found: https://www.cerebraltaxadvisors.com/blog/vacation-business-t.... Is there a link you could share for the actual fake conference approach?
> This is true for ultra high net worth individuals.
Anyone can borrow money against their stocks, house, or credit card. It's tax-free as well.
> They can do schemes like borrowing against equities and using the tax-free cash for expenses or purchasing other assets.
Um, borrowing money is not "income". You have to pay it back, with interest.
If the asset appreciates faster than the interest rate there's never a need to sell. If the interest rate is lower than the capital gains tax rate, paying the interest is cheaper than paying taxes.
UHNW individuals can borrow until they die. Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis. The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
Normal people can't do this. If I die owing money, my creditors will take it out of my estate before it passes to my heirs. UHNW estates can be structured differently and creditors can accommodate different payment terms (get paid second) because they know the money's there, and it saves taxes.
You can also read: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
I might have gotten some things wrong. Or maybe the poster has.
> Their assets pass to their heirs with a stepped up cost basis
LOL, the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
> The heirs can liquidate whatever's needed to pay off the loan and incur no tax.
The loan and the interest payments and dont forget the inheritance tax.
> Normal people can't do this.
Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
> LOL,
I assumed you asked a question to learn something. If you're not interested in learning, please continue believing that everyone gets the same tax system. Otherwise keep reading.
> the stepped up basis gets hit with the inheritance tax.
There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
If you read the link I posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
it has a fairly detailed explanation of how it's a completely different ballgame above a net worth of $300m. Grantor trusts allow sidestepping estate tax and...
> The loan and the interest payments
"The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was. Income that would normally have been derived by selling assets. Obviously it has to be paid back. No one said it's free money. Only that it's (largely) tax-free money.
The interest payments are lower than the income tax would've been on the same amount of income.
> and dont forget the inheritance tax.
You mean estate tax. Explained above.
> Yes, they can borrow money, die, the inheritors pay off the loan with the stocks, and then pay estate tax.
Not in the same way, and not nearly as effectively.
If there are specific inaccuracies with https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26... I'm open to learning.
> There's no federal inheritance tax. Only some states have it. You're thinking of the estate tax.
They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
> "The loan" otherwise known as "income" because that's what it really was
Borrowed money is not "income" in any sense of the word. When I was on summer vacation, I decided to take a class in accounting. One of the most productive uses of my time. I recommend it. P.S. if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income", that's called fraud.
> If you read the link I posted
I rely on my CPA for tax advice, not the internet, nor do I care much for misusing accounting terms. I've read too many articles that confuse income with revenue, wealth with income, and so on.
> They're the same as far as this discussion is concerned, as the amount that the beneficiary gets is (roughly) the same.
The estate's value is reduced by what it owes.
> if your business tries to classify borrowed money as "income"
sigh C'mon man, engage in good faith here. Stop saying things I didn't say.
If you can borrow cash against assets, don't have to pay principle until you die, and only pay low interest payments then it's functionally the same as selling those assets at a low tax rate. That's the principle.
And if you can use trusts to avoid estate taxes then there are no (or very low) taxes due ever.
> I rely on my CPA for tax advice
Ok ask your CPA what they know about using trusts to avoid estate taxes. Maybe it's BS but maybe it's true. Without some curiosity, how will you ever know?
> not the internet
More reputable sources than Reddit indicate it may be possible to use trusts to greatly reduce or eliminate estate tax:
https://privatebank.jpmorgan.com/nam/en/insights/wealth-plan...
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/grat.asp
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/wh...
I don't think anyone is arguing that a loan is income in a legal sense. I am going to generously assume you misunderstood.
20%. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-share-top-1-before...
The top 1% of people make 20.7% of the country's income. Given progressive tax rates, they should be paying a lot more than 40% of Federal income tax revenue, but rates don't scale enough, and aren't lax enough on other classes.
What is the right percentage for the 1% to pay? State a percent.
I keep here this “the rich should pay more”, but rarely do I hear a number.
Tax every dollar over $999,000,000 at 100%.
50% tax.
For perspective: UK tax rate bands are 40% between £50k-£125k, 45% above that. So 50% tax for the 1% isn't wild at all in absolute (although it's a big departure from the american approach to taxes, of course)
Whatever it takes to restore 1960s level of inequity.
By whatever measure works, eg old school gini coefficient or something more modern.
You're right though: food fights over decimal points and gaming the rules nicely obfuscates any constructive debate about what kind of society we want.
Your answer begs the question - why is the 1960’s the right target?
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax and pre-benefit distribution, it’s not going to change with high taxes and high redistribution (and yes you mentioned it may not be the right measure).
And if the Gini coefficient is calculated based on income data from the US, do we know if the better Gini from 1960’s wasn’t just due to income not being reported to the IRS?
> why is the 1960’s the right target?
Realpolitik. Proper Nordic levels of (lesser) inequity is not likely in the USA. But selling the nostalgia of our '60s era prosperity might fly.
> if the Gini coefficient is calculated pre-tax
Firstly, then pick a different different metric. Gini coefficient is merely the most familiar.
Secondly, you asked about proper income tax rate. In my pithy reply, I implied outcomes are more important than implementation details, but slap fights (like this one) about those details are used to distract. (I think the kids today call that "bike shedding".)
Also, I did not explicitly state that measures of wealth distribution is the central issue. I regret the omission.
--
While I have your attention: How do you think our tax regime should be structured?
Feel free to link to any prior explanations (posts) I may have missed, so you don't have to repeat yourself.
Can you explain your reasoning behind "they should be paying a lot more"? I kept hearing that they didn't pay their "fair share" when in fact it appears they pay double. It just seems like whatever they actually pay, measured in dollars or as a percentage, will always be widely regarded as not enough.
There are a couple of key phrases in politics that get used because there is no actual justification. "Fair" is one of them. It is impossible to achieve fairness in the tax system under any circumstances, it is always taking from someone who - from the fact that it isn't voluntary - we can assume quite likely disagrees with how the money is about to be used. Taxes are fundamentally arbitrary.
So in practice, if "fair" is used in politics the appropriate reading is often as a euphemism for "I think we have the numbers to push this interpretation of the world on people; it'll be good for us".
> when in fact it appears they pay double
They very obviously don't make only twice as much money as the bottom 80%, so how is that equal in the slightest?
You've mis-read the comment. This logic is not strictly related but it might help you understand what he was saying:
There are ~300 million people in the US who are not billionaires. If they earn, on average, $4 each that balances out a billionaire by income [0]. Since there are <1,000 US billionaires, the average american income would need to drop back to something around the $4,000 range for billionaires to be out-earning them.
This is why taxes tend to land heavily on the middle class, the billionaires don't control most of the money. If politicians want access to money, the biggest pot isn't the billionaires.
[0] And billionaires don't generally make billions in income because it is a wealth measure.
The top 1% aren't the billionaires. It's also not most of the millionaires. It's people earning a tiny bit less than 700k a year.
The suggestion is simply that the top 0.1% pay more - as they will be little affected by it.
It's important to distinguish between wealth and income. Like, I would say that a lot of HN readers are in the top decile of income in whatever country they live in, but far, far fewer are in the top decile of wealth.
Personally, I think that we should tax wealth more in general, and probably make the income tax a bit more progressive (I currently pay 52% which sucks, but if I had to pay a few pp more to get rid of homelessness and poverty in my country then I'd be ok with it).
> as they will be little affected by it
Everything you tax away from wealthy people is removed from their investments.
For example, if all of Musk's income above $1m were taxed away, the following companies would never have existed:
1. Tesla
2. SpaceX
3. Starlink
4. Neuralink
You didn't have to sweeten the pot, I was already on board
Its still less than the fines most of those companies have incurred in the space of a year.
Do you think they were arguing for taxing away all wealth over $1 million?
If they were taxed $1, that's $1 taken away from investments.
Ok, but how does that prevent the existence of what you mentioned?
Do you think they weren't? What about that logic doesn't apply to millionaires?
Or to put it another way, if I make the same claim about millionaires; how do you expect to argue that they will be greatly affected by being taxed more? A 1% tax increase on someone's gross income is never going to "greatly" affect them unless, but if it happens 100 times they will be pennyless.
If you take money away from someone, they will have less money and do less because they have less resources.
I'm not sure what the disagreement is? None of the stuff you said is wrong, but I don't see how it is a response to my comment. Nor do I see how it is particularly relevant in a conversation where I assume the idea is a different progressive taxation rate.
There isn't a disagreement, it is a question (technically, several questions). The hint is in the "?". Your 1 sentence comment isn't long enough to respond to directly without more information, even if I wanted to.
I am going to abstract from the hard 1 million number which is obviously low in 2025, and just base my arguments on maybe a few million as a reasonable limit. Make it ten or twenty if that fits your mental model better. You have no way of knowing that those companies would never have existed. They could very well have existed, just no billionaire would have been the majority owner. The money is not removed from their investments, but they are required to divest them to other owners. Funding mechanisms for the companies now self-funded by billionaires would be quite different if the ultra-wealthy were never allowed to exist. It would require more cooperation, but it would not therefore be impossible.
If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not. If some people would be less motivated and do less than they do now, it would be a lesser evil that creating oligarchs thirsty to dominate whenever they get the chance. As long as people can live a good and comfortable life, they do not have rights to more than that.
People who argue against progressive taxes tend to ignore the fact that modern capitalism is basically a game, one where the rules greatly favor the richest, who have virtually unlimited leverage compared to the average person. They make money exponentially more easily than others. It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes. Every once in a while an adult needs to step in to keep the game fun for everybody, and not just let the best player dominate others and make everybody else miserable. Maybe if we did this, the price gouging and constant turning of the screws would give way to a society where fair trade was the default cultural and economic norm.
Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
> If somebody cares about progress and is highly motivated, they should remain highly motivated to create incredible products and services, whether that buys them unchecked power or not
If you tax their money away, they have that much less capital to invest.
> It is absolutely right to correct this game through appropriate progressive taxes.
Only if you don't like electric cars, cheap space rockets, cheap global communications, and enabling people with spinal injuries to need a lot less help.
> Certainly hoarding more wealth than Smaug is a crime of grave injustice against humanity. For the mind completely sold to capitalism, this is impossible to understand. But people come before wealth and power.
Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
I suggest you check out what happened under communism in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, etc., under communism where people came before wealth and power. Your ideas sound good in a textbook and in the classroom, but they just don't work in the real world.
> Nobody hoards wealth. They invest it. Nobody has a Smaug hoard. There are no Scrooge McDuck cash vaults.
There are, unfortunately. [0] Though Putin's gold palace did have to be stripped for fungal problems, later.
Musk does go around with a large amount of debt, such as the 13bil he currently owes. So he's less likely to have a prepper vault. That does not mean that human greed doesn't turn to cartoons for inspiration, at times.
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
How come the system rewards someone like Musk with so much but doesn't do the same for people like Norman Borlaug (green revolution), Frederick Banting (insulin), Karl Landsteiner (ABO blood groups) or Katalin Karikó (mRNA vaccines)?
What sort of things can our society do to ensure that the people who dedicate their lives to eliminating the suffering of so many are compensated for what I'm sure we can agree are absolutely amazing accomplishments?
Musk's companies are hype stocks. Today's many successful tech companies run because of the commodification of x86 hardware, allowing them to build massive data centers, run cheap ad platforms, provide things like YouTube, etc, for free. All of this was because of Linux, which Linus Torvalds created. Before Linux and commodity x86 made it reliable and useful, every company had to pay Sun/IBM exorbitant amounts. In no conceivable universe has Musk created more value than Linus. Yet, Linus is not a billionaire.
Most businesses are funded by taxpayers, either directly or indirectly. Elon Musk is a billionaire because of DOE funding, or there would have been no Tesla today.
By January 2009, Tesla had raised $187 million and delivered 147 cars. Musk had contributed $70 million of his money to the company.
In June 2009, Tesla was approved to receive $465 million in interest-bearing loans from the United States Department of Energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two? At what point would you accept that someone has more money than they'd reasonably need? And if you just thought of a maximum amount, then, wouldn't the acceptable tax rate over that amount, be 100%?
> Could you help me understand why an individual with one billion, needs two?
Sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687828
Not sure any of these companies have really appreciably made the lives of people better. Sure seem to have funnelled more money to Elon though.
No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
As for making lives better, Starlink was provided free to disaster victims in N Carolina and the LA fires. Something the government failed at. Enabled by cheap reusable SpaceX rockets, another thing the government failed at. Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
Money was funnelled to Elon, he has a knack for getting government contracts. My memory is Tesla was powered by many grants for whoever was willing to work on electrification of society. The issue with that is that people want to put more money under the control of the government, despite it being the entity that funnelled money to Elon. I don't really understand that perspective, it seems a bit crazy - it'll end up with Elon getting more and more power and wealth. If we assume de-powering and de-wealthing Elon is a good, why push more money into the system that is wealthing and powering him? One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Government contracts where they buy something is not "funneling" money any more than you "funnel" money to Safeway when you buy tomatoes there. And if Musk had failed to deliver working rockets, NASA wouldn't have paid a dime. Musk bet his entire fortune on it.
Musk also sold those rockets to NASA for 10% of what NASA would otherwise have to pay.
> One theme in Elon's companies is they are positioned to hoover up money the US government is wasting and make sure it ends up in Elon's pockets.
Tell us how that works.
> Less government spending is more likely to hurt Elon than help him.
Are you suggesting that Musk is doing what's right for the country rather than what's right for his fortune?
> No money was "funneled" to Elon. He created it.
No he didn't.
> Starlink is very popular, so it must be making peoples' lives better.
So is meth.
So every enterprise becomes state owned? Ilya Sutkever's new company is already worth 32B so 31/32 of it should be owned by the government in your world? Who makes the decisions for it?
I am alarmed by how quickly Americans leap from the suggestion that we tax the super-wealthy more, to this idea of full communism.
Assume you think the government is in a better position to spend that billion than the billionaire is to figure out what to buy or invest their money in?
I know he's out of favor with a lot of people, but would Elon have created SpaceX or The Boring Co or Neuralink, or helped start OpenAI if he hadn't had the spare billions to do so?
I'd much rather have multi-billionaires investing in the economy, and in the future, than giving additional money to the government.
So you'd rather have someone unelected with that money. Don't y'all live in a democracy?
We live in a Constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights and the right to own property.
So, no?
Correct. Look up "Constitutional republic".
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/lesson-pl...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/fact-check-richest-1...
That seems excessive.
Corporations are persons, right? Why is their tax rate just half that of real people?
Why aren't all persons taxed equally?
This conversation is about billionaires, not the top 1%.
The top 1% own 39% of everything in the U.S. You are not in the top 1%. Why are you complaining again?
The city claims to own my house, as they charge me rent every year, and have a long list of things I'm not allowed to do with it.
That rent went up over 10% last year. For contrast, the rent control people want to cap rent increases to 7%.
My heart bleeds for you.
I appreciate your concern.
If they don't wanna pay so much in taxes, they should stop having so much money. Taxes function to raise revenue and thus have to go where the money is.
There are no loopholes for investment gains. If you are talking about offsetting losses and delaying gains, those options would likely be available to endowment funds.
I think the 9 billion is very misleading. More than half goes to hospitals affiliated with Harvard. I am not sure but I don't think they get anything from the endowment. The impact of loosing this money would be very uneven across different parts of the university and hospitals affiliated with it.
The faculty of arts and science would be fine. Yes, some cuts, a hiring freeze etc. The med school and public health school would feel a big impact. They employ so many people on "soft money" through grants including many faculty members.
The hospitals are a different story and I am not sure why they are even lumped together.
Yeah this isn't purely a question of Harvard's P&L being dependent on subsidies. The money in question is grants attached to specific practices or research. The money isn't just gratuity for Harvard being so great, it's awarded for specific objectives that Harvard was deemed capable of delivering. Cutting off the money isn't going to hurt Harvard, it's going to stop all the programs the grants were funding.
Stopping those research programs is a choice. They could also choose to pay for them out of the endowment.
People here have little idea about how Harvard works. Harvard is financially vulnerable. It is currently running on a deficiency considering the endowment. And Harvard can't freely use most endowment for personnels anyway. If the government takes away funding, Harvard will have a financial crisis. I guess the leadership made the decision in hope someone could stop the government before bad things happen but when bad things do happen, you will probably see mass layoffs of researchers in particular in life sciences and biomedical research.
I mean, we literally just saw what happened at JHU when their USAID funding vanished. Everybody on that soft money got laid off.
That’s what makes stands like this hard for admin: you’re risking massive layoffs in the programs that are often the least political to defend the academic freedom of the programs that are often the most political. Columbia made one decision. Harvard is making another. You could make Lord Farquaad jokes here, but if it alone loses its federal funding in these expensive research areas, it will lose its preeminence in those areas for a long time.
I guess Harvard saw the decision at Columbia made the situation worse [1], so they decided to make a different one.
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-freezes-all-rese...
Some universities should make sacrifices for academic freedom, yes. That's what they are there for!
I wouldn't say this easily if I were the sacrifice, especially as a visa holder.
With $50B in the endowment, how are they financially vulnerable? Honest question.
Much of the endowment is earmarked towards specific ends. It is not a slush fund for discretionary spending.
Earmarked implies discretionary so it is discretionary
That's not what discretionary means in this context. The funds having been originally earmarked at the discretion of the originator, means they are no longer available for any purpose at the discretion of the trustee, meaning they are no longer discretionary. You are confusing the funds having once been earmarked at someone's discretion for their being discretionary, which they haven't been since the point when they were earmarked at the originator's discretion.
Most of it is not discretionary, no matter what words random Internet commenters use to describe it.
I am replying to the GP. GP must be mistaken. It was Harvard’s choice to operate this way financially
I understand. I am saying they are correct that much of Harvard's endowment is not discretionary, even if they accidentally used a term that implies that it is.
This might be true for Harvard, but I don’t think free speech should only be for those who can afford it. I know my school couldn’t if the government came knocking.
Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.
This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.
That’s a very odd perspective.
Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?
If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?
My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.
> I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with.
There certainly is _no_ government spending supported by _all_ Americans, so your position isn't a very practical approach to governance.
Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).
1st Amendment is more important than you not liking a specific spending of government funds.
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> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed. I don't want my tax dollars going to support discrimination against Asians and others.
This is absolutely NOT what the 1st amendment is about, you are confusing tax and speech but they are treated separately in the Constitution.
The reason for that is simple, if every taxpayer could deny the funding of everything they didn't agree with, we'd have a very different Constitution. The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king... If you scale that ambition back a little and ask only for the power to decide where YOUR own money goes, you'd be speaking of something other than a tax because this isn't the way taxes work.
I'm not explaining this because I see much good coming out of Harvard, in fact I don't, but that's a different conversation. Both political parties, as well as certain private organizations have their hands deep in students' brains - it's the ultimate cookie jar after all. The real problem is the attempt to legitimize overt government meddling in the "cookie jar" instead of focusing on transparency and examination of the current forces involved in that process.
BTW can you elaborate on your assertion about "discrimination against Asians"? Neither the government letter nor Harvard's response mention Asians! Were you trying to comment on another post? Maybe something about the tariffs?
You have a very strange idea of how government works.
You don’t get a veto on all speech from anyone who receives funds from the public purse, and it’s not a First Amendment issue that you don’t.
That’s such an incredibly odd premise; where do you get that idea from?
It's conservative doublespeak in regards to free speech and small government we've been seeing for the past 10 years.
By free speech, they mean the lack thereof. By small government, they mean a monarch.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past"
- Jean-Paul Sartre
You don't need the whole bloated government if you just have one guy at the top making all the decisions /s
> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed.
Fascinating. Do I have a similar right to stop paying taxes, because I don’t support the things the President is saying, or the causes Mike Johnston is adding to the budget?
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Somehow I doubt you would apply these same principles to someone who doesn't believe in police and objects to their taxes being used to fund them.
Republicans won the presidency and both branches of the legislature. The people voted for their money to no longer be spent foolishly.
So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.
Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.
I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.
> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.
I don't want the government to fund any of that. The government should be far far smaller. The bigger the government is, the less rights you have.
That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.
The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?
Democracy doesn't mean that a plurality of voters in a single presidential election gets to overturn the Constitution and established law.
Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.
Okay, disband all of CBP and then we can talk.
Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."
Stephen Miller made it clear this morning: "Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."
If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.
They're absolutely teeing up to be able to deport whoever they want. Reasonable people should be (and are) very afraid.
Irrelevant and without basis.
Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-citizens-prison-el-salvador...
Relevance is subjective.
i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.
They could also possibly fire some administrators. Not every vice-provost out there is strictly necessary.
Just a few years ago, Harvard Crimson carried an op-ed complaining about the bloat:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/11/29/anderson-burea...
Cannot edit my original comment, because I wrote it 16 hours ago, but I am somewhat surprised by the fluctuating up/downvote count, going from 0 to 6 and back.
It seems that the very idea that some employees in academia might be superfluous is very disagreeable for some HNers.
Why? Institutional bloat is a well known problem, it happens in private sector, public sector, churches, military, wherever you can think of. It probably already happened in Ur and Nineveh. Why should academia be somehow immune from this problem?
And if it is not immune, shouldn't it try to do something with it?
There was a massive increase in tuition in the last generation or so. How much of that extra money goes to the core mission of the universities, and how much is spent on "nice to have extras", starting with opulent campuses and ending with "Standing Committees on Visual Culture and Signage"?
Everyone has to trim the fat down a bit from time to time. Even Google and Meta. Why not Harvard.
People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.
People in HN have been complaining about university admin bloat for many years. In this thread, the problem is it’s political and people struggle with the cognitive dissonance about that stuff.
This article lists out why it's not good of an idea as you think.
>Universities’ endowments are not as much help as their billion-dollar valuations would suggest. For a start, much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose, funding a specific professorship or research centre, say. Legal covenants often prevent it from being diverted for other purposes. In any case, the income from an endowment is typically used to fund a big share of a university’s operating costs. Eat into the principal and you eat into that revenue stream.
>What is more, eating into the principal is difficult. Many endowments, in search of higher income, have invested heavily in illiquid assets, such as private equity, property and venture capital. That is a reasonable strategy for institutions that plan to be around for centuries, but makes it far harder to sell assets to cover a sudden budgetary shortfall. And with markets in turmoil, prices of liquid assets such as stocks and government bonds have gyrated in recent days. Endowments that “decapitalise” now would risk crystallising big losses.
More worrying is the fact that the federal government can inflict even more harm aside from cutting off federal funding:
>the Trump administration has many other ways to inflict financial pain on universities apart from withholding research funding. It could make it harder for students to tap the government’s financial-aid programmes. It could issue fewer visas to foreign students, who tend to pay full tuition. With Congress’s help, it could amend tax laws in ways that would hurt universities.
https://archive.is/siUqm
if a $50,000,000,000 endowment can not be used to smooth things over in times of need or turbulence then the endowment managers need to make changes.
You can not possibly convince me that Harvard’s endowment doesn’t trivially have one year of liquidity in it.
I’m sure it’s not structured to handle a 7% annual draw down for the next 30 years. But it’s got plenty of time to restructure if needed.
The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
Spending a billion of it is not just spending a billion. It's spending the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest, over the next decades.
It's extraordinarily expensive to spend it directly, as opposed to spending the income it generates.
You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
> You can certainly do it, in a true emergency.
This seems to qualify for many people though. Less pain than complying in many minds I am sure.
> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
I've seen arguments of this general shape and form many times about this, and yes, this is true. In general, Harvard should not spend down it's endowment when it has other sources of revenue.
I think the issue here is that this _is_ an emergency. Harvard should consider that Federal money gone for the near future and spend and plan to spend as if they will not have it. There is no point in them continuing to exist as an institution if they accede to these absurd demands.
> it's eating your seed corn
Paraphrasing J. P. Morgan, the man, in the midst of the Panic of 1907 reassuring a banker concerned about dipping into reserves to pay out depositors: "what are reserves for if not times like these."
Eat the seed corn. Fight. Then raise unencumbered donations from the billionaires whose balls haven't fallen off. If Harvard plays this correctly, they could become one of the flag bearers of the legal and financial resistance to Trump.
>You can certainly do it, in a true emergency. But you certainly don't want to make a habit of it.
Harvard's endowment returned 9.6% last year, growing the total by $2.5 billion. In the previous year, the endowment returned 2.9%, though the total endowment decreased as the gain was offset by contributions to operating expenses. [0]
In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
[0] https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/10/financial-report-fis...
>In other words, Harvard already operates somewhat from their endowment, and can realize net endowment gains in spite of that.
The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something. The argument is that they shouldn't raid endowments by doing additional withdraws to fund the current shortfall.
>The argument isn't that Harvard should never draw from its endowment, like it's saving for retirement or something
The argument I was replying to was actually of exactly this form.
That argument also implied that any endowment spending to cover shortfalls would necessarily be of the principal, but that is also incorrect.
In fact, the White House just responded with a $2.2B funding freeze—an amount that would have been covered by last year's endowment return.
> the many billions it was meant to provide, in interest
THATS WHAT WHAT THE FIFTY BILLION IS
It’s a war chest that has been carefully cultivated over decades. The fifty billion is the result of a hundred years of investment and management.
If it can’t be spent now then when the fuck exactly can it be spent? In 200 years you’d still be saying “this is the seed corn for tomorrow!!”
I’m not saying burn it down to zero. But the whole fucking point of an endowment is to provide stability during trying times. If you can’t use the interest that has been accumulated now then when the fuck can you??
No. You misunderstand endowments.
Their principal is not intended to be spent, ever. The point of an endowment is not to "provide stability during trying times".
The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity. Which Harvard already does and has always done. Interest from their endowment is already a large part of their revenue. That's what the endowment is for.
> The point is to spend the interest that it generates, in normal times, in perpetuity.
Yes, but these are not normal times.
How much is the principle? Because I bet you $3.50 it’s multiple billion less than the current balance.
Returns fluctuate wildly, while expenses are roughly constant. So obviously expenses are drawn conservatively. And if investment works well, you can grow the endowment too. Obviously it is up to the university to strike the right balance.
The more it grows, the less risk there is in the future. But if you start spending it more than the levels of its average returns, that's high risk. And the point is it's supposed to last forever.
You also need to grow it simply to account for inflation and other rising costs.
Sounds like they have significant buffer to scratch the surface of their dragon hoard for one, perhaps even two, years.
They’d probably want to reduce spending and hit up donors if they felt they need to power through a four year stretch.
> The point is, it's eating your seed corn.
How much is “enough” money to hoard in an endowment though? We hear lots of arguments about how the concept of a billionaire is itself obscene, why can’t we apply to same logic to institutions? E.g. much like people say “billionaires shouldn’t exist”, perhaps endowments over some similarly arbitrary value shouldn’t exist either.
Well, it's proportional to their spending to some degree. It takes a world-class endowment to fund a world-class university. And it's all from private donations.
Harvard doesn't make a profit. It educates students and does research. It sounds like you're arguing Harvard should be broken up or something? But based on what? Is it abusing its power or something?
Not to mention all those legal covenants have another party to them - they're not written in stone. I'm sure a good number of them would be willing to considering loosening legal restrictions if it would really help.
Endowments have come from people over the entire history of the institution. The vast majority of the endowers are likely deceased and won't be able to agree to change the terms of their endowment.
And yet some trust, estate, or descendant somewhere ultimately has the authority to change those agreements. These things are not immutable facts of the universe, they can be changed.
As for the minority where that is not the case, it also means nobody will have standing to sue if the school decides to stop letting someone who died 200 years ago decide exactly how Harvard's money will be spent.
They made a big fuss a few years ago about what I read imo as over investing in foreign farm land, esp south America and Africa. Which seems to have completely flopped, if not yet realized.
At this point, you really do have to question whether each university hire was merit based or not, including the fund managers.
I don't know that making a bad investment makes them terrible fund managers, just as making a good one would not make them brilliant. Don't you need a string of data points?
If you are going to claim that they were not hired on merit, and that they are bad investment managers, you'll need to provide a lot more evidence on both points, rather than a "just asking questions" post on HN. Otherwise, it's just snark and not in keeping with HN's ethos.
To some degree it already has been. After the economic genius Larry Summers paid for the Allston campus expansion with some dodgy loans that blew up in their faces during the 2008-9 financial crisis, there was some attempt to reform the endowment, back off some risky investments, and build up more of a free-cash emergency fund. This actually paid off during the Covid lockdowns, which the university was able to weather without too much disruption.
The other oddity of Harvard's endowment is that each school at the university basically has it's own fund--so that for instance, the Business school and the Law school don't have to worry about money the same way that FAS (the main undergraduate school) does.
>...much of the money is reserved for a particular purpose
I would assume that a tax on an endowment would be like a capital gains tax, i.e., taxed on the investment growth. Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's reserved because the donation was earmarked for a specific purpose (eg. a business program or whatever), not because they reserved 30% on tax owing.
>Is the growth 'reserved for a particular purpose'?
It's probably safe to assume donors are competent enough that such glaring loopholes don't exist. After all, the concept of endowments being used as long term savings, rather than spent immediately, isn't exactly a new concept. Failing to take this into account would mean any earmarks are void after a few decades.
It’s never a guarantee when it comes to government funding. It can come and go at any time. Take the politics out of it, Harvard has been operating at risk with this funding source for some time.
He's not gonna be happy they can operate financially without his assent
He still controls the congress, the white house and the supreme court. So he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts. Since rule of law seems on fairly shaky ground right now in any case.
He may issue an EO against them similar to the ones he's successfully used to bring major law firms he doesn't like to heel: ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs, revoke clearances held by anyone employed by Harvard, and ban them from Federal property. Maybe with some other creative terms thrown in to mess with universities in particular.
> ban consideration of former Harvard employees (... maybe also graduates?) for Federal jobs
Oh, those federal jobs he’s been DOGEing for the past weeks in an attempt to demotivate folks out of them?
This administration’s incoherence comes back to bite it in the ass again.
That is always a risk of working for the government. Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
No, this is not the case. This is a recent and never before seen phenomenon. Please, do not try to downplay it. And, if you do, do not do it dishonestly.
>Your job exists more or less at the whims of the currently governing administration.
Perhaps in theory, but not in practice as a historical norm. And, certainly not for "standard" non-appointed, bureaucratic roles.
It's important that we don't normalize what we're seeing here, in terms of quality or degree.
That has essentially never been a risk for a non-appointed government employee in the United States of America, at least for the past century or so. We Don't Politicize the Bureaucracy. And that was at least in part the secret sauce to our generational success, that we could immunize the workings of the government from the pique and emotion of its leadership.
Or we didn't. Now we do. Kinda sucks.
Since ~1885 and the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Refo...
Submitted some historical breadcrumbs here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43686221
Well this was advice my father (an academic and lifelong straight ticket Democrat) gave me decades ago. So it was nothing specific to the current administration.
The difference is that the people affected by whim were, by design, only supposed to be the political appointees, not the civil service rank and file. Those jobs existed for as long as Congress decided that they produced useful results for the American people. Positions could be eliminated by virtue of Congress deciding that a shift in policy was needed, eg fewer Kremlinologists after 1989, but that is not a whim, that is a result of debate.
The current administration is making all positions political, and in doing so, performing an end run around the legislative branch.
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> You want to argue that Joe Biden didn't weaponize every branch of the bureaucracy against Republicans?
He didn't. I don't know why you guys think he did. A lot of those agencies, like the Justice Department, act independently.
It's not like any Republicans were jailed. This is starting to seem less like a legitimate take, and more like a strange fetish for persecution.
For the record, if people like President Trump want to no longer be under the eye of Justice, they should stop doing illegal things. It seems every other American citizen has figured that out. It is shameful our own president has not.
Joe Biden did nothing remotely comparable to what Trump is doing now.
And unlike Trump, Biden faced constant criticism from within his party. He would have faced outrage if he tried to, for example, cancel all federal grants containing the word "conservative" in them.
Meanwhile we're heading towards a future where Trump can deport anyone he doesn't like to an El Salvadorian prison without so much as a trial, regardless of whether they broke any laws. Why doesn't this terrify people on the right?
The people I've talked to just don't believe it can happen to them. They're going through the normal immigration channels, only getting abortions when medically necessary, and limiting their anti-Trump speech to the few quibbles they have here and there. They don't realize that the deportations aren't just the "bad" immigrants, even medically necessary abortions are being stymied by the current administration (with predictable deaths), and that any anti-Trump rhetoric is dangerous.
> he could potentially pull a completely illegal fast one and freeze their accounts
Harvard (and most institutions and powerful individuals) would be smart to maintain liquid assets and a bank account outside America’s control.
Maybe their endowment is held in treasurys they should start selling off...
LOL
I like the way you think!
>a bank account outside America’s control
There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America. If you're in the US and doing business with a bank, the courts can order that bank to do things or face isolation from the entire financial system.
> There really isn't such a thing if you want to do business in America
There are to varying extents. You want a country that isn't aligned with or dependent on America, but also isn't its adversary. (And which has a good banking system.) That list was classically Turkey, the UAE and Switzerland. Today I'd add India, Qatar, Canada and Brazil and remove Switzerland.
Yeah I'm no expert in financial systems but since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S. or locked away overseas and can't be transferred in for the next ~4 years.
> since the money ultimately needs to be spent in the U.S. it doesn't seem that important whether the funds are frozen in the U.S.
Of course it does. The hypothetical we're considering is the administration illegally freezing bank accounts. You don't need something legally impenetrable. Just complicated enough that it slows down the goons while you fight them in court.
It's much more than that, foreign banks will comply with US court orders, it's not just a blockade.
US courts shut down a series of Swiss banks that were trying to hide American's assets behind the swiss banking secrecy laws while also doing business on American soil (just having bank employees in the country did it).
This is true, and they have likely been accelerating the arrangements they already had for a while now. At the same time however, getting 50 billion in assets into various European jurisdictions is not at all easy. I'd estimate Trump could cut off 70-90 percent of what Harvard has to work with.
Alumni will need to come through for continuing operations if the worst does happen. And I'm certain Harvard has put some thought into that contingency as well.
Trump can make that illegal in no time. „No foreign funds” is a well known method of fighting opposition, tried and tested in many soft regimes (looking for a recent example, Hungary comes to mind).
Bitcoin!
I mean, it turns out the fed has the power to pull any money from any account they wish, at any time, like they recently did with NYC.
Harvard affiliated hospitals are dependent on NIH funding for survival. Wonder if they are included in the scope of this.
NIH falls under HHS, and the HHS acting general counsel was a signatory on the original letter.
That said, affiliated hospitals are not owned or operated by Harvard.
The affiliates could be pushed to drop their affiliation if NIH wanted to play hardball with Harvard.
According to NYT, “ of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.”
This is about lots more than money. Sure, Harvard can go without federal funds. Then comes federal tax breaks. Then Harvard's ability to recruit foreign students (no visas, no foreign students/professors). After that comes the really draconian stuff like the fed revoking clearances or not hiring/doing business with Harvard grads. Such things were once thought illegal but are now very much on the table. That is why Harvard needs to win the money fight no matter the numbers.
Right, money is just the first and most obvious cudgel. Does Harvard have any biomedical labs that require federal approval to handle hazardous materials? That could be delayed or revoked. Do they file taxes? They could face an audit. There's no shortage of painpoints an organization that large has exposed to an unethical government.
those endowments, especially for the Ivy League schools, aren't liquid at all. They'd take a massive haircut if they had to start pulling funds from it
Presumably they could go to a large bank and make a deal so that they only have to take a relatively small haircut by getting a loan to be paid back from endowment interest.
If this is the case then they really are not for the benefit of students?
80% of the endowment funds are heavily restricted as per donor requests and cannot be used unconditionally.
Could you give us some of these restrictions? This seems like a BS excuse to not support the students.
If I give a school 20 million yearly to research a specific form of cancer, and I find out that they instead used that money to upgrade the plumbing in their dormitories and spent nothing on cancer research, I would not give them 20 million ever again.
Sure, due to funding cuts students will suffer with slowly degrading infrastructure and will need to do plumbing fixes at some point. But that doesn't mean people who give them money for one purpose are happy with it being used for another purpose.
You might even form a contract with the institution obligating them do certain things with your gift
This is absolutely par for the course for university endowments. They're not big pots of money, they're thousands of small pots of money with various restrictions on their investment, disbursement, etc.
Not asking for the breakdown, wondering what some of those restrictions look like and whether they support the students with those restrictions.
For a quick institution specific overview, see “with donor restrictions” on page 20-21 (pdf page 21-22) of their most recent annual report[0].
I’d imagine “maintain and invest the original contribution in perpetuity” covers majority of the restricted funds, with use-specific restrictions in a distant but comfortable second. Since it’s Harvard, they probably also have more funky restrictions than the average bear (gifts of stock in kind with restrictions on timing of sale, voting, etc.).
[0]: https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy24_harvard_fin...
thx
Harvard is probably thinking they just need to draw the $1 billion extra for another 4 years. Unless, Trump runs for a 3rd time which he has floated. If that happens then I think everyone's just screwed.
It's very dangerous to assume "oh, this will only last four years". The rights currently being eroded (free speech, habeas corpus and voting rights themselves) are required for free and fair elections. Even if the term of the current Shitstain In Chief ends when it's supposed to, his replacement will be from the same cloth.
I'm sure he's got plans to issue an executive order declaring all of the votes against him null and void because they weren't cast and counted within 4 hours of each other on election day.
With an overbearingly powerful executive like the federal US executive you can come up with so many ways to fuck with companies or institutions like this one beyond not giving them money.
I agree. Also, the quality and independence of the research will improve when it is funded outside of government influence.
Which is, of course, why the internet is a spectacular failure and SpaceX is our best chance to ever put a man on the moon, and polio is still ravaging the country. Great point.
From the United States government letter to Harvard: "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
So if a student has, say, an immunodeficiency syndrome and wears a mask to protect their health during the riskier seasons of the year, they would face dismissal from the university? (Or worse - whatever that is - according to the letter.)
This is how we know that the Republican party has no interest in freedom as the word is conventionally defined.
They want freedom for themselves. They're free to impose their will on others without judgement. That's the purpose.
I wrote this on another thread recently, reposting here:
Things started to make more sense to me once I realized that by nature, human beings hate freedom and love tyranny. Once you accept this, it all falls in place. Deporting citizens to foreign prisons? Sounds great. Incoherent foreign and economic policy? Love it. Freedom of the press? Who needs it! Destruction of democracy? Own the libs! Legalize bribery of foreign officials? Even the playing field! And finally, words don’t need to mean anything because they are simply evocations intended to stir up certain emotions. They are more akin to a hunter’s duck call. The hunter doesn’t speak duck and doesn’t care whether that sounds he’s making have any meaning, he simply makes noise and looks for a result. Not getting the desired result? Just change the noise a little.
This is why democracy will eventually fail and autocracy will rise in its place. And no one will ever learn.
Seems like this could also be explained by short memories. Most westerners, me included, have never lived through true tyranny, we don't know the signs and probably are just too comfortable coasting along, thinking what we have now won't suddenly disappear [1].
We can read history, but it's nothing compared to actually living through it. And I think most American voters don't know their history, and don't bother to inform themselves either, which makes things much worse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_effect
There's a whole Radiolab or this American life episode on this.
Basically, young people haven't lived through anything and are very willing to give up democracy.
A large part of the population struggles to even entertain a hypothetical scenario. I’m active in several agricultural forums, and it’s clear that many participants lack fundamental knowledge across the board. They’re generally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussion. Almost every comment they post seems aimed at shutting down the conversation rather than continuing it. There is no curiosity. The world is already way too complex.
I think that's a function of the internet combined with a new flavor of individual exceptionalism. It is shockingly easy to engage only in echo chambers, even without knowing it. You're just on a site for people with similar interests, nevermind that those people all agree with you entirely.
Combine that with the lessons kids are learning that they are legitimately unique and special, and anyone who makes them feel bad is just wrong, and here we are.
Or maybe I'm just the old man shouting at clouds now. Who knows.
Autocracy, or some form of it, has been the dominant form of governance throughout the history of human civilization. That's not gonna change just because we got Apple watches. Democracy was a really nice experiment, but it's over now.
ironically enough, most of those regimes also fell. Even autocracies realized from millenia of history that its easier to control people when they feel like they have power. Or distract them with circuses.
Turns out Apple watches can change and stabilize such autocracies.
Yeah, for about a century or two. This is not the first time all of this has happened. Read your history.
The current regime in Washington is clearly fascist, there is nothing democratic at all about them. They want to banish Americans to foreign concentration camps for torture, he said that just before his interview with the El Salvador President who is hosting at least one of said concentration camps. Yet the media says little.
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Do you have a source? You can have mine: https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/news/comprehensive-review-confirms-...
Dumbass
A "comprehensive mask ban" would presumably include exceptions for people who are immunocompromised, actively sick with an upper-respiratory infection, etc.
Steelman, don't straw man.
"presumably" is carrying a lot of water here. For instance women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors are afraid to give abortions even on women who could potentially die from complications because it's not a sure thing. This is the MAGA mentality
Let's be realistic: how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications? How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor? Women are bleeding out in Texas parking lots because doctors wants them to bleed out to make a political stunt.
>how many doctors have ever been held accountable for performing abortions to avoid complications?
I got at least one: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-doctor-maggie-carpenter-...
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/us/texas-abortion-doctor-...
it's very recent law but the cases are already racking up. And it's just basic game theory. Help and you might be arrested, don't help and leave it to the state to battle between negligence vs. upholding the law.
>How do you even imagine a trial against such a doctor?
As seen in the DOJ, I expect a kangaroo court, of course.
That's exactly my point: all three articles says nothing about any doctor's responsibility for abortion with the goal to prevent harm to pregnant woman. No arrests, no charges, no fines, nothing, not even single case (as far as I know; your links also describes zero such cases).
And still women are bleeding out. What else could it be other than doctors' political stunts at the cost of women's lives?
That's open to interpretation. That's the problem. We've seen how Republicans treat anything that deals with nuance.
I mean...the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is really clear, and the Democrats have weaponized it to help the constituencies they're pursuing. Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point, because that's not why the party machine is doing it. They've institutionalized racism and sexism at a scale we haven't seen since the civil rights movement brought merit ("...by the content of their character.") to the fore.
> Whether that's morally correct or not is beside the point
ignoring if you claim is even correct: morals drive logic for most laws. That's why every first world organization says "killing is bad". And then cut further saying "killing is justified if your life was in danger".
Morals ostensibly drive logic for some (not most, most are boring tax stuff) laws, but what's really going on is some group of people thinks the law will advantage them and so pushes it. Blue Team doesn't inherently care about black people, they care about getting black Americans' votes. You'd hope the moral and the instrumental would align, but not always.
It's just words, obviously contradicted by many of Harvard's recent actions, but all I can think is what a fucking lay-up. If only Columbia's administration had half a spine they would have responded similarly.
Columbia's administration obviously has no issues silencing free speech and dissent based on their actions though.
Seems like it could mean death for Columbia as a desirable college honestly
Probably not, they'll just pump up international student numbers to recoup and basically gut the domestic student experience. There's near infinite demand for American universities overseas even now.
I think you're wrong. I know several bright students that have decided to not go to the US now given the persecution and targeting of international students.
You can't expect the brightest minds to study in an authoritarian country.
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Intl students are not mad. Who is going to pay the US intl student premium, to add the Columbia tag. Intl students are paying for very specific future life paths.
Really? That demand is rapidly dropping, for all kinds of terrifying reasons
they probably don't have a $50 billion endowment to weather Dump's petulance.
> all I can think is what a fucking lay-up
I am nervous about the US right now. So many cases are going to end up at the Supreme Court that is controlled by conservatives. It may not be the lay-up you think it is.
Also what happens if Trump just decides to ignore a court loss as he did with the recent deportation of Kilmar Garcia?
I don’t agree with Roberts but he isn’t a hack. For what it’s worth, he also went to Harvard.
I think conservative Harvard graduates are among the most eager to impose their will on Harvard. Look at Harvard grad Elise Stefanik, for example.
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It will take a majority of states, and their military backing, forcefully overthrowing Trump.
I really hate to be alarmist, but it does feel more and more that we're headed to massive, coordinated state against state violence.
Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
> Believing that something is inevitable is the first step towards it becoming inevitable. But there feels like there is a momentum in people, and in society as a whole that only ends one way, and we need to release and explore. I don't know if once society gets the "bug" to tear it all down there's any going back.
> I feel like we're destroying our societies and getting into wars out of curiosity, and because we've forgotten how it hurts more than anything else.
I can sort of theorize that human society does have the ability to cycle that is partially based on human life spans / human memory. It is like a LLM that runs out of context and then starts forgetting what it learned in the earliest part of the context. For humans it is related to our lifespans as we culturally forgot what we have learned, and thus have to relearn it.
That said, I think that periods of peace are punctuated with war. War resets the pressures that build during peace. This is similar to how refactors or rewrites are needed every once in a while as the technical debt builds up as requirements and use cases change over time, especially if no one was paying down the techn debt as you went.
Cultural ouroboros. Eventually we become so distant from our past selves culturally that we identify once normal, helpful, natural things as foreign. I'm seeing this with the new wave of mental illness in my generation.
Or you could find illegal conduct for congress people, have them sued in criminal courts, and then hold elections to elect people (republican or democrat) who will make congress function as it is meant to.
Perhaps someone can provide security services to republican congress people who are threatened with violence if they dont toe the line, so that they are safe enough to stand up to trump. (This is an actual reason given for their cowardice)
The core fundamental problem from my viewpoint in the US political system is unlimited campaign contributions which empowered the ultra wealthy. This means that elections are fought between ultra wealthy people and politicians have to first appeal to the rich people to get them on their sides, rather than the majority of the people.
You need to fix this, otherwise you have muted the impact of the majority of people in your democracy.
From a geographic standpoint, the conflict isn’t state vs. state this time around, though, it’s rural vs. urban. Blue cities in red states. Red counties in blue states. Not very conducive to conventional military conflict.
Perhaps. The Courts and the Legislature have yet to defend their powers, but the crunch point to do so is approaching. When we get past the stage that they have fully capitulated to Trump then it'll get truly ugly.
The biggest irony here is that after Roberts, the justices Trump appointed are the conservatives most likely to do the right thing. Gorsuch and Barrett are fine justices (even if they have opposing views to mine), Kavanaugh could be worse. Hopefully he doesn't get to choose another one or we'll get another Alito or Thomas.
So first they demand "Merit-Based Hiring Reform" and "Merit-Based Admissions Reform", and then it continues to demand "Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring".
I can't even engage with these levels of cognitive dissonance. Or bad faith. Or whatever it is.
Never mistake a man's rhetoric for his principles.
If you genuinely cannot distinguish the two then that's about equally as bad as cognitive dissonance:
Phenotype diversity != Viewpoint diversity
The former is what current academia and DEI focus on, the latter is what the administration demands.
Does this simple logic need to be expressed in Rust for HN folks to wrap their mind around it?
the contradiction is that "viewpoint hiring" =/= "merit based hiring".
I think you should give better faith to the community instead of breaking the guidelines here trying to prove a point.
I have never been a "woke" person, but Trump really makes me doubt the meritocracy argument. If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
As others have pointed out to you, "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world. Leadbelly used it at the end of his "Scottsboro Boys" [1] in 1938, and it likely was in use many years before that. Erykah Badu's "Master Teacher" also uses it prominently, which probably helped bring it out of AAVE into more mainstream use [2].
Anyway, that's all to say I find it sad and funny that people are all up in arms about being "woke" these days. It's like stating "I'd prefer to be ignorant".
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrXfkPViFIE&t=249s
[2] whole song is great, but I forgot about this second section of the song: https://youtu.be/Dieo6bp4zQw?si=fCPJpWIbQV_g5yx3&t=203
> "woke" is just from AAVE, meaning to be awake to the racial prejudices and social injustices of the world.
Yes, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy that serves the people of Korea.
Sometimes expressions have meaning beyond what advocates for the related concepts claim. For example, as I’m sure you are aware, ‘woke’ viewpoints repeatedly advocate for racial discrimination in American universities.
Lately it feels like "woke" in political discourse just means "anything Republicans don't like".
What a waste of an otherwise useful term.
I’m liberal and I also find wokeness to be irritating, so it’s not just things Republicans don’t like. Like the above person says, it’s not just awareness of structural discrimination and the like, which I believe are real and ought to be addressed, but also a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
>I also find wokeness to be irritating
This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with. Hence, the GP comment. If we can't agree on meanings of words, we talk past each other instead of to each other.
You see your two meanings and you realize how arguing about the term without aligning isn't a discussion, right?
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as an aside:
>a sort of rhetoric and militant attitude about it that honestly I find grating.
I'll be "woke" here and note the discminination in when a demanding male tends to be thought of as "leadership material", whereas a demanding female in the same role is called "bossy". These kinds of internal disciminations is exactly what "woke" people try to address (and ironically enough, are dismissed as "militant" over. Because it talks about topics people want to shut down).
>This is a useless term if we can't agree on what "woke" is to begin with.
It is worth noting that it is a right-wing tactic to capture the meaning of words. "Woke" used to mean "being aware of social and political issues and injustices," but right-wing usage of the term has diluted it to the point where it can't be used for its original meaning anymore.
I think the thing to consider is that the right-wing is focusing on the things that are the most likely to produce outrage amongst a certain part of the population when they talk about being woke. They'll hyper focus on one protest gone violent rather than thousands of peaceful gatherings in town squares, for example. They've always been very successful at creating this division through their rhetoric and selective focus.
If you're aware that structural discrimination and social injustice exists, then you already are woke. The expression of it might be different for you -- more MLK than Malcolm X, say -- but that doesn't mean you're not woke. We shouldn't let them muddy things when the goal is helping all beings be awake to reality.
I don't recall the term "woke" being all that useful. I really only started noticing it as a right-wing pejorative, often times being used by straight up racists, and to lesser extent by people pointing out performative solidarity, and this is not a recent thing either.
The meaning of "woke" changes depending on the person saying it, and the one listening, which makes it hard to tell what the person is _really_ trying to say.
Edit: Apparently it was recently popularized by BLM activists, but then took on a different meaning [1]. So it seems ambiguous, which to me makes it not that useful.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke
Just as black people have claimed the "n" word, white racists have now claimed the "w" word.
Still not sure it was a fair trade though.
>Still not sure it was a fair trade though.
It's never a fair trade. But at least one is a singular word you never have to use in a discussion. The other was a term that de-humanized people.
People of all backgrounds, which hate Asians, Jewish people and white Americans use the term. Including some members of those groups.
You have come to the realization that systemic racism exists, and it grants privileges to the dominant socioeconomic groups. Congratulations, you are now "woke"!
That's what the term originally meant, before it was turned into a strawman for "anything I don't like" by the conservative media machine and weaponized to divide people.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now
If Trump were a black woman (or man), he would have never survived the release of the Hollywood Access tape and therefore would have never gotten elected.
Yes a black man can only (politically) get away with something less risque like smoking crack cocaine on video during an FBI sting:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/fbi-video-of-unde...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry
Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
> Pretty bad false equivalency. Barry was barred from running and went to federal prison. Yes, he was eligible to run (and was re-elected) but only _after_ he served his sentence. Did I miss the part where Trump went to jail?
Nope. Though you also missed the part where the manufacturing of "felony" charges was so novel they had never been attempted before. The closest parallel is probably the case of John Edwards who was acquitted: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/us/edwards-jury-returns-n... But you probably think it's because he was also a white man and not because there was no criminal act.
I'm curious if you can even sum up what exactly was the felony that Trump was convicted, or even better, who's the victim? Because all I saw was an overzealous DA in NY with utter disregard for the actual law.
> You also can't compare a mayoral election with a presidential one.
Yes. And clearly people of DC would rather elect a Democrat crackhead over any Republican.
You're on to a different argument now.
My point was about surviving scandals as a candidate. Trump survived the Hollywood Access tape, where it would have buried most candidates. Your example was "whatabout Barry" -- but they're not comparable (and Barry did not survive his scandal, but went to jail).
Why would you expect Trump to go to jail for a manufactured felony charge? Even if it was a legitimate case, the sentencing guidelines would not have recommended jail time.
>manufactured felony charge?
Pretty sure sedition was around since Shay's rebellion.
And yes, welcome to privileged. They made up new laws to arrest black men without saying it's targeting black men. Hence the metaphor in this chain.
> If Trump was a black woman he would never get away with half the things he is doing now.
It sounds like you're aware of the present reality of race and how it impacts how one is treated in America just for being who they are.
> I have never been a "woke" person
I have news for you!
Edit: to be clear, I'm certain you don't match the the adversarially bastardized caricature of what a "woke person" is, but it sounds like match the original, well-meaning definition.
It's not cognitive dissonance, or bad faith. Of course.
If you let Harvard do "merit-based hiring", they'll move a little in the direction of actually complying with employment law, but not much. If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades (i.e., if you don't have "enough" black people, you need to show how your recruitment pipeline means that's necessarily the case, like not enough get the required type of degree), you'll get much better compliance.
>If you institute a regime such as the one that existed for race and sex for decades
Do you really think this administration is doing anything close to that?
Frankly no. I don't think they actually care in the way that equal outcomes was baked into what it meant to be Blue Team for a while, and the bureaucracy ("deep state") is against them, especially in Massachusetts, and I don't think they're competent enough.
Harvard admitted it needs to "...broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community..."
This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/5/22/faculty-survey-...
How is this a no brainer? How many of their faculty identity as believers in a flat earth? Are we concerned about that viewpoint being underrepresented as well?
Well, 2.3% of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences. I would bet that, say, the business school has a slightly different makeup…
We're talking about going from 2.3% to maybe 13%. And this isn't a reflection of attitudes among people who are potentially employed there, it's a reflection of overt, rigid filtering on the basis of political beliefs.
Typically, in order to be employed at a college, you have to be smart and aware of the world. This qualification disqualifies basically all conservatives.
That's not true. Painting the "other" as some sort of one-dimensional malevolent retard isn't doing you or anyone else any favors. I promise.
There are real people, even smart people, on the other team. They have thoughts, kids, impressive degrees, goals unrelated to politics. They enjoy sunshine and hiking. They think they're doing what they're doing for good reasons. They believe themselves to be good people. They might even believe you to be a good person.
> They believe themselves to be good people.
As should be more widely known, this is a bad start to actually being good people.
And I bet that the % of their faculty that identify as flat earthers is even more egregious!
So pick one or the other: having a broad representation from many walks of life is important or it's not. You can't mix or match depending on which group you like.
And that is what I'm commenting on. I'm not a fan of Trump's "war on DEI" but if it was applied with some consistency I could take it as a genuine difference in viewpoints. That would be okay. But the movement is railing hard and vitriolic against anything with even a whiff of "DEI" while applying wildly different standards to themselves. This is hard to take as a genuine difference in viewpoints.
Conservatives will make observations such as "the most educated people are almost never conservative" and they will conclude that it's not their ideology that may be on shaky grounds, but rather the concept of education itself.
"Most American academia" !== "most educated people" (much less so if taken globally).
Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities. It is nowhere near as one-sided. And Asian universities are a completely different world.
Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
From my European pont of view, I think the definitions of left and right have shifted a lot.
Sure, in Europe left and right may be more closely matched in academia, but most "right"-leaning Europeans would not be anywhere near the "right" in US-terms, so your argument is comparing very different things
Depends. German Burschenschaften, though not massive, strike me as very far right. IIRC one of them had a big row over whether they can accept a member who was ethnically Chinese. (That guy was a full German citizen born in Dortmund, but of Asian ancestry.)
IDK how it is today, but last decade the US was considered to have many of the best educational institutions.
>Many Americans would be seriously surprised by the balance of left and right at continental European universities.
Yes, because EU "left" would be accused of socialism, whereas the EU "right" would mostly be the US's existing left wing. the US right wing was always on a far side and these days fell straight to the AfD levels of extremism.
It's not one sided, but the spectrum is completely different.
>And Asian universities are a completely different world.
I'm sure they are. a history fighting within the eastern continent and a rule of emporers will shape differently than from a land of conquerers puahing for conformity who eventually tried to make nice as their regimes fell and created this hybrid of individualism and trade amongst one another.
> Generalizing from the extremely lopsided ratios in academia of the Anglosphere to the global educated class is somewhat unreliable.
I agree generally, however you should be aware that American republicans are not referring to these people because they don't know anything about them. While the American left is typically extremely US-centric, the American right is even more so. So, while you have a point, you are giving them far too much credit. Their view of American education IS their view of education in general, because that's all they know. If they wanted to know more they would have to educate themselves, but they're ideologically opposed to education, so...
And, to be clear, it only takes a small look through Republican policy making to deduce they are ideologically opposed to education. They outright say it, usually.
And it makes complete sense when you think about conservatism as an ideology and education as a concept. Education is the processes of breaking down thought processes, destroying preconceived notions, and seeking truth through evidence. It denounces the idea that what is correct is what is common. It denounces the idea that wisdom is just a given, and not something to be worked towards. This is directly antithetical to conservatism. Conservatism values maintenance and blind belief, keeping stability for the sake of stability. It values faith in things working, and not evidence of why it's working. It denounces the notions of explanations and reasoning being required. It upholds the status quo because it is the status quo. It's naturally risk-averse, anti-creative, and small-minded.
This is the reason progressiveness, whether it be in Europe or anywhere else, thrives in education whereas conservatism struggles. It is, however, important to note that this does not perfectly line up with American politics. But, the American political system is associated with these underlying ideologies and thought patterns.
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> Most professors in non stem departments are Marxist
So, as I alluded to before, the issue here isn't the education - you are delusional. I don't know how to help you because what you're saying is just not aligned with reality and that's not something I can fix.
For the record, you can analyze the text of various scholars even if you don't agree with them, and that's a huge part of critical thinking and higher education. Understand the historical, social, and economic context that lead someone like Marx to his ideology is important. We do this for Hitler and Mussolini all the time, but I don't see anyone claiming that educators are fascists.
Meaning, you, and others, have a severe bias here. You're missing, looking past, the instances that disagree with your perception. So then all that's left is the stuff that aligns with your perception, and such you've constructed a perfect delusion.
This idea that conservative socioeconomics and the "invisible hand" is the One True theory of everything and nothing else should even so much as uttered, lest you be a communist, is, in it of itself, as you say, "fashionable nonsense". In fact, you cannot truly understand the context for 20th century fiscal policy without understanding the impact of Marx and other ideologues that came after him.
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American conservatives are increasingly not grounded in facts and reality. This isn’t partisan, it’s just an observation of reality. I used to identify as a conservative, but they have become less and less grounded as a party.
> This is a no-brainer considering only 2.3% of their faculty identifies as conservative.
That's true now. It wasn't always true. From: https://www.aei.org/articles/are-colleges-and-universities-t...
- In 1989-1990, when HERI first fielded this survey, 42% of faculty identified as being on the left, 40% were moderate, and another 18% were on the right.
- in 2016-2017, HERI found that 60% of the faculty identified as either far left or liberal compared to just 12% being conservative or far right
Now you say it's 2.3% conservative.
The universities argue they haven't changed, it's the politics of the right. I'd say they are correct as the right now to disavows and ridicules the output of universities on things like climate change, tariffs, vaccines, health, voter fraud in US elections ... well it's a long list. It wasn't like that 30 years ago.
The universities are supposed to be intellectual power houses fearlessly seeking out fundamental truths and relationships, regardless of what the people in power might think of their discoveries. Both sides of politics once celebrated that. Now one side wants to control what types of thought the universities allow, demanding they monitor, snitch, report, and police the on ideas the conservative base don't like. That's directly opposed to how Universities operate. They allow and encourage all types of thought, but insist they be exposed to a torrent of opposing thoughts so only the soundest survive.
Frankly, I'm amazed 2.3% still identify with a mob that clearly wants to undermine that. I'm guessing it will drop to near 0% now.
that’s the faculty of arts and sciences—is this administration going to mandate university economics and business schools —which likely lean heavily capitalist—demand ideological diversity and bring in more communists?
Are conservatives a protected class now? We need DEI to make sure we hire enough conservatives in our company so we look super diverse
You make it sound like modern conservatives possess the intellectual rigor and career achievements required to meet Harvard’s hiring bar.
I am against admissions discrimination so I disagree. Conservatives should get into schools based on merit.
Do they ask for your political ideology on the Harvard application?
No, which is why it’s so surprising so few are able to get in.
How can we know that without knowing how many apply? How many 18 year-olds even have a real ideology? I know mine shifted a lot during college.
If conservatives are applying at a more than 3% rate then either 1) Harvard is using some method besides directly asking for their ideology to discriminate against conservatives or 2) they are being rejected on non-ideological grounds e.g. merit.
If they are not applying at a rate of over 3% then there is no discrimination.
It sounds like you don't really know if they are being discriminated against, even though you are stating it as fact. The 3% number could be biased due to any number of reasons, conservatives may not apply to Harvard for ideological reasons, or student ideologies may shift during education.
It's possible that you can identify right-wing high schoolers based on their writing, but I don't really see a problem with rejecting students if they are touting unpopular and/or discriminatory ideas. Universities have the right to maintain a culture of openness and learning, and conservatism is often antithetical to that.
De facto yes. This is what essays, particularly "diversity statements" are for.
Also, if you're an academic seeking employment, your work and professional connections will make it clear.
Yeah what Harvard definitely needs is more faculty who will defend sending people to Salvadoran prisons without due process. /s
The wildest thing I read was:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
Conduct violations at Universities are a pretty broad set of rules at universities and don't necessarily line up with what's legal or not but more with the university's cultural and social norms.
Another good one, "Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias .. The programs, schools, and centers of concern include:"
> Harvard Divinity School
> Graduate School of Education
> School of Public Health
> Medical School
> Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School
> Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic
(partial list)
I must have missed the time when the Medical School racked up a record of egregious antisematism.
The Crimson, among others, have reported on the allegations.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/8/hms-investigatio...
Some of those international students with their visas revoked apparently only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune. They are going after any level of law breaking in order to match their stated goal of kicking out criminals, since they are having trouble reaching the numbers promised in campaign speeches.
> only had traffic violations according to what I read in the Texas Tribune
I don't think that is true. Do you have any examples?
I misremembered - it was in the source for a sentence in the Texas Tribune article six days ago: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/educatio...
Those are just the ones where they think they have an answer about why. ICE just refused to respond to requests for specifics otherwise.
The article: https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/09/texas-universities-i...
From what I can tell, it all boils down to one of two things:
- Criminal activity
- Support of Hamas
I’ve only seen one person expelled for support of Hamas with evidence - the doctor who went to a funeral in Lebanon of the Hamas leader assassinated in past year. The administration was super proud of that one. Show me evidence of anyone else that has any association with Israel/Palestine conflict protests that actually support Hamas. It does not have to be an either or proposition - one can be against Israel killing civilians and against Hamas. And for other arbitrary decisions there’s several examples of people expelled for gang activity who simply had tattoos.
From the feds documents they describe the federal government as thought police:
>Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, 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.
Even ICE had a deleted tweet that makes it clear the thought police are active:
https://i0.wp.com/www.techdirt.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/0...
I prefer these thought police to the thought police we had previously.
The "diversity" thought police had very strong views about what the only acceptable thoughts were. These people are like, "if we could get it up to 30% that would be a huge victory". Actual diversity in thought at top American universities would be a boon.
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Merit-based admission sounds good to me. Harvard is vigorously defending its "right" to continue to deny admissions to highly qualified Asian applicants out of nothing but pure racism, and somehow they are the good guys?
Merit is not easily definable.
Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent.
Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up".
Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar".
Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed.
I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
Academic success isn’t what Harvard cares about. They want leaders, not kids who are great at “school”.
Put it this way they’d much rather have Roberts or Obama as alumni than your typical 1600 SAT quant.
Whats the best metric to find the people they are looking to educate?
If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university? Formal education that the government regulate has different goals from non-formal and informal education. If the goal is to be a primer for leaders, then they can be that without mixing it with formal education.
If we want the selection process of future leaders to be government regulated under formal education, then we should have a discussion on how such system should look like. The current system is a bit like the old fraternal groups, with the admission system being relocated to the university admission board. There should be better way to select future leaders.
> If that is their goal, should they even be classified as a university?
There is no universal definition of what the goal of a university should be.
At the very top of Harvard's mission page it says, "Our mission to educate future leaders is woven throughout the Harvard College experience, inspiring every member of our community to strive toward a more just, fair, and promising world."
There is NOWHERE where they say anything even remotely like, "Our goal is to reward students who do well in high school coursework and testing." Nor do they say anything like, "The mission of Harvard is to teach as much academic material to students as possible."
In contrast Caltech says, "The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society."
It's much more focused on solving science and tech problems and a focus on educating outstanding students. There is very little here about leadership.
And so you tend to see that CalTech has some of the top scientists and professors in the world. At the same time, even in tech/science companies, they occupy a small percentage of CEOs. Those aren't the people they are intending to nurture.
There's room for different types of education with different goals and metrics, including admissions metrics.
And anyone can create a university and say,"We look at grades and test score. We don't ask for recs or essays. Don't care about what your goals are. We stack rank based on GPASATAPs and then select the top N." That's a perfectly valid approach. I wouldn't want to go to that school, but it sounds like there are some students who would, and I wouldn't object to it.
I am not that knowledgeable with US law, but to my understanding, U.S department of education has a policy for higher education, based on the Higher Education Act of 1965, as well as educational policies set forth by Congress. The higher education act references universities as part of what it regulate.
So if I would attempt with a universal definition of what the goal of a university, it would start by being an institution that complies with the standards set by the Higher Education Act and is accredited by the U.S department of education. As part of the formal education system, the goal of the regulations and laws will be enforced onto those classified under it.
Which returns me to my original question. What benefit is there to be classified as formal education if they don't share the intention (and goals) of the formal education system?
In reality though, Harvard actually educates perfectly ordinary physicians, engineers, etc., and I assume that the vast majority of their output consists of relatively ordinary people.
What people need isn't leaders, but the capacity for decentralised self-organisation.
Their decision to make education into finding or creating leaders is, I think, a terrible mistake and socially dangerous, and in a way exclusionary. If they are truly successful and are able to notice natural leaders and bring them into their institutions that might well channel the capacity of ordinary people away from decentralised self-organisation and into a pure elite society.
You can try, but I think it'll be hellish.
Then they'll fail. They have that right.
As so many people who hate the Ivies tell me, you can get just a good of an education at your local CC and state college. That option is available and they don't have the emphasis on leaders and they also tend to accept most people who are qualified.
The reasons people want to go to Harvard aren't simply because of the academics to be ordinary engineers.
Morally, I don't think they do have that right.
I'm a Swede. I don't care about Harvard myself. But here in Sweden we some historically excellent universities, and some places that were a little second rate as we viewed it.
But the Germans don't care. If they get to be called professor they're happy, so they come, and they become professors at these once second rate universities, and then they put out research that is as good as any, and they have PhD students and everything, and the end result is that it's basically transformed our old second rate institutions into places actually producing good research; and apparently this is the way it is Germany. All their universities produce good research.
I think the future here, in the long run, is it should be that it won't matter where you go, only what you do, and I think that's something which should be, not just embraced universally, but pushed for deliberately, in all countries. If Harvard is really successful in finding potential leaders, then they are dangerous to society.
Furthermore, most of Harvard's graduates will be ordinary engineers, or ordinary physicians or ordinary practitioners of some field, whether it's what they studied.
Your German story doesn’t parse to me.
And yea, most of Harvards grads will be ordinary. And they could’ve just have easily gone to UMass. But a higher percentage will be leaders. And that’s the reason they admit who they do.
Essentially, the Germans are turning all the schools that I would have dismissed as 'what even is this' into something respectable, churning out good research, churning out good PhD students, etc.
Because they don't dismiss the places that I had dismissed, they transformed them.
Got it. Maybe some people will transform local state U.
Do you think there's a specific (whether public or hidden) criterion being used to deny Asian students based on "leadership abilities"? Or do you think they're simply being held to higher standards or subject to an informal quota?
I don’t think most people are denied based on any specific thing. Asians attend these elite schools at much higher rates than their population. If there was a school that admitted based on grades and test scores only they’d probably be even more highly represented.
College is no more a reward for school academic achievement as a basketball scholarship is for HS basketball achievement. They’re correlated but a lot more go into both.
The thing is, acceptance at these elite universities is _highly_ correlated with academic performance. It’s just that different racial groups are admitted in different ranges. You won’t find a single Asian at Harvard at or below the median Black SAT score. The range to be accepted as an Asian is also higher than Whites, which is higher than Latinos, which is higher than Blacks. How can you possibly explain this if it’s not a quota system based on race?
I don't think this is true. First, I don't think the SAT data exists for Harvard broken down in this way (if you have it, please link it). Furthermore, there were Asian students accepted in the 2nd and 3rd decile -- this is below the average for African American students almost certainly. So, I find your claim very likely to be false.
Now if you said that admissions has favored African American students in the Affirmative Action era over Asian students then I'd agree. But Affirmative Action is also over per last year's Supreme Court decision.
It's not just Black students over Asians, it is the entire gradient I outlined, and they continue to use race in admissions, they just obfuscate the reasons now.
Again, the statement you made earlier seems almost surely false.
And how do you know they continue to use race? You have access to data that the rest of us don't? Again, if you have data to support your claims then post a link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
Compare the numbers for MIT who is somewhat complying vs the Ivy leagues who are mostly not complying.
I agree my original claim is likely not true. I should have said >95% of Asian's SAT scores are higher than the median Black SAT score.
How do you know MIT isn’t now discriminating against Black students? How do you know what MIT metrics? Maybe it only cares about test scores and not other aspects? Also MIT is a D3 school, or a D1 school.
You don’t seriously think that is a possibility.
> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly.
So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
Are you saying these aren’t objective measures or that they’re “problematic”? The distinction is important.
They're objective measures (don't depend on the person applying them), created subjectively (people choosing criteria based on their preferences/ideas), and chosen subjectively (people deciding which ones they want to rely on more). I meant objective originally, as in many people claim the whole process is objective.
They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of:
1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success
2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success
3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2).
Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success.
They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1).
By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end.
The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.
If you think that Ivy League cares about academic success, you're out of touch of how US universities work.
Y'all have a lot of inner city neighborhoods that have been systematically destroyed over decades due to redlining, Jim Crow laws, lynching their inhabitants or just outright burning them to the ground, or is “but we do it in Europe” maybe frequently as stupid a comment as “but we do it in America” and is best kept to one’s self, if one doesn’t actually understand how it might be applicable?
Also, bullshit on IQ tests. They do reliably predict a number of socioeconomic factors, so I suppose they’re a great way to keep the poors out. How very “enlightened” of you.
If someone has a low IQ and can’t do well on a standardized test, how in the world will they succeed at Harvard?
Even if you believe that such tests simply reflect privilege and reveal absolutely nothing regarding innate talent, what difference does it make? It can be a point-of-time snapshot but it still doesn’t mean letting in low-IQ poorly-equipped students to Harvard will help them or anyone else.
Just go sports.
Your question is, “even if IQ tests don’t show intelligence, how will someone who did poorly on one cope at Harvard”?
Seriously? That’s your question? And you think these low income students are why you didn’t get into your school of choice?
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
It’s also not what they’re doing. Seems like you’re arguing against a strawman.
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
Do you have data to back this up?
Admissions data does not back it up. And based on my college recruiting data, recruiting doesn’t back it up either.
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies
[Citation needed]
Sounds fine, test for those things and admit the best. Or do a random lottery.
Just dont pick and choose students to disqualify based on race.
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
> I thought we wanted to let the market decide?
That sounds like an excellent reason to remove government funds.
"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology"
Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.
“Merit definitions can be faulty, so completely abandon any attempt to measure merit and admit people based on vibes.”
This is why Harvard students now need remedial algebra classes.
When the "other side" is pretty much evil, yeah, you are the good guys. Like, by default. I would even go so far to say Harvard could do much, much worse and they would still be the good guys.
On a closely related note, you are legitimately out of touch with reality if you believe any part of this is done with the intention of "merit". This is done to strengthen allegiance to MAGA and conservative ideology.
Does that sound a bit scary and fascist-like? You decide. But it's explicitly stated as the goal of this constriction on higher education in Project 2025. So, take it up with them, not me.
Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
This administration has ZERO credibility to define what "merit" is.
> Merit as defined by an administration whose cabinet is composed of Fox News personalities, DUI hires, and some of the least qualified people for the jobs they were given.
Are you referring to the defense secretary Pete Hegseth? He also attended Harvard so clearly there's some intersection in how both Harvard and the Trump administration evaluate candidates.
Merit is what allowed women and non whites to attend university.
I don't believe for one second that conservatives care much for it.
because the answer for the racism against admissions from asians is deny admission and deport everyone that isn't us-american
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Or maybe there are better applicants than your highly qualified asian applicants. But sure, an Asian canadian came over here, helped kill AA, and nothing's changed. Well done Asian community. You fucked over a tiny fucking minority for nothing.
Do you seriously believe MAGA has any interest in fair access to education? Or are you just saying that as a disingenuous talking point?
If the Trump admin could directly control admission, I truly believe future classes would consist of close to 100% far right leaning ("anti-woke") WASP types.
It really isn't. Harvard used to be a special cultural institution now it's just another research institute. Whoopee, nothing can be special, everything has to all be the same gray sludge cause otherwise it isn't """fair"""
Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
While I agree with this, if you read the letter of demands from the administration I don't think Harvard had any choice. I think the letter was much more egregious than what the Columbia demands were (at least from what I read about the Colombia demands). I think if Harvard had acquiesed it wouldn't have much reason to exist anymore, and I say this as a Harvard alum who took plenty of issue with the direction of the university in recent years.
In contrast, most of the demands I read for Columbia, except for the one about putting the Middle Eastern studies department under some sort of "conservatorship", seemed relatively reasonable to me if they hadn't come from the barrel of a gun and from an administration who has clearly defined any criticism of Israel and any support for Palestinians as anti-Semitism.
> Harvard just earned some reputation with me. It was already a place with great research. But now, it is also in institution with actual moral fiber.
I'm not so sure. The Harvard endowment is huge. I might not be so much "moral fiber" as having enough fuck you money that risks don't matter as much as they do to others.
No. This fight will be much bigger than money. It’s true they have money, but this will be a literal fight of academic freedom against authoritarianism.
I guess the nice thing is, the bad guys picked a fight against Harvard Fucking Law.
Plus Quin Emanuel and King and Spalding are representing Harvard against the Trump Administration. These firms are among the best of the best.
More of that! When a mountain of old money is suddenly put at risk, it can easily be mistaken as moral fiber. We will see if Harvard suddenly decides to defend others, or just fend for itself.
> actual moral fiber.
Maybe? Or maybe they realize that they will lose all future credibility with students, government and NGO's if they bow to the conservative & Christian right?
There are two outcomes for the the current American government situation - a slide in to authoritarianism (it's right there in Project 2025), or these wackjobs get voted out because they are destroying global financial stability.
If it's the former, Harvard eventually has to cave because literal Nazi's.
If it's the latter, Harvard is screwed if they capitulate.
The thing is there's really no choice. The version of Harvard we get if they cave is the same as burning it all down. It would be dead as an educational institution and would only serve to foster the same kind of insane doublethink that leads people to ask for "diversity in viewpoints" at the same time they ask for the removal of the viewpoints they disagree with.
Edited:
Yes, I doubt they're cool with the ideas in the letter like the federal government auditing everyone's "viewpoint diversity" and mandating staffing changes to fit what the federal government wants.
I think.... you're agreeing with me?
I am, I misread your response, my bad.
I don't know, is it moral to give legitimacy and a platform to someone like J. Mark Ramseyer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Mark_Ramseyer)? Less clear example would be keeping around Roland Fryer.
I find that very few people and even fewer institutions are consistently always on the right side of things morally, even in very clear-cut cases (never mind that what exactly the "moral thing" is, is a whole discussion in itself). It's probably better to look at the overall pattern rather than a incidents (either good or bad).
I have no opinion on Harvard myself by the way; I don't know enough about it. I'm just saying this is not an especially good criticism.
This is the only correct response, but I don't think I'm being overly cynical in thinking they're being opportunistic either.
They're quite happy to turn a blind eye to unfashionable political views being silenced, so there's a pinch of hypocrisy in making such a show of standing for openness.
All in all though, I'm happy to see this.
It's my understanding that the issue is not that they're "espousing the right views" but rather that they have the constitutional right as a private institution to espouse whatever views their students and faculty want under the first amendment.
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right, freedom of speech is free as long as it agrees with the viewpoint of who's in power. similar to how history is written by victors but this part is conveniently ignored. it's just facts in the open marketplace of ideas yay!
I mean, while this is the only correct response, it could still cost Harvard around $9 billion, which isn't chump change, even for Harvard.
And while I agree and have been disgusted with Harvard's slow slide to demanding ideological conformity over the past decade plus (e.g. https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...), I believe they have made some belated changes in the right direction over the past year.
Good. I think Harvard has faltered a bit recently with academic integrity scandals, but they are still well-respected overall. Them standing up for students is an important signal to other less high-profile schools that they can do the same.
The Federal government making funding to a university contingent on them "reforming" specifically named departments whose foreign policy views the executive branch disagrees with (Israel/Palestine policy) seems like a clear violation of the First Amendment.
They are deporting permanent residents for op-eds.
One permanent resident was sent to a concentration camp in El Salvator without due process, none over speech yet that I know of but his was for being spuriously labeled a terrorist.
My understanding is that racial discrimination is forbidden under title nine at least.
We are well past the point where in a future history class a student will raise their hand and ask 'Why didn't anyone stop them?' followed by 'Why were so many people members of that party?'
All of the information is saved, it's going to be interesting to study, the first "class" of people to leave are the ones from tech, you know, the backbone of USA services, it's going to be interesting, it's going to be an economy fall that didn't happen in Nazi Germany
No mention of anti-Asian discrimination? It made big rounds in all the American media circles a few years back, and if memory serves, MAGA boarded that train too.
MAGA loves to say how universities screw over poor hard-working Asian students, and then they turn around and defund universities and fire researchers. Their pity on Asians is not sincere, because they detest higher education in the first place.
And I'm saying this as an Asian father whose kid is going to a US college this year.
> then they turn around and defund universities
Harvard was one of the universities "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students", so I'm not sure the criticism holds, especially when the government's letter is asking for merit based admissions reform.
Are there other universities that weren't discriminating against Asians that the government has or has moved to defund?
And exactly how were they "screw[ing] over poor, hard-working Asian students
From [1]:
> Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court ruling that race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What came out of the documents in that court case was used as research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and was published[2], so we can see very well how they were screwing over poor, hard-working Asian students.
> Data on admissions—particularly at elite universities—is tightly guarded, making it challenging to identify both the students who benefit from racial preferences and the importance of race in admissions decisions… The data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC lawsuits are important because they make it possible to look behind the admissions veil to see how racial preferences operate.
It wasn't just Harvard, the University of North Carolina was included. The poor part is handled right there in the abstract:
> Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs [under-represented minorities] from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.
Echoed later on:
> Those who benefit the most from racial preferences (at least in terms of advantages in admissions) are those who come from higher socioeconomic status homes.
Asians weren't and probably still aren't benefitting from this, as:
> Looking first at the applicant columns, African Americans are most likely to be labeled disadvantaged followed by Hispanics, Asian Americans, and whites.
So not only do these "diversity" policies hurt Asians, they don't even help black Americans from lower socioeconomic classes, which seems to me to make all of it racist, including against black Americans - the ones most purported to be helped by this - and even against disadvantaged whites, who lose a whopping 25% of their chance to be admitted:
> a white, male, disadvantaged applicant with a 5% chance of admissions would only see his admissions probability rise to 32.1% if he were instead treated as an African American applicant
But the easiest misdeed to see is that done against Asians, hence the lawsuit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...
[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w29964
Bruh, have you been sleeping under the rock throughout the whole Trump-defunding-NIH saga.
If I had been, how would I understand your comment?
“Bruh”
These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical. Once they got the SCOTUS win and affirmative action was toast, they quickly moved on from fighting anti-Asian hate to a new fig-leaf/tool to useful for fighting the next ideological battle, which was prominent protests against government policy, which happened to be pro-Palestine, so this is the best tool for the job.
The messaging is very similar too, conflating pro-diversity with anti-whiteness, or anti-asian when needed, and now redefining being pro-Palestine as anti-Semitic or pro-Hamas. It's dumb, lacks nuance, but effective when the Fifth estate is pliant, co-opted or otherwise ineffective.
> "These "values" are not sincerely held, but tactical."
By MAGA, yes. Asians themselves haven't forgotten about it nor will they forgive anytime soon.
Asians are not a uniform block. They forget, often, just like every other ethnicity. Or they convince themselves that the values are actually still being held.
Good points. But they did open themselves up to this by blatantly discriminating against Asian students. I mean, "you have an ulterior motive in arguing against our hugely racist policies" is not a great defense.
The page acknowledges that Harvard lost that case and will comply with the ruling.
> MAGA boarded that train too
More like they found some useful idiots
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Harvard, as an institution capable of sustaining itself without relying on federal funding, bears a heightened responsibility to champion academic freedom and intellectual independence. Its financial independence positions it to defend these principles more vigorously than universities with fewer resources, which may face similar pressures but lack comparable institutional stability to resist government overreach.
I predict a surge of alumni donations in the weeks and months to come, not just at Harvard but also at other institutions that are showing their willingness to stand up against the creeping fascism of the current administration.
I think people who value education, academic freedom, and understand the economic and societal role that universities play, were hoping to see one or more of the major institutions stand up for these principles.
But they’re not standing up for freedom. They are admitting and hiring people based on a monoculture.
"Zaporozhian Cossacks write to the Sultan of Turkey" by Ilya Repin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporozhian_Cossacks#/media/Fi...
Funny how a foreign country got America to compromise on its core value of free speech that we used to lecture Europeans on.
I found harvard’s letter a poor attempt to articulate just how authoritarian the demands are, and how they undermine the very idea of a university. How leaders of such a prestigious university refuse to place what’s going on in historical context is sad. But it’s educational: now I have a better understanding of how the nazis came to power.
not a perfect comparison, but a useful starting point.
the irony of the evil being perpetrated around the world in the name of "antisemitism" is mind boggling
In the name of "fighting antisemitism"?
It's true, though. It's a convenient tool. "What do you mean you don't want to cede control to us? Don't you want to fight antisemitism?!"
Smells awfully like Putin's trumped up (ayy) play in Ukraine to "de-nazify".
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Why is it any more necessary to fight "leftists and muslims" than it is to fight righties and MAGAs?
That's the question that the Trump people never seem to acknowledge that the rest of America is asking itself?
What's the difference between muslims bombing whatever and MAGAs shooting up or torching a black church? The rest of us are finding it hard to see the distinction.
In fact, recent events have served to crystalize the dangers posed to the republic by ill considered MAGA policies. And to concentrate minds on the problem of how to extricate ourselves from the crises they have gotten us into in as efficient a manner as possible.
If efficiency is even possible at this point? Maybe "in as minimally painful a manner as possible" is a better way to say it?
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What organised group of leftists has attacked a group of people based on their ethnicity? Do you have a link you could share?
SJP for example. That's why Khalil and others are deported.
Can you expand on this?
What is SJP? What student did they attack based on ethnicity? Can you send any links?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/five-jewish-coll...
Can you quote the part of this article where a leftist student group organises to assault a student because of their ethnicity?
I couldn't find that part.
I was struck by how many of the people whose ages are named in that article were in their late thirties through fifties. Both as alleged perpetrators of violence, and victims.
Yeah. Sometimes college students are older, but that article isn't really evidence that student groups are hitting the streets bashing people based on ethnicity.
I am sure you can read, but apart for the very numerous mentions of violent attacks against Jewish students, we have this quote:
Kates, the head of Samidoun, and leaders of other hard-line pro-Hamas groups, say they don’t randomly attack Jewish people at demonstrations. Rather, they said, protests turn violent due to clashes with the police and run-ins with Jewish counterprotesters who carry Israeli flags and become targets.
“If you were to carry other flags of countries and nations that have committed genocide, one might expect them to be taken away,” Kates told NBC News. “That’s really a very low-level of confrontation for actively going out and supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
That's a pretty straight up claim admission of violence during demonstrations by a student group. This group that was part of the "student's" demonstrations in the universities was later on designated by both USA and Canada as affiliated with the PFLP terror group [1][2]
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/10/g...
[2] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2646
I am asking for simple evidence of something that was claimed to be widespread, but so far no one has presented any.
Can you link me to evidence that a leftist group attacked a student because of their ethnicity?
I am lost for words, what kind of evidence will you deem sufficient?
Surely the two students attacked at the start of the article due to wearing yarmulkes in public by a man wearing a keffiyeh is not related to subscribing to a specific ideology
The keffiyeh bit reads as really suspect (not saying the student was lying—mistakes are common in these situations) given all the other details of that incident I can find in other sources covering this. That claim appears to be the only connection to the pro-Palestine movement of the attack by a 52 year old white townie whose mugshot reads "homeless"—all of which paints a very different picture.
Maybe, I actually believe that the many instances of obvious non college participants does not cast these protestors in a good light
In any case, another example, A US court ruled an organized attack by a leftist group on Jews by physically blocking them from entering the campus if they refused to declare they agree with the "leftist" group
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-stud...
I believe there's ample evidence that campus life in many american universities was hostile to many jews, and it is enough to watch Claudine Gay congressional hearing to understand they were reluctant to do anything about it
> Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel
So, just to be clear, it was because they were pro-Israel, and not because they were Jewish.
If it was because they were Jewish, Jewish students that oppose Israeli occupation wouldn’t be allowed through.
Conflating the Jewish identity with support for Israel is a subtle ideological trick, one that Jewish antizionists consider to be antisemitic.
Well, a US court ruled that this was exclusion of Jews, not me, but what do you think about this?
https://www.courthousenews.com/jewish-students-harassed-duri...
A US court hasn’t ruled anything on that case yet. It hasn’t been heard yet.
I don’t want to be mean or anything but you aren’t succeeding in convincing me that leftist groups are plotting to attack Jews.
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I know that Jewish people are attacked by antisemites. No one is questioning that Jews face race-based hatred, just like Muslims do. Especially after 9/11, Muslims face a lot of antimuslim sentiment here.
I am questioning the notion that leftist groups on universities are doing antimuslim or antijewish activities.
The article you linked writes this about the perpetrator of the attack you're referencing here: "The man, whom police later identified as Jarrett Buba, a 52-year-old white man from Pittsburgh"
That doesn't really sound like a leftist student protestor to me. I was told that leftist student protestors are attacking people based solely on their ethnicity, so I'd like some evidence of this.
I don't think you want evidence of this, I think you'd like to be combative, therefore I am disengaging
I was very clear about what I wanted to see evidence of at the beginning and my request has not changed since you started engaging:
>What organised group of leftists has attacked a group of people based on their ethnicity? Do you have a link you could share?
I am not being combative; I am requesting evidence of a claim that was made at me.
You request me to supply evidence, I can only make a request for you to actually read the article
Reading this without a side, all they're asking you is to prove what you said, which is that leftist student groups are being racist/violent/antisemitic in an organized way.
You haven't shown any evidence to support your notion that "both sides the same" in regards to left/liberals banding together to promote their hateful ways.
There is, however, widespread and constant organization on the right to enact hateful/racist/antisemitic rhetoric. One can just go to foxnews for that.
Your argument is weird and I think the majority of people wouldn't buy it.
I don't think it really matters if it was organized based on hate for a specific ethnicity, I think for one that the western tradition of antisemitism is so embedded in the culture it is still pretty rampant, but racism is hard to prove today when everyone is disingenuous about it.
What actually matters is that some of the same groups that organized these protests celebrated the massacres in october right afterwards (google SJP october 7). When a student organization supports a massacre that kills a thousand civilians with the added atrocities or further calls for genocide of that group (but only in Israel!), obviously members of that ethnicity will feel threatened
Is that worth restricting free speech for? that's a different question, but the protests could have been done in a less restrictive way for other students and when you compare it to some of the more extreme cases of Title IX investigations, and university administrators saying that calls for genocide of jews is not violations of Harvard policies, you have to ask yourself is free speech really the issue
The claim was "Organized groups of Lefists and Muslims in the US became increasingly violent and started to attack a group of people based on their ethnicity."
I asked for evidence. It has devolved into the message you just wrote, which still does not supply evidence that "Organized groups of Lefists and Muslims in the US became increasingly violent and started to attack a group of people based on their ethnicity."
This is disappointing.
I did. I didn't see evidence of a leftist student group targeting students based on ethnicity in the article you sent me.
Can you quote the part that talks about this to me?
Source or don’t post assertions like this. Come on.
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Good. More organizations that have the resources should be putting their foot down.
If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Habeas corpus - still in effect unless you're already in El Salvador.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
Unless you're Stephen Miller, who insists that no mistake was made: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrobxubic23
And, more recently, Bukele and Trump insisted that they would not return a "terrorist" to the United States: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
Well one thing is for sure: it's not a coincidence that after they determined that it was impossible to get him back, they've changed the narrative to "no mistake was made" (and begun throwing around the magic word "terrorist" which justifies all sorts of things).
> after they determined that it was impossible to get him back
This phrasing buys into the Trump admin's narrative.
They did not determine that it was impossible to get him back. They have chosen to not pursue it. They refuse to define the agreement between the US and El Salvador sufficiently for anyone to know what is or is not possible through that path. They also seem to refuse to use political or financial influence to go beyond whatever that agreement may define.
If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens.
> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
"Bad" citizen can end up meaning anything Trump doesn't like, such as criticism. Even the most conservative person should be worried about this.
Especially the most conservative person.
He didn't get caught doing anything; he said it, openly, during an interview: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrx6b2gxy2f
Yeah, this is not going to end well for all y'all:
https://bsky.app/profile/pbump.com/post/3lmryeyuj6s2v
Not caught, he held a press conference and announced that he was going to try to do it.
Actually I stand corrected--he was ALSO caught on tape with a much more chilling version of this statement.
It's not.
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
I've posted here before that this idea that we just have rights is actually problematic, not the least reason for which is that whether we have such rights or not, their mere existence has never and will never actually defend anyone from any violation of them.
Rights are just the concessions that the less powerful have extracted from the powerful by virtue and utilization of power. This perspective has the double benefit not relying on the imaginary and making it clear that if you don't fight for your rights you will not get to keep them. Rights may be God given, but God isn't going to come down and rescue you from a concentration camp if you get put there by an autocrat who doesn't like your "free speech."
All that matters is whether we will personally tolerate abuses against human beings and what we are willing to do to prevent them. If I had my way, talk of rights qua rights would be swept into the dustbin of history with other imaginary stuff like religion in favor of concrete, ideally evidence based, free human discussion about what human beings want from the universe and what we are willing to endure to get it.
Precisely. If only the people who worship the Declaration of Independence and recite it like parrots singing a psalm, actually understood what the document was saying.
Unfortunately, those people have a lot of practice worshipping a text that they have not read.
>Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
Yet, US was systematically disenfranchising people for centuries
Within the lifetimes of some of us, lynchings were still common.
> The rubicon has already been crossed
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
Respect for rule of law and democratic norms. “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
> The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
Distinction without a difference, but it’s 3/5.
Thank you! I had an emotional reaction to the founder worship.
the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
That judge was against the interment of Japanese Americans. He took a stand against anyone deprived of due process throughout his life.
The US came close to losing its democracy status with FDR, which is why after he died, the 22nd Amendment was quickly created - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the...
Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
What's your take on the government drone striking American citizens without any sort of trial?
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As soon as you carve out exceptions for who should and shouldn't have their basic rights, you've lost the plot. Someone with a little bit of authority only needs to claim that you are a part of that group that shouldn't have their rights, and then you get to experience a flight to El Salvador wondering where it all went wrong.
Question for you - if you don't exercise due process, how do you know if any individual is one of those 10 million you speak of, or someone who is here legally, or for that matter, a citizen?
The same way you exercise it for 320 million other people. The same way it has been exercised for every person who immigrated to American soil. Including your ancestors.
Let's be clear about what you're actually saying and you're advocating for, you are advocating for the suspension of due process and fundamental rights to an entire class of human beings you see as the other.
If history has taught us anything, the definition of who and what is other changes over time. One day, you too shall be the other. And that day you will beg for the due process and fundamental rights you wish to deprive these people.
When the Benjamin Franklin said, "... if you can keep it." This type of thought process is precisely what he meant.
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Just to be clear, you are suggesting that it is fine to kidnap and send American citizens, ANY AMERICAN CITIZEN, to foreign prisons. They could come take you or any family member for any reason, and all they have to say is they thought you are a dangerous gang member. They don't even have to say anything! Once you are on that plane, it is a black hole, and they are grinning about the fact that you can't do a thing about it. That is why we have due process. This isn't about immigrants or cheap labor or anything. This is about disappearing political enemies for any reason. Flick off a Tesla driver? Gulag. Post on facebook that maybe we should be nice to gay people? Gulag. Trying to enter the USA on vacation with too much melanin? Guess what, gulag.
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You realize that the 'First They Came' poem was literally targeted towards people like you, specifically? By the time it happens to you, it'll be too late.
If you want to reverse exploitation of cheap labor I suggest you turn to strategies which do not treat human beings like cattle or some kind of infestation to be shipped en mass elsewhere.
An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage, eliminating the benefits of bringing in illegal labor and maintaining a humane society. Furthermore, we should probably only trade with countries which have equal labor protections as our own, so as to ensure that jobs aren't offshored to save money, at least at the expense of human rights.
I'm sorry, I just can't buy that "treat a bunch of people like animals" is the humanist, labor friendly, perspective.
>An economically viable solution to this problem would be simply force companies to pay all laborers, foreign or domestic, legal or illegal, a living wage
Do you think that the law has a cut-out to allow for paying illegal immigrants less than minimum wage? This is like solving the murder rate by making murder illegal -- it's already illegal to employ these people and pay them below minimum wage.
Yeah, but maybe we should deploy the national guard to make sure its happening. Even that would be a better use of our resources than rounding up a bunch of desperate people in a dragnet that might catch the innocent.
Like these people are victims of a system which is exploiting them. Treating them even more like shit isn't going to make the world a better place. Target the exploiters.
> because Wall Street wanted cheap exploitable labor
totally a ton of illegal immigrants running across the trading room floor yelling put orders and putting the real, American stock brokers out of jobs they deserve!
Wtf you talking about bro? Cmon buddy.
Bernie Sanders put it best: "open borders is a Koch Bros scheme"
You saturate the labor market with workers, it depresses wages, plain and simple. It's in the interests of shareholders to saturate the labor market to increase profits.
Companies exploiting labor to maximize profit is as old as this country itself. Slave labor, child labor, god awful minimum wages, union busting. What's your point? Why is this an issue now when it has always existed?
The point is we have laws in place to prevent it, unless you're being trafficked and forced to pay off gangs that transported you over the border, and no rights to ability to deal with an abusive situation.
The fact that you are okay with the defacto slavery/trafficking because "its always happened" says a lot, and why I generally dismiss these arguments, because at the end of the day, you just want to pay less for things, while you live in the nice part of town.
I didn't say I was ok with anything, don't put words in my mouth. I was asking why the thing that has always existed is a big issue now. For this administration specifically, the thing that has always existed wasn't an issue that demanded these actions the last time they were in office, just 4 short years ago. See what I'm pointing out? There are other reasons that things are being done.
>For this administration specifically, the thing that has always existed wasn't an issue that demanded these actions the last time they were in office, just 4 short years ago
Immigration and border security were maybe the #1 policy front for Trump in 2016 -- am I missing something here?
Did the things that are happening right now happen back then? That's what I'm asking.
> The point is we have laws in place to prevent it
And the current administration is flagrantly violating and ignoring the laws and the courts of our country. What is the point of laws if they're not followed? What is the point of your argument saying we have laws in place if laws no longer matter?
>Why is this an issue now when it has always existed?
Because it's a relatively new phenomenon that the ruling administration enables and advocates for the import of 10 million illegal immigrant laborers.
I hesitate to ask, but... what?
Habeas corpus doesn't seem to be working for Rümeysa Öztürk right now.
the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
It's starting to like authoritarian is the wrong word.
Totalitarian? not yet, but....
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
Uh yeah, why wouldn't I?
I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.
FYI habeas corpus has been under attack by GOP administrations for nearly a quarter of a century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
It was very depressing (if financially understandable) to see other institutions immediately caving in.
What institutions other than Columbia are caving in?
A long list of extremely large, well-heeled law firms
They will once the administration revokes the visas of half their grad students and shit-can all the international undergrad tuition income.
Every law firm.
Every law firm is hyperbole but I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
> Every law firm is hyperbole
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
> I meant what other universities other than Columbia?
Trump has only really gone after Columbia and Harvard. (Institution is a broader word than university.)
How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
WilerHale and Jenner & BLock are two: https://www.npr.org/2025/03/28/g-s1-56890/law-firms-sue-trum...
Susman Godfrey.
There's a lot going on and it's really hard to keep abreast of it all
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro...
Thank you.
And University of Washington and University of California on the west coast, although he's not directly threatening them. Rather, his HHS appointment has just quietly pulled all of the funding for their medical and biological research programs.
> How? Which major law firm is standing up like Harvard is?
Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling LLP, and Elias Law Group are fighting Trump's executive order. Those are 3 of the biggest law firms in the US. As far as I know only two major firms have made deals with Trump while many are sitting quiet but not everyone is cowering.
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
The point of no return was January 6th 2021!
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
It could have been water under the bridge if we simply did not re-elect him. But now we have a second term emboldened by de facto total immunity.
It would have been water under the bridge if him and his cronies all got perpetuity starting jan 7th and we never heard of them ever again. Instead the dems chose a demonstration of weakness, and showed that an attempt on our democracy would be punished by a strong worded reprimand, at best.
It wasn't up to dems but courts imho.
Plenty of blame to go around including for the Democrats.
Responsibility for Merrick Garland's failure to adequately pursue Trump lies at Joe Biden's feet and will likely be the thing he is remembered for most in the history books* despite the fact that he had some decent domestic policy (and some horrific foreign policy).
* (assuming we work our way out of the current mess, if we don't he will be remembered for far worse things given that he's Trump's reflexive whipping boy despite the fact that it makes Trump look weak to keep droning on about Biden)
Disagree. Polarisation existed long before Trump. America was going to face this sooner or later. The culture war was always coming.
> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
> By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War.
That may be true. The North won the war, but let the ideology that caused it fester.
I think people frequently forget that the North didn't actually have the firepower to stamp out the ideology.
Like any ideology, you can't actually destroy it with force any other way than burning books and, eventually, men.
And whether or not that would have been wise: the war was extremely costly for the North and there was a non-zero chance that if they started dropping every third Southerner from the gallows the federal government would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the survivors on both sides of the Mason-Dixon and that'd be it.
> who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Like a heart attack can be good for your health,perhaps this USA withdrawal will be good for Europe. (If Europe is what you mean)
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there's no need to defend any good things the nazis did to germany
The good things (and the promises of more) are what make them compelling for a while. Fascism is appealing because top-down directives from an absolute leader can work… for a bit.
Eventually you run out of the low hanging fruit that can be messed with by executive fiat, and then you have to find enemies to blame.
Reminds me of the venerable Dril:
issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them.'
Apologies. Did by no means try to mean it as a compliment to the Nazis - I just intended it as a comparison to help explain the justification at the time.
> At least the Nazi party created a strong economy in Germany
This is a myth. Wages of Destruction [1] details the Nazis’ autarkic economic incompetence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction
It didn't even do that. The Nazi economy was a debt fuelled spending spree that needed war in an attempt to sustain itself.
Nope, it didn't. The Nazis started a war economy almost immediately and yes, they hiked employment, but the Nazi economy was boom or bust. They couldn't sustain it long term without the war.
The nazis just robbed minorities and used slave Labour to prop up their economy and rich certain people/ethnicities
Which, again, is a parallel to Trump. If the peoll,e he deports to El Salavdor start to have their assets taken by the state/their neighbours/the people that dobbed them in, good luck.
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There is no evidence Trump has dementia. That is something his detracted unfairly say as if it is true, but there is no reason to think it is.
I don't like him either, but that doesn't mean I will say unfair things about him.
I was speaking in probabilities, not making a judgment myself (I wouldn't be qualified to do so anyway). Numerous mental health professionals have made the assertion that he is, and he has a family history of it, so at the very least it can't reasonably be claimed with 100% certainty that he's not in the early-to-mid stages of dementia.
Furthermore, my statement was very clearly presented as a massive stretch in the first place; noting that it might slightly increase the chance that he'll be unable to make an attempt at a third term (even if by 0.01%). Sometimes squinting hard enough that the resulting bokeh resemble a silver lining is all you can do to muster hope.
Statistically at his age he has a 25% chance of dieing before his term ends.
What is your definition of "fascists"?
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
The opening passage of the Wikipedia article:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
Tell me how this doesn't fit?
I feel like most people that are using the term deliberately, are doing so based on reasoning close to Umberto Eco's "Ur-fascism" essay: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
If you want something more modern, someone made a tracker: https://www.realtimefascism.com/
The tracker uses "the 14 characteristics of fascism identified by Dr. Lawrence Britt" (which is slightly different): https://osbcontent.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/PC-00466.pdf
I get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
> historical fascism
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
How did that work the last 10 times we said the things trump wants to do aren't gonna happen. He's saying he will so we should believe him
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-t...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-going-run-third-term-ste...
None of the rest of the stuff happening was going to happen either, I’m sure.
Legal residents are being kidnapped and disappeared into foreign gulags but let’s turn down the temperature, right?
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
The number of times I've read people say "That's alarmist and will never happen", just to see that exact thing happen, is a lot.
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Serious question, when someone tells you what they want, why don't want you believe them?
It's openly being discussed and you think it's alarmist? No, we need to turn the temperature up and start taking people at their word.
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
For context, this is exactly what was said of _literally everything_ that has happened in Trump's current term.
Is it alarmist, or is it just alarming? And, if it is alarming, shouldn't we be taking it seriously, instead of hand-waving it away?
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
We need to start turning the temperature up or this country will be completely lost
Why do you consider it alarmist? Trump has repeatedly said he would do it, and that he's "not joking" about it.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
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So you're fine with them arresting dissenters as long as you disagree with the dissenters? That's fairly antithetical to the ideas expressed in the US constitution.
I'm fine with stopping the flow of federal money to people who hate me in particular and who take a salary to convince others to do so too. Those who defend the conduct of universities need to pause and consider that the public has noticed the radicalization of academia, despises it, and will support state action to reverse it.
Who hates you in particular? What do you mean by that? Also, that's fine to have a conversation about funding, but it's fairly different from arrests, deportations, and shipping individuals to foreign prisons. Rather motte and bailey to earlier suggest that the government was going to go "Henry VII" on universities, and then say that you just want to change funding. These are very different positions.
Well you claimed they are violating "the fourteenth amendment" which hardly makes sense. How could they be doing that? Is Harvard a Government agency? A state unto itself?
Can you please elaborate on the “radicalization” of academia? What “radical” actions have they been taking, exactly? And are these actions pervasive or situational?
Which people do you think "hate you in particular"? Why do they hate you - what have you done to them?
They hate you because you're a useful idiot, not because of your skin color, for the record.
Yes we all know what good defenders of truth and knowledge the Trump administration is. Surely the same people who seem to have made a habit of causing constitutional crises and have directly challenged the 1st, 5th and 14th amendment have our best interest at heart.
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If you really believe that then I don't know what to tell you. You've been successfully brainwashed. I hope one day you're able to hold a 5 minutes conversation with an actual student and clear that bullshit out of your head.
Yeah, I must be hallucinating with "bullshit in my head".
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/black-lives-ma...
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/70845
Would you like to further colonise mathematics?
Algebra could be renamed Chestering, to credit the Englishman who did the real work of translating Al-Khwarizmi's text from Arabic into Latin.
Is colonizing now a synonym for cultural fusion?
Surely the arabs have been colonizing mathematics by translating the indigenous greek works
The arabs of the Abbasid Caliphate braided a rope by unifying Greek, Babylonian, and Indian mathematical and scientific works after translating original works into Arabic and extending them.
As well as everyone else, why is it colonizing when the west do it to arabic mathematics and not when the arabs do it to western mathematics?
That argument is rather weird as mathematics was never about culture, but rather about logical truth
Since my example was apparently poorly chosen due to my own ignorance, and you're finding it worthwhile to have this discussion, I'll conclude that studying mathematical history ("decolonizing mathematics") is useful.
Well you do have a point. It would be absurd. Just like the opposite. Both decolonizing and "further" colonizing maths makes no sense and is a waste of time at best...
You should really read those articles that you linked instead of ignorantly pointing at them in outrage, against something you clearly never engaged with other than through conservative media. At least read the Nature one, damn. It's directly addressed to people like you, who might think they have issues with this stuff, for reasons.
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.
Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?
It's dangerous because of post colonialism and earlier post structuralism is in its basis.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
No part of your comment addresses any "nonsense" or "danger" in the Nature article ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9 )
The context was:
Do you have _ any _ meaningful critique of the contents of, say, maths historian George Joseph’s book The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics (1991) ?This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
I read the Nature article, and I read the seminal work on the subject Orientalism by Said. The context of the article is post-colonialism, a very established philosophical movement. This is shown when they mention whether mathematics is socially constructed and in the actual title "decolonization". I then proceeded to criticize that movement and explain why it is a problem for mathematics.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
Do you think there may have been developments in this space since 1978, when Said published Orientalism?
I don't mean to be rude, but do you think it's possible that your understanding of the situation is a bit out of date?
Maybe, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Which part of my critique of post-colonialism do you think had become obsolete?
>Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed
This part. I'm not sure if it's because it's out of date or just plain wrong, though.
What? Have you really read the Nature article? You're talking absolute nonsense here. No one is out to redefine mathematics, fuck!
You want real politicization of science? Check out the GOP's pomicies. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to foreign scientists for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
75% of scientists that ever published in Nature are now considering leaving the US [1] from fear of the administration. Is that not a concern to you?
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00938-y
Politicizing the sciences is a huge issue from both sides, and Trump efforts are worrying
I currently worry more about the left though, as it is much more powerful in the academics, and actually creates political "science" today
?????
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
you asked me though, and that is my opinion
Fair enough, I am simply baffled that some people can still believe the threat to science comes from the left in the face of an overwhelming and unprecendented anti-science crusade from the right. Now I wonder what the current administration would need to do for you to change your mind. Behead scientists? They're already detaining them, so that's the next logical step.
You're beyond saving then, if basic historical research is "dangerous nonsense". What's the risk there? Discovering a theorem was known at an earlier point in history? Big whoop.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
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I agree, each UK citizen is infused with the original sin of being a colonizer and their opinion should be discarded until they purge this sin from their bodies through appropriate cleansing rituals.
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
Goodness gracious. Invoking religious self-harm imagery in response to mild criticism feels wildly out of pocket. Do you genuinely think anti-colonial activism demands this or anything even resembling this of post-colonial states?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Do you not find it out of pocket that you made a judgement about the validity of someone's opinion based on their (not even birth) nationality? Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
> Is there anything they could say or do to make their opinion worth listening to?
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
> mild criticism
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
> what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities
Since we’re bringing it back onto topic, has any university ever ran a “decolonised maths” program? What would that look like?
I'm not sure. They did supposedly organized "Decolonization in Mathematics" conference. I have no particular interest in figuring out what that means exactly on a non superficial level because it would be a waste of time.
I googled the term you put in quotes and found a lovely article in Nature that seems to indicate that it's mostly about correcting common lies in Mathematics history.
Seems relatively straightforward to me...
Things like:
"" Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1) "" or: "" It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2) ""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
It's significant because we already have patterns of thought where we credit civilization and such to white people and it causes problems.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
Where are those quotes from?
This appears to be the source: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/school-of-mathematics/about-us/eq...
I agree - trying to show that other people may have discovered things that we believe we did exclusively is abhorrent and those people deserve all the sanctions that we can impose on them.
And don't forget people who like me are in the UK but weren't born there.
Did you read the letter sent from the government to Harvard?
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
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You only used one of the magical thought-stopping phrases.
You're supposed to say that it will help the children too.
Well yes.. an attempt by pseudo-fascists to takeover universities and other public institutions is indeed a matter of national security.
What specifical threat to our nation are they trying to defend against?
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Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
The problem with your questions (if the one above is an example) is that you're asking what can be seen as an insulting question that doesn't really add any nuance or analysis itself.
You could have asked the question while highlighting points in the governments letter that you thought were valid policy goals that you wanted more discussion about. You could have asked if they'd read the government letter and pointed out that the government telling the university that it both had to consider who it hired with regard to political and ethnic and to make personnel changes to demonstrate they didn't consider political and ethnic considerations going forward was particularly ridiculous.
You may still get downvoted for emotional(which you shouldn't) or other reasons but it would be less likely to be the case as it showed you made some effort (which can indicate good faith) and more importantly you're comment might inform someone reading the comments more about the topic as well.
Thank you for explaining this. I don't have much experience discussing politics on the internet and so I have some catching up to do in my understanding of the etiquette. I can now see how my question came off as disrespectful, but it's not how I meant it. I asked it in the way I would ask one of my friends in good faith.
I have learned my lesson and I will try and be more thoughtful in my questioning moving forward.
Again, thank you, if you (and a couple others) hadn't responded by explaining my mistake I would have gone on assuming that I was being downvoted for the wrong reasons.
It's because you sounded like a sealion. That and whataboutism are just adding refuting noises without substance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Thank you, never heard of that concept before. I don't think I was doing that but I can see how it could appear that way. I can't figure out how to get back to the parent comment to see what I was responding to, but I think I asked that because I was trying to understand if the commenter was reacting only to the Harvard letter and preconceptions about the administration, or the administration's letter itself. I could have been more thoughtful about the question.
I have very little experience engaging in political discourse on the internet. So I asked the question like I would to a friend.
I'm realizing now that the best way for me to engage is simply to take these threads and paste them into an LLM and have it explain the nuance and context to me. I just wish there was a forum for conversing about this stuff with real people with diverse viewpoints and who kept to most respectful interpretations.
The notion of "Sealioning" is a perfect example of substituting mockery for criticism. See also: "What about the menz?!", "Akshully...", "tips fedora", etc., etc.
Because you sound like a concern troll/sea lion. Ask your question better.
Yes, I understand my mistake now. Thankfully a couple other people explained it with a bit more nuance than you have here, but regardless I appreciate you taking a moment to offer me feedback instead of just downvoting me. I had never heard of the sea lion concept before. I am not new to this world, but I am new to discussing politics on the internet and am still learning how to do it constructively.
> Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Obama didn't need to demand it, the Universities went ahead and did it on their own.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...
So not a comparable situation.
In this intra-elite competition, the previous winners might deserve to lose. The current regime and its allies absolutely cannot be allowed to be winners.
Harvard can do whatever they want. They can also not get taxpayer funding for it.
> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
> At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
Not everyone.
It can take a good long time though. It's Juche Year 114 in North Korea and the Kim dynasty remains firmly in control.
Everyone recovers from a sickness. Until they don't.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
This rings true for much of South America at one point or another. Lots of African nations. Several in SE Asia as well.
Heck, just in the last few years we've seen several countries regress by a decade or more because of military coups or similar.
Really, if you look at many countries that haven't been a world power, this has happened once or twice in recent memory.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
Do you have a better example? Or is that it?
Everyone except those who died in the camps.
And under the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sure... As a different government.
I assume parent is talking about the functional end of this iteration of the United States as a political entity.
> we've come back from it
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
> universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds
Agree. I don’t think they should accept federal funds to the extent that they do. Maybe it’s time for elite institutions to get past the 70s camp era and start behaving (and wielding the power of) being elite.
It’s current year. They might hobble along for a few years without federal funding but they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions.
> they need federal funding to keep their academic reputation and be elite institutions
Why? The funding chased their reputations during the world wars. There are plenty of ways of collaborating on expensive research facilities with the federal government while keeping a boundary between church and state within the elite halls.
Top researchers prefer federal funding, it’s fairly predictable..till now. It’s messy now so I might be wrong.
> wrong about amyloid plaques
Sorry... you think that Trump is doing this because of suppression of dissent about amyloid plaques?
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
> there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population
Not in any meaningful way. And not in a way that would have mattered.
The elite universities got into this hole by trying to court pedestrian approval. Trump is at war with the professional managerial class, not the elites. Harvard’s brand remains unimpeached among the latter. Return to serving that group and ignore the broader population.
$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
The 9 billion isn’t specifically just for Harvard “the university”.
The lion’s share of it appears to be NIH programs for area hospitals - all of which are associated with Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
We all benefit from that research.
> $9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American…
Now do what it gets them.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
Is there any evidence that we've been "blindly" pumping money into academia? Funding agencies are part of the federal budget and don't just get everything they ask for. Then those agencies have all sorts of review procedures for choosing grant awardees.
There isn't just some big slush fund labeled "dumb science ideas" that everybody grabs from.
No need for that. There is more than enough money being funnelled into defense to fund Harvard + everything else you can think of and still have the largest defense spending in the world.
Arguing that Harvard gets too much while ignoring 99% of the budget is not a reasonable stance.
This is a logical fallacy of whataboutism. It is perfectly possible to say that the DOD gets too much money as does Harvard.
I would agree if it was not a response to a similar argument about pumping money into alternative. So its consistent to that.
The people who want to hurt Harvard also want to hurt the local schools.
this is identity politics, rather than discussing ideas we discuss whose ideas they are and whether we like that person, I don't like that kind of discourse and don't find it valuable, bad people can have good ideas and vice versa
edit: that being said, I agree what's happening to harvard is in bad faith and has nothing to do with making the government more efficient, so my argument isn't good
It’s not identity politics to observe that the dilemma you presented (public funding for universities xor local schools) is false.
When the guy lifting your TV starts quoting Marx at you, it's not actually an invitation to engage in philosophical discourse, and no amount of sound economic reasoning is getting your TV back.
The Trump administration is not, has not, and will not be arguing in good faith. Stop pretending we're working collaboratively towards a shared future - they're either stealing your television or stealing your neighbor's television, and attempts to interrogate the merits of their television relocation policy aren't shedding any actual light to the situation.
@TimorousBestie (I can't reply inline due to comment depth)
I didn't say fund harvard xor fund local schools, I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets. The comment I'm replying to is who implies I must support harvard funding xor I must support trump, "the people who want to hurt harvard", I don't think that's true. I'm allowed to think federal funds for academia are too high and also think Trump is bad for the country
> I said it's crazy how much money harvard gets
A place that has all the facilities, faculty and pedigree to pull some of the best researchers from all over the world. It's in fact crazy that Harvard, or any R1 university, wouldn't get a large amount of research dollars from the federal government.
Sure, but you can understand the perspective of someone growing up with zero access to those resources and lives in a rural part of the country hearing your argument and then voting for someone like trump, I would argue that sentiment is one of the forces driving regular people away from democrats and lost them the election in 2024, it is an "ivory tower" perspective and regular americans don't buy it (even if it's true that harvard is a great investment for public money)
I agree the democrats have terrible messaging, but what would really help 'regular' Americans is universal healthcare, free education, and maybe even UBI. As departments get DOGE'd a lot of 'regular' Americans are starting to find out where a lot of federal money goes, to those rural parts of the country.
And let's be honest. The force 'driving people away from the democrats' is the propaganda network known as Fox News.
First, it's not blind. These big universities are where a ton of research happens. It makes sense that research dollars will end up there.
Second, I agree that local schools (I guess you mean K-12?) should get more money. DOGE is busy cutting that also.
We can have a discussion on if the money we spend is worth it sure. That's not what's happening now, Trumps not asking if this is the best way to fund research, he's demanding Harvard ban masks and punish students for engaging in political behavior he doesn't like. You're bringing up an entirely separate issue.
You seem to be missing the point that federal research grants are not gifts, but instead paying for a service.
If you are looking for someone to take this money and redirect it to local schools I have some bad news for you.
I invite you to write or read a proposal for a multi $M grant before saying that money is being blindly pumped.
Massachusetts has some of the best public schools in the nation.
I promise you right now that no one in the Trump administration is interested into providing more books to local schools. Quite the opposite
even partially agreeing with anything the trump administration does on this forum makes you a target for downvotes.
let me cred fall. idgaDANG
you say as your comment about downvotes gets downvoted, echo chambers are dangerous to democracy imo
The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
> More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
1) Granting that giving more power to tenured professors would be a good thing, in what way is it legal, wise, or good for the executive branch to achieve this in the absence of any law by strong arming individual private institutions that it has decided to target on ad hoc basis?
2) You are reading selectively, it says "fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter" [emphasis mine]. So in other words, it is a requirement that the university give power to those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration. This is a very clear and alarming violation of the first amendment.
In toto, the letter is an attempt to impose ideological reform in a private institution, and is part of a wider attempt by the current administration to browbeat or subvert every institution that might act to curtail (or even speak out against) its actions.
I read "the changes indicated in this letter" to mean "removing power from non academic activists"
While I kinda agree that can also be taken to mean "those ideologically-aligned with the Trump administration", it still means those calling the shots are the non academic activists not aligned with an ideology of promoting academic merit....
Maybe.
> "removing power from non academic activists"
That sentence (from the letter) makes no sense. An activist isn't someone with power to do something. If they had that power, they wouldn't be advocating it, they would do it.
What that insisting the University do is shut down people talking and protesting with viewpoints they disagree with. They list those viewpoints in their letter: "..., Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild". The pro Israeli protests that happened aren't mentioned. If they get away with this, I'm sure a lot more viewpoints will follow.
This isn't about powers. It's about controlling what people can and can not say on a University campus.
>An activist isn't someone with power to do something
Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
> Without doubt in this context "activist" refers to those pushing the LGBTQ, race and gender baiting agenda with no regard for education of actual real world value.
Nope. They literally spell out the activity they want banned in their letter. Have you read it? LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
->LGBTQ and gender aren't mentioned.
yes they are
"discontinuation of DEI"
aka not giving someone a position of power purely because they are e.g. a hispanic homosexual and a quota needs filling.
and kicking out the activists that push that policy over academic credentials.
Yes, discontinuation of DEI is one thing they are asking for. But they aren't (yet) the calling for banning "hispanic homosexuals" or any other DEI group on campus. They aren't asking for discussions about them to be banned. That would be a little awkward, as I'm sure they warn to encourage discussions disparaging them. Nowhere in the section on dismantling DEI do they use the term activists.
Kicking out activists is another thing they are asking for, in a different section. They list the sorts of activists they want kicked out. Right now it's a short list that boils down to protesting what Israel is doing in Gaza. DEI is not mentioned anywhere in the section, nor are any of the groups DEI typically encompasses. I have no doubt that if Harvard did acquiesce the list will be expanded to everything the administration disagrees with - for example protesting about abolishing DEI. But that's for the future.
It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues they want dealt with in different ways. One is a policy they want dropped, the other is a group they want shut down. What is not so clear is why you are so keen to conflate the two issues. Are you keen to get "hispanic homosexuals", and any other sub-group you don't like banned from campuses?
>It's clear from the letter of demand "activists" and DEI are separate issues
Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
All of whom have exactly zero acedemic credibility.
Certainly non of whom should be funded by tax collected from a single mother living in a trailer park.
> Separate issues. Mostly the same people.
Just for clarity, do I have this right: You think people who protest Israel’s handing of Gaza are mostly people favoured by DEI, you think "hispanic homosexuals" are favoured by DEI at Harvard, and you think someone who is a "hispanic homosexual" and others that fall under DEI invariably have zero academic credibility?
I think the people who blocked jewish students attending class are mostly the same racist dumbasses that think being black or hispanic or sexually deviant automatically qualifies you for additional tax payer funds.
And being that dumb to believe in either means you have zero acedemic credibility.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
You forgot the cost of his golf excursions. (there are a surprising number of Trump golf trackers LOL)
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"
You also forgot the birthday military parade he wants that's been estimated to cost ~$100M.
And the salaries for DOGE employees that are higher than the highest pay band.
that's 10 cents per american (still crazy!), but not $30, and $30 is only for Harvard much less how much federal funds go to other schools
Obviously I'd rather that 10 cents go to something productive, but on the national stage trump golfing feels like just a distraction from much more important topics
Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about that but this isn’t it, this is attempted coercion, and yes, it is fascism.
> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
Small towns overwhelmingly get more federal dollars than they put in. Big cities subsidize small towns.
>it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Because Americans in small towns overwhelmingly vote for people who lower taxes for rich people and promise not reduce the scope of government. Instead of blaming Harvard, why don't you ask your neighbors why they like to vote for people who refuse to help them?
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
Are there world-class research facilities in your small town? Why would it be hard for you to see it makes sense for billions to be spent on research at world-class facilities with world-class scientists?
FWIW, chances are whatever local state university nearby also receives quite a bit from federal grants as well. But it probably scales based on the research facilities and staff actually there. Do you think it would be better management of federal resources to instead spend the same amount at facilities that don't do nearly as impactful or nearly as much research?
These are grants for specific research. Researchers put together proposals to study things, the federal government decides that's something worth looking into, and funding gets cut (simplified). Harvard has a lot of people doing pretty fancy research, so it makes sense they'd have a lot of grant proposals requiring fancy and expensive things. Complain to your state legislature for not focusing on making your local university a research university if you feel your area should be getting more of these grants. But let me guess, you probably voted for people who argued for lower taxes. Gee, I wonder what they found to cut...
And FWIW the federal government spends a bunch on a lot of small-town America. FEMA grants for emergency preparedness comes to mind. A higher percentage of populations of small-town America live off federal aid programs. Small-town America also sees more of its school funding from federal sources and grants.
> it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans
The democrats have been trying to pass universal healthcare and free higher education it feels like forever. UBI has even come up a few times. Nothing that Trump is doing is for anyone but himself and his rich friends.
Instead it will go straight to military contractors, yay!
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.
Even if Harvard wanted to comply with the government letter, it's full of so many non-sequiturs and self-conflictions that it reads more like a piece of satire:
> The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity
> In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023
> Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming
The letter is a complete joke. Giving it any sort of compliance would be giving validation to a set of rules that are literally impossible to follow by design. There is literally nothing Harvard could do to not be in trouble later.
Also buried in the letter is this gem:
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
This is Maoist-style social reform through and through.
> Keep in mind Harvard also runs a medical school!
Aseptic surgical procedures may soon go the way of vaccines.
Harvard Medical School?
Ah yes I've heard of that, it's one of the "Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias" which most fuels antisemitic harassment and reflects ideological capture!
It seems like the government has a soft Monopsony. There are many universities willing to sell research, but the government is the biggest buyer and controls the research grant market
Universities don't sell or do research. They provide facilities, equipment, services, and sometimes funding for research. The actual research is done by individuals, who are nominally employed by the university but largely independent from it. If a researcher doesn't like a particular university, they can usually take their funding and projects to another university.
When grants are revoked for political reasons, it affects individuals who happen to be affiliated with the university more than the university itself. And it particularly affects people doing STEM research, because humanities and social sciences receive much less external funding. If the decline in public funding is permanent, it makes humanities and social sciences relatively stronger within the university. They are more viable without public subsidies than the more expensive STEM fields.
Research is often (usually?) the property of the host university, though. Yeah labs are independently managed but the university is in at least one sense, and imo many more, still the institution both doing and selling the work
By default, research belongs to the researchers. That's an essential part of academic freedom. The main exceptions are research funded by grants and contracts that specify otherwise, and when you start looking for patents and other commercialization opportunities.
In other words, the university may have some property rights to your work if you deal too closely with for-profit businesses or national security interests. But if you are just doing normal research with normal grants, you'll probably never see those exceptions in your career.
This isn't close to a monopsony but it's more directionally correct than it is wrong. Keep in mind research institutes can be funded by private foundations, state and local governments, industry (e.g. pharma), venture, or even foreign governments. The federal government is undoubtedly the largest buyer though. I do think there are other motivations to rely primarily on federal grants beyond number of dollars. In particular, funding sources other than federal grant money is often looked down on from an academic prestige perspective. Until now federal money came with very few strings attached compared to the perceived loss of objectivity that could occur when receiving money from other sources. The current situation may alter or relax the prevailing view on which sources of research money are perceived of as potentially compromising.
It's not a very good analogy because federally-funded research is a public investment, a public good like roads. The research is supported by the public (the government) and becomes available for anyone to use, learn from, and build off of. And in fact most successful U.S. business are built on the backs of technological innovation that was originally funded by the government, or at the very least, innovation from PhD's whose educations were largely federally funded. (Disclaimer: federally funded researcher)
You couldn't replace that with a private company "buying" research and expect the same societal benefits.
Anyone whose research is profitable is free to work for a private entity. The government is a "monopsony" in "buying" unprofitable research the same way it's a "monopsony" subsidizing any industry that would otherwise fail in a free market. That is not typically how the concept of monopsony is meant.
America is starting to seem like the world depicted in V for Vendetta.
The world should never forgive Americans for what they let the man they call their president get away with. Sending people to concentration camps, among many other despicable acts. "Wir haben es nicht gewußt".
Likely I'm very naive. But here goes... It seems that taxpayers fund a lot of research. This research is very valuable and lucrative. It finds its way into the hands of those who know how to profit from it. The taxpayer is again screwed paying exorbitant prices for said breakthroughs. Insulin is one area of interest to me and it very much seems to be the case in the diabetes world.
This was how NAFTA was sold. Move car manufacturing to Mexico and they will enjoy better living wages while we get more affordable cars. Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable. I'm sure corporate profits were great. Should probably look into this someday and see if my perception is correct.
I think a conversation about what the taxpayer should get back from university research funding is a good question, I personally don't like privatization of medical breakthroughs discovered with public money.
However, I am cautious to extend that argument to this situation. This is an attempt to use federal funding as a backdoor around the 1st amendment (from what I can tell). I'm not going to extend this administration any leeway when their bull in a china shop policies inadvertently break something I don't like. I don't want to improve taxpayer funding of research by losing the 1st amendment.
> Except that I don't recall cars produced in Mexico ever getting more affordable.
According to this site[0], new car prices were about 6% higher at the end of NAFTA in 2020 compared with at the start of NAFTA in 1994. Considering inflation on other things was on average much higher and also that more recent cars are significantly safer, more performant, and fuel-efficient—i.e. more provide more value—it does look like cars did effectively get cheaper.
[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation
Keep in mind labor is something like 10%-15% of the cost of a new car so even if you cut that down by 80%, including transport, and ignored recouping capital cost to actually move the production lines then you'd still need to move the production in less than 2 years to actually see the price decrease rather than "not move up as fast" at 3% car price inflation of the early 90s. Interestingly there was a dip in the price increase rate of cars at the end of the 90s https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation but it's too large to have been reasonably attributable to this trade change.
Between 1935 and today car price inflation is at 2.41% per year while general inflation is 3.56%. You may have not noticed. Since free trade it's been less than 2%.
You may not have noticed but it happened.
Part of nafta was to slow the increasing costs of production, not lower them.
When looking over time it definitely worked in many regards. Things didn't get as expensive as they would have otherwise.
Much like outbreaks that never turn into pandemics, no one remembers the efficiency measures that prevent price increases.
I don't think your concept her is bad at all.
But I also don't think your concept has anything to do with the situation at Harvard.
It’ll be nice if an institution finally decides to oppose some of the recent government overreach.
It’s really shocking to see an institution in our country take action that is not in its immediate financial best interest (assuming this letter translates to an action)
It's not just about finances. Trump just announced (possibly accidentally) that he's going to start deporting American citizens to El Salvador gulags: https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-says-the-us-could-de...
and they've been painting political enemies as criminals. It's pretty much the same situation as Russia/Putin but at an earlier stage of its development, and people want to avoid being the tallest grass that gets mowed.
It's good that some institutions are standing up but I don't expect it to go well for them.
He also said Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor may have committed treason for criticizing him as president after signing an executive order to investigate them.
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These people (not only MAGA) perverted the very meaning of antisemitism to the point that it means nothing today. I am saying that as someone who's lost a family member to Holocaust. When I hear someone mention antisemitism today, 90% of the time it is to punish someone's views critical of Israel.
Which is, of course, deeply antisemitic of the people claiming antisemitism when they are talking about only criticism of Israel, to equate all Jewish people with the Israeli state.
Same, having descended from Holocaust survivors, what is happening in the U.S. and Palestine right now is chilling to me in its similarity.
When I was active on the Politics Stack Exchange site years ago I was "reported to the ADL" for merging the [jews] and [judaism] tags. Right out of the gate after I casually mentioned it in another discussion: not even a big fight about it. But the same person outright ignored the Trump-supporting holocaust denying user who harrassed a Jewish user with antisemitic slurs such (e.g. [1]).
Sadly antisemitism obviously exists, and sadly some pro-Palestinian activists have veered off into antisemitism. But the selective outrage is hard to take serious.
Remember, Caesar subjugated Gaul and killed or enslaved about a quarter of all Gauls in the process, to "protect" them from invading Germanic tribes. "Top kek", as I believe the old Latin saying goes.
[1]: https://politics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3596 – I am the author of that, I deleted my account since in large party due to all of this
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> Where are the pro-Palestinian activists who are standing up for the Gazans who have the courage to risk their lives by protesting against Hamas?
If you can find me a western government or institution they should be protesting for actively collaborating with Hamas then I'll grant you that hypocrisy. They don't need to because it's already a federal crime to materially support Hamas in any way whatsoever.
If the Palestinians are risking their lives to protest against Hamas in Gaza, why can't the alleged pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate in support of this viewpoint?
> If you can find me a western government or institution they should be protesting for actively collaborating with Hamas
The BBC (which frequently quotes Hamas verbatim without attribution and which has employed many openly racist correspondents), and Associated Press (who rode with Hamas during the Oct 7 massacre). You should already be aware of this.
Governments have a monopoly on violence in exchange for protected and upholding our privileged rights. When any government start disregarding that contract, so too can the populous.
Can someone confirm that if Harvard turned down Pell Grants and Federal student support, they could admit whoever they want?
>Private clubs are generally exempt from anti-discrimination laws under certain conditions. For example, being genuinely private and not engaging in business with non-members. However, there are exceptions to these exemptions. For instance, when a club receives significant government benefits or operates as a commercial enterprise.
They could. Look up Bob Jones College or Hillsdale College, both of which operate without any federal funding. It appears that the elite universities are going to find out the same thing that the small Christian universities found out in the 1970s, which is that the federal government Can control you if they fund you. I believe Bob Jones in particular won a case in front of the Supreme Court giving them the right to racially discriminate in their admissions if they refuse to take any federal funding.
ty
I don’t think the administration seriously thinks Harvard will accept these terms. This will just be used as more fodder against “liberal elites”.
Conservative media will then headline with “Harvard rejects Trumps reforms on DEI” or “Harvard says no to ending anti-semitism”.
Scathing, and wonderfully so.
Re: endowments, really good post on why universities can't just tap into endowments for budget shortfalls:
https://medium.com/@myassa_62896/why-you-cant-just-use-the-e...
>It’s more like a patchwork of locked treasure chests, each with its own key and its own label: this one funds scholarships, that one supports cancer research, another pays for upkeep on a library.
Explain why direct donations cannot accomplish the same. I suspect that universities want endowment donations because they grow tax free.
My understanding is that a large part of endowments comes from large (really, huge) donations.
If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
It's not entirely about what the organization wants, but also what the donators/sponsors want.
>If I was to donate 9 (or 10) figures to an institution, I would want to make sure it is used to support what I want it to support (cancer research, scholarships, libraries, etc), rather than be used as a general slush fund.
You can make that restricted donation outside of the endowment. I thought endowments were for the support of students, not research.
As information, the current administration is doing similar demands to foreign universities, trying to impose the point of view of the world in a president we didn't vote for.
Here is an article about the Trump administration demands to our universities.
https://www-publico-pt.translate.goog/2025/04/11/ciencia/not...
Thank you for that link. I knew about letters to parts of the European industry but not to universities. 7. 12. 14. and 15. are mind blowing.
Wasn't Harvard's president a woman who wrote her PhD thesis on DEI? I vaguely remember the news about this (fraud or something). If this is what Harvard considers that the person for the job, I think the sense making apparatus of Harvard personnel is specifically tuned to not bend the knee in this case. The instrument would likely fail at the input validation step and not proceed to the sense making portion.
Do they stand a good chance of clawing back any of that funding by suing the government (which they seem to be hinting at doing)?
> "Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension."
Wow. Imagine being sick with something serious like pneumonia and having to decide whether to get everyone around you sick, or risk being suspended from school.
I think you mean jailed, tortured and deported.
While I am not a friend of a mask ban, universities should absolutely teach their students to stay home when sick. Going to work sick is an abomination that should be rooted out. And it is a nice liberal cause too.
If you're seriously ill, you should get treatment, not walk around hoping that a piece of cloth will save others from exposure to whatever it is you're coughing up.
Except that masks do statistically work in preventing the spread of contagion.
Even if it's just 10% it's still worth doing.
There are also tons of legit reasons to wear a mask besides being contagious.
Anyone defending a mask ban is doing it to support ideology, not practicality. Just say that instead of using really dumb click bait fox news quips.
What if they have pollen or other allergies that masks help mitigate? What if there’s a huge forest fire that’s polluting the outside air with acrid smoke?
There are so many possible scenarios. What if the campus is infested with face-huggers from the award-winning movie Alien? What if there are still Jewish students and faculty members who need to be harassed anonymously?
I'll leave those to people more familiar with the subject. And as for the pneumonia scenario, I reiterate that the only sane course of action is to seek treatment, not to walk around public spaces, masked or not.
I do believe the universities have a lot to change for better, but sadly this government is the worst to ask for.
There really is no incentive to compromise with the Trump Admin on anything. Even if you cave, they just go for more. You need to act like a cornered animal and not expect honest negotiation.
OTOH if Trump admin WAS at all rational partners they could be extracting historic changes from these institutions. But they won’t.
We are silently watching "Country of the Free" falling at max velocity to the deepest of the darkest pits of fascism, teocrasy, and dictatorship.
This is a larger idea, just tangentially related to this particular case.
In 2011 there was Occupy Wall Street. It was a movement that argued that many of the financial problems we saw in 2008 were a result of a 1% of wealthy business people who were prioritizing their own wealth over the needs of the populations of the countries they operated within. I mean, they created a financial crisis by inventing obviously risky financial assets based on peoples housing. They knew it was a house of cards that would fall in time but they did it anyway with callous disregard to the inevitable human cost.
It was in the wake of that the "wokeness" became a buzzword, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, corporate policies were amended, management teams were upended, advertising campaigns were aligned to this new focus. Women, minorities and marginalized groups were championed and ushered in to key public positions. In a brief 14 years, then entire garbage dump of modern capitalism was placed like a hot potato into the hands of a new naively optimistic crew. This coincided with huge money printing and zero percent interest rate, the likes of which we haven't seen. That new elite grew in wealth, stature and public focus. They became the face of the "system" as if they had created it instead of inheriting it.
And now that the zero interest rates are done and suddenly everyone believes in the scary size of the deficit and the ballooning debt, the people sitting in power as we are about to actually feel the crash instead of just kicking it down the road yet again, those people are the target of public ire. I actually see people in these very comments acting as if the looming crash was caused by the DEI departments which formed just a little over a decade ago.
And guess who is coming back to claim they will save us from these DEI monsters? The people who created the actual mess in the first place. Yet now, instead of calling for their heads on spikes like the public was in 2011, we are literally begging them to save us from these DEI proponents.
Our anger has been redirected away from the wealthy and towards the minorities with such skill I almost admire it. The collective anger at DEI is at such a level that we are willing to cede core rights just to damage them.
This is spot on. The US has enjoyed enormous wealth and prosperity, but it's been mostly captured by the top 1% of private individuals. The GOP has done a masterful job redirecting the blame to China, DEI, immigration, etc... when the real problem is that we have not spread around the prosperity through programs like universal healthcare, free college, and heck, even UBI.
If a president flaps his arms on one side of the planet does this cause a hurricane of chaos on the other side of the world? And everywhere else.
Ooh, I am jealous. A close family member has been branded egregious by various acting members of the current administration. I guess I am going to need to up my game if I want to be able to hold my head high at family gatherings.
What jumps out at me is the paragraph: "Governance and leadership reforms." in the original letter sent by the government to the university.
The other stuff is hard to make sense of, but this part is crystal clear: The authoritarian government is asking the university to restructure itself along more authoritarian lines. ...essentially Trump wants continuity of reporting lines ultimately leading up to him, and going down to the individual faculty member, student, and foreign collaborating partner. That sort of thing could come in handy for all kinds of things in the future, not just the silly demands of the present.
The preponderance of academic and philosophical disingenuity — which could only be equally well explained by immensely subpar raw intellect (doubtful on HN) — in this very comment section perfectly illustrates why DJT was elected POTUS.
Let me just repeat the basic point:
Phenotype diversity != Viewpoint diversity
My father works for a big pharma company, which means they have to listen to the federal government or risk being shut down by the FDA (which would be easy for Trump to do).
He uses this an excuse for the company's complacency, and by extension, his own. I'm glad to see some institutions take a stand.
> As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”
This is already a shift on Harvard's part. When the ruling first came out, they announced they'd be finding ways around the ruling so they could keep doing what they'd been doing (i.e. discriminate against Asians by systematically scoring them low on "personality.")
Presidents and their policies come and go; knowledge stays and grows.
As long as educators aren’t selling themselves short, I remain optimistic about the future.
Einstein essentially gave up his professorship at the University of Berlin. How far into the future are you looking?
https://www.nytimes.com/1932/10/18/archives/einstein-would-q...
The current administration have interrupted the pipeline of students to research - current research funded or partially funded by federal government is stopping or will be curtailed and future students will question whether is a rational decision to go into any sort of path that leads to research because it would only be stable for maybe two to three years, assuming a sane, science respecting House, Senate and President were in office and used the regular norms to pass bills and implement programs. I do not see a recovery path from this unless American public gets a similar thrashing like the Great Depression and decides to not elect nut jobs for 50 years. I keep seeing interviews with those who vote for Trump and are hurt by his tariffs or immigration changes and insisting they still support Trump. Those (mostly older) people are going to have to die of natural causes and be replaced by demographic shifts before things change, but the last election showing young men shifting to Trump and this administration trying to suppress the vote of women does not point to this.
I think it's also important to point out the auditing and spying the government is asking the universities to comply with including the whistle blower section and things like - "report all requested immigration and related information to the United States Department of Homeland Security".
It appears that because it's easier to bully, punish and disappear individuals than an institution the Trump administration is doing everything it can to find out who these individuals are so they can be targeted.
I hope everyone is ready for a general strike because that time is coming up at us rapidly.
General strike when >50% of those who voted wanted this? What world are you living in?
Edit: I stand corrected, 49.81%. It doesn't change the point much. Especially when that ~49% includes many "working class"[1] voters. Who's going to participate in this general strike? A bunch of office workers?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-return-power-fueled-...
I suspect much less than 50% actually wanted legal residents of the United States disappeared to El Salvador.
Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
> Also, research tells us that it only takes 3.5% to overthrow a government.
You're describing a coup or revolution. Isn't that highly anti-democratic considering this president just won an election? Why should the 50% be under the thumb of the 3.5%?
> just won an election
And just as just, violated his oath to the constitution. How long, precisely, should we allow him to violate his oath and our rights?
If the 50% can't or won't promise me that they won't ship me to El Salvador in a few years, I don't much care about abstract political principles until their power is broken.
He is ineligible for the office given his previous insurrection attempt: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-14/sectio...
49.81% of the people who voted did so for Trump.
It's a weak response, in that it accepts the Trump Administration's position on antisemitism. This is tied to the broad definition of antisemitism which includes acts by the State of Israel.[1] That definition comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. There's a more balanced definition called the Jerusalem Declaration here.[2][3]
This will lead to a controversial discussion, so I'll stop here, with the comment that getting involved in religious wars of other countries hasn't gone well for the US. The US has constitutional freedom of religion partly because the drafters of the constitution knew how that had gone in Europe.
"Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson
[1] https://www.state.gov/defining-antisemitism/
[2] https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Declaration_on_Antis...
Why did the response have to include it? It’s not tactically useful.
I would have preferred a much more concise refusal.
I’m not sure if you wanted it shorter for tonal reasons rather than simply for length of time to read, but I think it was pretty concise.
It's bad rhetoric. Using stronger, more direct language would have been much more effective at making their point and having their point reach a broader audience. We need leaders who refuse to comply with an authoritarian government and do so with proud defiance. This message was meandering and weak.
Harvard has "fuck you money". They should go ahead and make it clear that they know they have this power and are expressing it (not necessarily with the vulgarity, yet)
Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
Much of that federal funding is for research, the same as any other R1 university. We all benefit from research findings. Endowments are used for other purposes.
There are a few colleges that take no federal funding in order to maintain total independence (mostly for religious reasons). But their research output is virtually zero.
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> I'd guess bad-to-good ratio is at least 10 to 1. Should we fix that?
Should we fix... what? Your unsubstantiated claim? You didn't even bother to do napkin math about it, you just asked a bunch of leading questions and then claimed inaction by the masses.
These are important questions, but your skepticism has no roots in firmer grounds. How are you arriving at a ratio of 10:1? Bad faith actor.
You do seem expert in all research fields. You can do on your own.
The federal funds are for doing research that the government wants to fund, not keeping the university’s lights on. This is about terminating a productive partnership, not ending a subsidy handout to schools.
Yup, people really need to learn their history. The modern federally-funded research university system came about as a direct result of the US getting caught with their pants down after Sputnik. The government decided it's in its best strategic interests to maintain long-term investments in basic and applied research. Those aren't things you can just spin up on short notice, though it's easy to kill it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis#Response
Also, isn't a ton of the IP from federally funded research just handed over to US corporations for free or pennies on the dollar?
Something tells me this is more of the current administration threatening to completely wreck US prosperity if they don't get wins on their bigoted social war agenda.
Absolutely. Everything in tech is hugely funded by tax payer money.
Modern semiconductor manufacturing is nearly all researched in partnership with federal funding. It's viewed as a national security issue.
The best theory I've heard so far is that Trump has this wild idea that if he can tank the US economy into a recession/depression then he can renegotiate our debt. He thinks this will save the US trillions of dollars. Except it'll cost the US trillions of dollars as well. I don't know if he's smart enough to think this up but it does kinda seem like what he's doing.
Honestly I think he’s just doing it for the reasons he has stated
Yeah but money is fungible.
It actually isn’t. Grants, as well as much of endowment funds are restricted. They legally must be accounted for separately and can only be used as specified. If you have a billion dollars in restricted endowment or grants towards scholarships and resources, you cannot use them to keep the lights on.
Research projects require grant funding because the schools do not have a business model to justify doing the research.
As a university professor, I agree with you. I think universities must cut the cord and be independent. The university faculty gave up the control to administrators and administrators, in turn, gave up the control to politicians.
The government letter demands giving control back to tenured academics (from students, activists, and administrators).
I think this is the common-sense response. The push back I've heard is that endowments are apportioned to specific things. That is, it's not an open piggy bank. Nevertheless, $50B is a _lot_ even if the smallest allocation is 1% of the largest that is likely on the order of tens of millions.
It'd be an interesting strategy if you could split the organization based on departments that depend heavily on federal funds (i.e. perhaps STEM fields such as medicine and physics/hard sciences, etc.) and those that are not (and perhaps simultaneously requiring more freedom of thought).
Perhaps resurrect the Radcliffe College to support the more intellectual, free thought based departments. [1]
[1] https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/about-the-institute/histor...
Do you have money in the bank? Do you have income? If so, you don't really need any help from the government. If you value your personal independence so much, then cut the cord.
I think that's what they're saying.
They don't. This is the federal government threatening to withhold payment for research they commissioned.
Next step: taxing that endowment (which is a good idea irrespective of the other demands: universities are government-subsidized tax-free hedge funds)
Just consider the tax-exempt status as an indirect subsidy for research and education. I think its ROI is much higher than from any other way the government could use the uncollected amount.
Sure, that's the narrative to manufacture consent from the naive, but I don't buy it at all. Perhaps for very small fledgling universities that makes partial sense; even then I am skeptical. For Harvard, definitely not.
At very least, if your endowment is growing on an inflation-adjusted basis, it does not appear to me that you need further subsidies; your primary business is to be an hedge fund and the treasury of an empire, not education for the masses. Gains should be taxed like a hedge fund at that point.
If you want to subsidize education as a society, there are much better ways: fund research directly and cut through the indirect cost crap (which was popular among academics up until the moment the current administration started advocating for it).
> Harvard has a 50 billion endowment, what do they need federal funds for. If they value their intellectual independence so much, then cut the cord.
I agree. Gulf monarchies will probably come in a give even more billions to these institutions anyway to make up for the losses. No strings attached of course...
Harvard probably already secured some more funding from Qatar and what not.
Trump is about making money for himself so he can boast. He doesn't care about this. I wonder who's really calling the shots, because, this is just the beginning. At the same time, he feels he can (or he's testing) ignoring court orders. Where this meets in the middle will not be a good place.
Can someone say tyrant? Or is that a thought crime for citizens too now?
They have more than enough money in their coffers to tell Trump to fk off for a few years.
W government
Soooo you want freedom of speech but if you don't like what someone else is doing, you want to censor them?
And even the reps don't mind this?
How hypocratic do you have to be to want to get rid of the 'Wokeshit' which is freespeech while also advocating for free speech?
Btw. the real term for what type of speech radicals and nazis is abusive speech and yes there are good reasons why abusive speech should lead to consequences
They recently closed their Middle Eastern studies department. Absolutely insane tbh. Imagine closing a center of Asian or African studies because the president wants to make his Jewish daughter and some rich donors of his happy. How can we be okay with any of this. They caved there. The only reasoning for this response is it infringes on their sovereignty. But make no mistake, every institution rolled back DEI and other initiatives for this admin. Hoping Alan will do what is right. Reinstate that department. Double down on fighting the admin in court. America will not be held hostage by a wanna-be autocrat, a foreign power or those who swear allegiance to Isra-el over American ideals and education in these United States. Silencing dissent in institutions of learning is tyrannical.
How quickly we forget "Dear Colleague."
Good for Harvard. As idiotic as many of its policies are, this is clearly government infringement of freedom and speech.
That's right. Infringement of freedom and speech should be left in the hands of government funded institutions like Harvard.
> Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
So alongside antisemitism, The other demand is for changes in intellect. For some reason this reeks of Christian evangelical movement to purge wokism and anti-Zionism, both of which have run counter to evangelical dogma.
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Except homeland has been Egypt before it was Palestine. And Jews lived in both places peacefully after the Arabs established peace.
Antisemitism is not what you want to make it out to be. It is as much a hatred against Arabs as it is against Jews, as Zionist Christians want to fill the land with Jews just so the end of the world is near, without any consideration for what happens to the Arab natives of the region.
Arabs never ‘established peace’ - historians largely agree that Islam was spread through conquest. Under Arab colonisation Jewish people either lived as Dhimmis, which are second class citizens, or were subject to outright violence (you can find many incidences of this before 1948), or both.
Yes, peace happens after conquest. Colonization never occurred. And if you want to know what happened to the Jews after Arabs conquered, listen to this historian speak: https://youtu.be/9bBlv0hfj5c?si=JVi7tMYTPwBI97gT
> peace happens after conquest
No, it doesn’t. This is discussed in the comment you responded to.
To deny the Arab colonisation of the middle east is simultaneously hilarious and disgusting, the one does see this occasionally amongst arab nationalists that have recently infiltrated the American left and caused the issues at Harvard and elsewhere.
I guess you didn’t watch the video link?
You guessed incorrectly. Being (according to this man) better than other colonizers does not obviate the behaviour described in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43690612.
It eliminates the argument you proposed that Arabs didn’t establish peace. Arab conquests established justice which included bringing the Jews back.
No, it doesn’t. You need to read my posts before replying to them.
I’m going to block you now, Not, because you’re a very good at arguing, but because you’re very poor at it.
PS: the man speaking is Ray Casagranda. Many laypersons know know more about Middle Eastern history than he does.
You can’t block anyone on here. And you can’t be here to argue if you don’t make an argument. And you can’t attack anyone just because they don’t agree with you. Roy is a historian unlike yourself.
You can with extensions.
> you don’t make an argument.
I have made an argument, here's a fourth reminder. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43690612 You haven't responded once.
I could knock anything from Ray from Austin Community College out of the park. His video on the creation of Israel is full of falsehoods that are easily proven wrong, that's where I recognised him from. If he's an historian, I am too.
Which reminds me I need to click the block button.
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This is massive. In Europe, we know what real Resistance looks like. And what Harvard just did? That is Resistance, plain and simple.
It breaks my heart to see my country backing the fascist side of history again. But just like before, we won’t stay silent.
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.”
Harvard isn't the first to be targeted, nor will they be the last.
The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century. It would be tough to put any sort of exact number on it, but we can absolutely say "a shitload".
>The American university system is undeniably impactful on American success over the last century.
Merit based reforms would only help. What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
> And merit based reforms would help continue this.
I look forward to some.
This ain't it.
Ill settle for agreeing in principle that Harvard should be merit based
> What kind of DEI programs did Harvard have 100 years ago?
Amongst others, legacy admissions and discrimination against Jews, Catholics and non-whites. Let’s not pretend that Harvard’s admissions process, or American society more generally, was some kind of perfect meritocracy in 1925.
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.
Harvard does substantially more than teach undergrads.
> Lawyers? Doctors? Medical research? Thousands of highly educated graduates annually?
Lawyers and doctors aren't undergrads.
Medical research depends heavily on faculty and postgraduate folks.
Only some of their thousands of annual graduates are undergrads - about 1/3 of them, per Wiki.
I am confused. Who says credentials only apply to undergrads?
I said they do more than teach undergrads, to which you re-quoted me questioningly.
Include postgraduate folks and they're still doing a lot more than just teaching and credentialing. Places like Harvard output research, too.
A university research lab is controlled by usually one professor or a very small number of professors. They can decide to move to another university and take the lab with them.
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.
Universities and colleges are hotbeds of political protest. Take young people with poor impulse control, expose them to education and political literature, and let them freely associate (e.g. form student groups). They're going to question authority and government policy, often in an unruly manner. That's just how it goes. The thing is, when students are right, protests often spread to the rest of the population. That's why the letter makes explicit a concern about non-students being invited onto campus. The last thing any administration wants is for student groups to spark a big protest that sticks around for a bit and pulls in protesters from off-campus. That stuff will make the news every time!
Most governments recognize that large protests can influence public opinion against them. If you let such a protest occur and do nothing to satisfy the demands of the protesters, then things can get ugly quick. Freedom of speech and association are powerful things! There's not much an open, democratic government can do except respond to protests by addressing the underlying issues or crush the protest and hope that the public decides the protesters were wrong. What the Trump administration is trying to do here is reduce their risk by infringing on freedom of speech and association. It's fascist or totalitarian. Take your pick.
As for their claims that they're trying to "unwind enforced ideological conformity"... You can't do that by enforcing conformity to a different ideology, as they are attempting here. This is a case where you should pay less attention to words and more to actions.
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.
> For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities
yep. stop doing that. your university is nearly half a millennium old, and everything from the last century will be a footnote. you are a networking ground for upper class society, not an upwards mobility machine for the plebians. just go back to your roots and you won't have any of these issues.
> These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history.
privately fund it now that its a proven method. this obviously won't be controversial in the future. if its economically impossible then it won't happen, the end.
There is no such thing as free speech under the Bourgeois State.
When you criticise of the last Western colonies, bourgeois goons disappear you.
When you criticise racial and apartheid laws in your home country, bourgeois goons disappeared you.
When you resist their power and establish a parallel people's, bourgeois goons WILL disappear you.
It's a shame we have forgotten that WE, workers, can be authoritarian too, if only we can organise, educate and militarise ourselves.
This is welcome change, to they defend admisions discrimination on race, sex is beyond me. They will fold, if federal funding is not enough, they will find other pressure points.
I think the only way for the universities to escape this blackmail trap is to bind together in their response, refuting the Trump's claims that they're not doing enough to "stop antisemitism" (obviously a cover chosen by the WH because it immediately gathers public sympathy), and reject Trump's demands. If they cave in now, it will be used against them again.
Take the haircut and wait for either the next presidential elections, or maybe midterms if the GOP gets pummeled because of this and starts standing up to Trump. One thing we've seen about Trump is that he fairly easily reverses course when the right pressure is applied.
Granted Harvard's in an easier place than most, but I predict Columbia will come to seriously regret their decision.
hats off to Harvard, did they generate the response with chatgdp? so many em dashes lmfao
problem will only last another 3 years or so
So, many of these universities were taken over in positions of power by people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries. They did this while describing themselves as open-minded institutions commited to everyone's success.
In the degree programs, they forced these beliefs on students in "diversity" classes, rewarded those on their side, and canceled or limited people with differing views. Those who make it through the process are more likely to force it on others in government and business, which they often do. Worse, being federally funded means taxpayers are paying for students' indoctrination in intersectionality and systematically discrimination it claimed to oppose.
Yeah, I want their funding cut entirely since theyre already rich as can be. I also would like to see those running it take it back to what it used to be. That's a Christian school balancing character and intellectual education. Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture. That is worth federal funding.
On top of it, how about these schools with billions in endowments put their money where their mouth is on social issues and start funding high-quality, community colleges and trade schools and Udemy-like programs everywhere? Why do they talk so much and take in so much money but do so little? (Credit to MIT for EdX and Harvard for its open courses.)
> people promoting intersectionality which also promotes systematic discrimination (eg DEI) against specific groups. That's a highly-divisive philosophy with no proven benefits that's similar to Marxism which killed 50 million people and wrecked countries
Just like all people connecting to "Kevin Bacon", and all Wikipedia pages first links connecting to "Philosophy", every idea can be connected to mass murder if you're willing to manufacture enough links.
"Intersectionality" is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, idea. It promotes nothing.
More like it's two philosophies with similar elements originating from places where both were taught. In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
There's also large groups pushing this stuff in businesses, forcing it on all employees, under the banner of ESG. That includes Blackrock and World Economic Forum. There's billions of dollars behind forcing thus stuff on America. Yet, we still see voters rebelling against it, like by electing Trump, because they don't want our country to keep being ruined.
> In both cases, those that believe in them try to force them on everyone in law, policy, etc. They've been doing that, too, so it isn't speculative.
I think it is speculative. I haven't seen this happen beyond a small number of isolated cases, that generally are met poorly within the organization where it happens.
To my observation the association between "believing that intersectionality accurately describes the world today" and "attempting to force others to believe similarly", is about as strong as the association between "frequently voting Republican in the US since 2016", and "attempting to carry out a mass shooting".
Could you describe what you believe "intersectionality" to mean, as a philosophy?
> That's a Christian school
> That is worth federal funding.
... interesting.
You left off...
"Also, one where many views can be represented with no cancel culture."
...before "that is worth federal funding."
Such cherry picking in ways that misrepresent what is said, also common in liberal media, is one reason distrust in liberal politics is at an all-time high. Put the truth of what others said side by side with your own position, like I mentioned intersectionality with my counterpoint. See if your ideas stand up to scrutiny.
It's really not necessary since you had already invoked the notion that separation of Church and State isn't particularly important to your evaluation of what the government should fund. Everything else sort of falls by the wayside.
Or, you know, they could follow the bullet points in the government's letter:
- foster scholarship over activism
- hire based on merit, and review potential employees for plagiarism issues
- admit students based on the merit of the candidate
- not admit foreign students hostile to values in the U.S. Constitution, openly espousing anti-semitism, or supporting terrorism
- abolish ideological litmus tests for faculty, provide a diversity of viewpoints to students
- adopt policies for student discipline that disrupt scholarship and normal campus activities including allowing campus police to enforce these rules
- implement whistleblower protections
- disclose foreign funding
Taxpayer money comes with strings attached. Be good enough to deserve it.
Not sure about the mask ban... Is that about mask wearing during protests?
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
We can debate about specific requests from the Trump administration, but it is pretty clear that Harvard has been horrible. The previous administrations completely failed to fix it.
- Harvard has been discriminating against Whites and Asians in admissions for decades.
- Harvard deliberately refused to protect Jewish students against intimidation and harassment. Students camped in school property for weeks against Harvard's official rules. They chanted that they would bring islamic terrorism to America ("intifada, intifada, coming to America"), established a self-appointed security system that monitored and recorded Jews, and remained there for almost a month while the school simply refused to remove them. [1]
- Harvard's president stated that calling for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily constitute harassment. This is particularly bizarre when contrasted to Harvard's approach to other groups, like when it considers "misgendering" of trans individuals to be harassment.
[1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/harvard-jew...
For the people downvoting: can you actually provide arguments for why you think these points are incorrect?
If you are downvoting simply because you disagree politically with what I commented, you are going against the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Being anti-Israel should not be conflated with being antisemitic. After all, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for a reason.
Trump is using “antisemitism” as cover for the imposition of authoritarianism. This comes from Putin's playbook. Putin used denazification as an excuse for invading Ukraine.
Trump himself has espoused antisemitism from time to time, see below.
John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, reiterated his assertion that Trump said, “Hitler did some good things, too,” in a story published Tuesday in The New York Times. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...
Donald Trump dabbles in Nazi allusions too often for it to be a coincidence. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/trump-nazi-allusions...
Trump's re-election campaign that featured a symbol used in Nazi Germany. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53098439
Trump’s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4677700-trumps-latest-...
Trump campaign accused of T-shirt design with similarity to Nazi eagle https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/11/fac...
Donald Trump's 'Star of David' Tweet About Hillary Clinton Posted Weeks Earlier on Racist Feed https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-...
An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office resulted in a purge of books critical of racism but preserved volumes defending white power. Two copies of “Mein Kampf” are still on the shelves but “Memorializing the Holocaust” was removed. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/naval-academy...
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If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass. Hamas engaged in terrorism, but Israel's response was out of proportion. Saying that aloud doesn't make one antisemitic. The ICC and UN are not antisemitic organizations for ordering arrest of Netanyahu and condemning Israel's use of excessive force.
What would have been a proportional response? Is it a numbers game? lets do 2x? 5x? 10x? In the gilad shalit deal Palestinians established the proportion of 1 Israeli to 1027 Palestinians. So on Oct 7 - 1,195 were murdered, by your standards Israel should have killed 1,227,265 Palestinians.
First of all, the proportional response should be delivered directly to the source: Iran. There are lots of bad guys in Gaza, but there are lots of innocent people too. Indiscriminately killing everyone is not the solution.
You still didn't define what's the proportional response.
Come on armchair commander show us your battle plans for Iran. Do we nuke it? Do we destroy all the dams? Do we hit just the nuclear facilities? Or do we eliminate their oil industry? Maybe just all the military bases, oh we forgot all the subterrains rocket facilities, do you want to invade Iraq style?
If the IDF would have Indiscriminately killing people then the number would have been 10x, and you know it.
A) It's hard to argue that the war in Gaza was indiscriminate when the IDF achieved the highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio in the history of urban combat, despite Hamas hiding in tunnels underneath population centers.
B) When soldiers flood across your border from a neighboring polity by the thousands, it would be an abdication of sovereignty not to defend against that immediate threat, regardless of the enemy's funding sources.
> highest combatant-to-civilian casualty ratio
Very hard to believe.
Let's ask the world's leading expert in urban warfare, then:
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urb...
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnwspencer2018_israel-has-d...
Note the falsification of Hamas casualty figures:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-quietly-drops-thousands-dea...
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-hama...
It's actually quite believable when you define a combatant as males aged 13+
> If anything negative you can say about Israel is equated to antisemitism then Israel gets a free pass.
I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
> but Israel's response was out of proportion
Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
> when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
And where it gets disturbing is when you make the claim of different standard without any evidence, and launch accusations of antisemitism.
Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas. As of January 2025, at least 46,707 Palestinians have been reported killed, including about 18,000 children. Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas, but those 18,000 children were not Hamas.
> Israel has a right to annihilate Hamas
How should they go about this? What rules should they follow? And when other countries violate these rules, are you commensurately outraged?
Not committing genocide would be a good start. And yes, I am opposed to all genocide.
Well I obviously don't believe they are committing genocide.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why are there more Gazans alive today than this time two years ago? Israel could turn Gaza into a parking lot overnight; why didn't they?
Please backup your claim of more Gazans alive today. Gaza is a parking lot. In fact it is worse than a parking lot... it is not possible to park many cars there because of all the fallen buildings. (I am going by what I see on TV... not a single building is seen still left standing.)
Save The Children estimates 50,000 births in Gaza in the first 9 months of the war, when the fighting was the most intense: https://www.savethechildren.net/news/women-self-inducing-lab...
Unless there have been zero births since this article was published, even if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value, the population has increased since the start of the war. Of course, there is reason to suspect the Hamas figures, since they have been systematically manipulated, don't distinguish combatant deaths, don't separate out deaths from natural causes, and don't call out deaths caused by misfired Palestinian rockets.
The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993 (article is a few months old but this is still true). And even outside of these camps, 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza despite serving as terror HQ.
> 16+ hospitals remain operational in Gaza
No, the last fully functional hospital of Gaza was just bombed yesterday [1]
> despite serving as terror HQ
This remains to be proven and sounds more like propaganda.
> The central camps have been almost totally untouched since the hostages are being kept there: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-804993
This is not what the article says at all. An in any case, if the IDF knew where the hostages were held, why wouldn't they surround these areas and liberate them, instead of terrorizing civilians over and over again on all the territory?
> if you take the 50,000 death estimate from Hamas at face value
Looking at the following:
* the scale of destruction visible on satellite images, drone footage - shown by both parties in the conflict * the quantity of bombs (29,000+ air-dropped bombs according to US intelligence, plus the tank and artillery ammunition) * the population density in the whole Gaza strip * the lack of resources and safety to rescue people and recover bodies from under the rubble after bombing * the lack of food, water, medical supplies, medical staff, ambulances
Can we realistically think that the number of casualties could be that low?
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjr7l123zy5o
This is the second time you write a comment where you argue that stable birthrate/population numbers contradict genocide.
The ICC issued a warrant for Netanyahu on (among others) the grounds of using starvation as a method of warfare [0]. Starvation as a method of warfare is consistent with genocide [1]. These are international legal facts/definitions.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(crime)
1) Hamas run health ministry numbers are not trustworthy
2) You do know that Hamas uses children soldiers right?
3) Not everyone in Gaza is Hamas true, but most of them (pre war) and most west bank Palestinians (currently) support them
4) If Egypt allowed non combatants to flee, they would be safe, however they closed the door or asked 1000s of dollars in bribes, but then they couldn't be used against Israel like the Arab nations always do.
>I am not arguing this. Everyone is free to criticize Israel; when it becomes antisemitic is when you hold Jews to a different standard than you hold everyone else.
What different standard is being applied?
>Why do you say this? What would a proportionate response have looked like to an attempt to conquer your country by firing 5,000 rockets while 6,000 people invaded and murdered everyone they could find? Bear in mind, that immediately afterwards, Hamas leaders promised to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel was annihilated.
A proportionate response is not denying food, water, and medical aid to civilians. It's not destroying every school and hospital in the region. It's not committing genocide. You look at the situation as a zero sum game where only Israelis or Palestinians can live. Hamas is not all Palestinians and destroying their homes and families does not make them righteous or productive.
Maybe taking some effort to address the issues that have created the circumstances of the attack in the first place would be the better option. Like giving Palestinians either their own country or at least equal status in Israel. Maybe not taking their land and settling it. One cannot maintain inequality and peace. 50,000 Palestinians lost their lives for 1,000 Israelis. Does that seem proportionate to you?
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1. OK, great: this is a legitimate argument against the existence of Israel. So we can then expect Israel to be the focus of 0.5% of anti-nationalist protests, since it is one of ~200 countries.
2. What is the "correct" number of fatalities when fighting a defensive war against an enemy committed to annihilating your country? And besides, even Hamas now admits that 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men.
3. I never said carte blanche; I just find it curious that people find so much time in their day to protest against Israel, but when Alawites are massacred in Syria, civilians slaughtered in Sudan, or hundreds of thousands of children starve in Yemen, nobody says "boo". Surely you value the lives of innocent Muslims everywhere the same?
> 72% of combat-aged fatalities they have recorded were men
I don’t think this is the point in your favor that you think it is. “Combat-aged” excludes children and elderly, which are the most reprehensible deaths. And this means that over a quarter of combat-aged deaths were women. Women in this situation are quite unlikely to be combatants.
The correct number of non-Hamas fatalities is 0.
If that standard were universally applied, even purely defensive wars could not be done.
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Where are you getting your news? It must be good because you're 100% right lol
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TLDR:Harvard will continue to drive towards a modern edukayshun at all costs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM
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Certainly seems it ought not to be, but evidently the will to provide "the same protections" is lacking. The unavoidable conclusion is that antisemitism is policy even if it's not official and documented. That truly defies logic considering some of the university's brightest lights have been Jews who've made major contributions to their fields, the school and the country as a whole.
Harvard said most of the demands were not actually about antisemitism.
> Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.
> afford Jewish students the same protections as other minorities
I’m not really familiar with this dispute. How have they failed to do this?
You want to send them to El Salvador?
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Hyperbole doesn't help at all.
Police the violence, not the speech.
Israel is violent against Palestine and receive more guns, why don't these students received a few too?, they are doing the same, or the guns only come after a few thousands of killed innocents?
I've visited a handful of encampments. Super peaceful, mostly kids educating each other about colonialism and the history of Israel's occupation and apartheid.
If you're looking for violence, the attacks on the Palestine encampments at UCLA were by far the most horrific violence on campus of the last year, and that was funded by Jonathan Greenblatt (CEO of the ADL, which is a racist org)
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A demand letter that said only "Harvard may not use race, gender, or national origin as criteria for admissions and hiring" would be a lot more defensible, and much harder to oppose.
But the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith. And we have seen enough already that any independent organization would be very irresponsible to assume good faith.
I would go so far as to say that any institution trying to make decisions based solely on merit is required to resist this kind of pressure very forcefully. There are many examples of the administration using "DEI" as a buzzword when firing meritorious women and minorities, all the while promoting totally meritless white men.
-JD '08
> the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith
And their demands are so insane you couldn't name one. I've gone through it and it all seems incredibly reasonable
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.
Insane
> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.
Insane
> reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship
Is even insane if you think about it for two seconds; nobody wants the government deciding what counts as activism and what counts as "real" scholarship. A good heuristic: do any of the proponents want a Bernie Sanders or AOC wielding this authority?
This sounds very similar to all the DEI stuff which they didn't have an issue with before. Forcing them to not be aggressively hostile towards Republicans does not seem like an unreasonable ask.
I had to take critical race theory classes for my grad school program, I'm sure they can find a Christian to make a powerpoint on avoiding hate towards Christians.
This is all stuff which has been happening in reverse for decades. The real solution is for schools to find a funding route other than government, but until then these shinanigans have been happening for decades and this isn't suddenly "insane".
Multiple problems here:
1. Universities aren't "incredibly hostile towards Republicans"
2. CRT: critical race theory is a real study. It's just understanding the historical context for the current socioeconomic landscape of America. Do you think black Americans were magically fixed after slavery ended? No? Congratulations, you support the fundamentals of CRT. It just became conservative spooky buzzword.
3. Avoiding hate towards Christians... who is out here hating Christians? This fetish for persecution is getting very strange. At absolute worst, people are asking Christians to avoid passing legislation using their religion. Which is happening at an alarming rate and should be concerning to every American who respects our Constitution!
4. "reverse"... yeah no, it's really not. Nobody has been silencing conservative voices, it's just difficult to hold a conservative voice while being in higher education. Because conservatism as an ideology is naturally opposed to higher education and new ways of thought. It's the same reason conservative pieces of media suck. Conservatism as an ideology is naturally opposed to artistic expression and radical creativity, so of course the media sucks. Nobody is doing it to them, it's just that the way they are is largely incompatible with that thing. There's other fun example of this, too. For instance, why does Christian Rock suck so bad? (Christianity and Rock as ideologies are antithetical).
I don’t care at all. For what it’s worth, yes, Harvard and other elite universities should be more welcoming to conservatives. But turning to the federal government to enforce “viewpoint diversity” is just an obviously bad idea.
I don’t want the government deciding what viewpoints need representation. And again, if you think about beyond the immediate case you may have a personal emotional investment in, I don’t think you do either.
I don’t want a future administration trying to enforce “viewpoint diversity” on oil and gas companies, investment banks, or rural family farms either, regardless of what federal contracts or subsidies they have. Exxon, Goldman Sachs, or an Iowa hog farm would be insane to submit to that.
Also, a mask ban enforced by suspension is just plain stupid. That’s not even viewpoint diversity, it’s just partisan chum, and it gives away the game on whether this exercise is in good faith.
I agree in that I'm not thrilled that federal government is enforcing viewpoints, however the original post was saying their requirements were insane and impossible to implement. The requirements laid out are very similar to prior requirements thrust upon them, the only difference is these requirements require right-wing viewpoint alignment instead of left-wing viewpoint alignment.
If you think 'viewpoint diversity' is any level of sane with the current administration then you haven't been keeping up with their actions:
> By August 2025, 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.
This sounds like the federal government is demanding that they adhere to a department of Policing Wrongthink.
The federal government cannot attach conditions that limit free speech onto federal funding. There is precedent for the federal government expanding into areas it has no direct constitutional authority over through conditions on funding. But e.g. 'regulating commerce within a state' is not something the constitution explicitly forbids. Whilst 'abridging the freedom of speech' is very much explicitly forbidden.
There are regular legal battles about what public schools can and cannot teach in the schools.
Consider also the Equal Time rule and the Fairness Doctrine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
As I am not a lawyer, I suppose we'll have to see what the courts have to say about it.
Importantly, the Civil Rights Act is a (well-litigated) law, not an ad hoc decree from the executive branch. If the current administration wants to strong arm universities, they should go through Congress.
If they want to abridge freedom of speech, they also need 2/3s of US states.
Or the Supreme Court.
> Importantly, the Civil Rights Act is a (well-litigated) law, not an ad hoc decree from the executive branch
That's right. And it's the function of the executive branch to enforce those laws.
I agree. Congress has allocated funds to Harvard. It’s not up to the executive whether to disburse them, unless that was specifically stated in the law.
As the Harvard letter says, "I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government..." This goes far beyond a demand to follow existing civil rights law. It's a demand for a full-on, government-monitored cultural revolution that will punish Trump's enemies and bring in his supporters. It's also hilarously self-contradictory. The government demands an END to all DEI programs, yet in the same breath, "Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity..."
> The Federal government has always attached conditions in exchange for Federal funding and Federal contracts. This is not dictating.
It effectively is. Just look up the history of the drinking age - a classic example of the federal government using extortion tactics to override state rights.
Which was also a law passed by Congress. Congress passes laws.
Should we also say that the president can strike down unconstitutional state laws because the Supreme Court is in the federal government?
> Which was also a law passed by Congress. Congress passes laws.
Indeed, but this was a clear evasion of prior laws. I don't like such workarounds in principle - either Congress should have gone the proper way and go for a constitutional amendment, or it should have buried the fucking bill. This created the nasty precedent that the current admin is using to push through the SAVE Act.
I meant this in the form of the Federal government handing out contracts and funding to private businesses, not state government.
I don't think most people would consider "You can't discriminate based on race", to be extortionary. Instead, its a well accepted principle in most of society.
I agree on the matter, but pressuring states with financial strings is not the way to go for it.
All other democracies on this rock just go and modify their constitution, that's the proper way. Y'all just are so completely gridlocked that this is all but impossible...
Same with speed limits.
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>3. Testimony before Congress that equated opposition to war crimes to antisemitism [4].
Can you link to a specific line of testimony that supports this allegation? "war crimes" isn't even mentioned in the article. Far too often claims like this devolve into a game of strawman/motte-and-bailey, where each side tries to paint their position as maximally charitable, and accuse the other side of rejecting the maximally charitable position.
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I'm a scientist and I've spent a lot of time at Harvard, including working there for years.
These demands seem on point to me. I see a lot of uninformed opposition in this thread, but I think most of you all don't have any idea how it actually is at elite universities.
- Political tests for employment, or continued employment. The UC system (a public system!) is one of the worst offenders here, but Harvard is really, really bad.
- Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof). The number of academics who aren't even aware that this sort of discrimination is illegal is mind-boggling. I would say 9 months ago it was 80% or more. The number of emails I've received either indicating a candidate isn't viable because of his genitalia or skin color, or telling me this is the reason I didn't get the job is crazy. They literally don't know and don't care.
- Compelled speech. This is a bright line we have so far, as a society, successfully succeeded in not crossing. Harvard and other elite universities were crossing it, and the Biden admin's Title IX rules overtly crossed it. A bad look, to put it mildly.
- Widespread censorship, to the point where we (social scientists) have developed code to talk about certain things "nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus" hahaha...dear lord.
And these aren't small effects. It's not 55% / 45% type scenarios. You have to view the Administration's requests in the light of: Harvard is 95+% Blue Team, and that's largely because they actively filter. There are plenty of people who aren't willing to bend the knee who don't have jobs because of it. Harvard has created an intellectual monoculture. They want "diversity" in the sense that they want people who look different on the outside, but who are all the same on the inside.
Asking for monitoring to make sure they're no longer illegally and immorally discriminating in hiring and admission is warranted, indeed it would be kind of crazy to not monitor. They'll just continue racist and sexist hiring otherwise.
What's in this letter is a reasonable set of asks in response to a situation that is so off the rails it's hard to describe.
Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed.
I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine.
I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding.
Trade schools cater to the lower income, are much more effective dollar for dollar, and get a lot less federal funds. If that money were to be poured into trade schools instead of universities, it would help create a better middle class.
Why should Harvard be so entitled?
EDIT: IMO, The reason youth go to college is to have fun. The real reason the parents are willing to pay, is because their children will forge connections with other wealthy families that is worth the money. It may be good for the wealthy that the money stays in their circle, but IMO this is not something the Gov should subsidize.
Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.
Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.
If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.
Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.
the money is for research not education.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.
Good. Trump is simply trying to see what he can get away with and the answer as it turns out is a lot. Everyone need to stop capitulating to this nonsense. People, universities, companies, all of them.
I initially engaged in these comments by asking questions in good faith in an attempt to better understand what was going on. I was trying to address my own ignorance by asking questions, and I was mostly attacked for it (mass downvoting).
I had more luck copying the scenario over to LLMs and asking them the questions.
It's disappointing to me, because I come to HN instead of other social media for intellectual discussion and nuanced perspectives. To be attacked for asking questions is frustrating and disheartening.
That said, after significant back and forth with the LLMs in an attempt to untangle several key issues, this is the summary I was left with. Somehow I suspect this will be downvoted like the rest of my comments, but I will share it here just in case it helps someone better understand why some right-leaning people may condone the governments letter and also why the letter is so concerning....
Good-Faith Policy Concerns Potentially Addressed in the Letter
Title VI Compliance:
Seeks to ensure that race, gender, or national origin are not used as explicit criteria in hiring, admissions, or funding decisions.
Merit-Based Standards:
Advocates for transparent and non-discriminatory evaluation of faculty and students (e.g. ending race-based preferences, enforcing plagiarism rules).
Viewpoint Diversity (In Theory):
Attempts to correct ideological homogeneity that may stifle academic freedom or lead to one-sided discourse.
Antisemitism Response:
Responds to documented or alleged incidents of antisemitic harassment post-October 7th, which could fall under Title VI protections if based on shared ethnicity or national origin.
Governance Reform:
Calls for clearer lines of authority and accountability in complex academic institutions, which is a reasonable administrative concern.
Key Issues and Overreaches in the Letter
State-Enforced Ideological Engineering:
Viewpoint diversity audits and mandated ideological balancing per department move into compelled intellectual conformity, which risks violating academic freedom and free speech.
Suspension of Institutional Autonomy:
Replaces university-led decision-making with federal oversight, annual audits, and direct hiring/admissions intervention—a level of control inconsistent with traditional norms for private institutions.
Targeting of Specific Programs:
Selective audits of programs like Middle Eastern Studies or Human Rights centers signal ideological targeting, not neutral application of anti-discrimination principles.
Guilt by Association / Collective Punishment:
Calls for discipline and de-recognition of entire student groups (e.g., Palestine Solidarity Committee) based on political stances, even absent direct policy violations.
Mask Ban and Protest Crackdown:
Mandated suspension for mask-wearing and harsh punishments for past protests go beyond civil rights compliance and verge into authoritarian control of student expression.
Foreign Student Loyalty Screening:
Requiring ideological screening for “American values” and reporting foreign students to DHS raises civil liberties and due process concerns.
DEI Abolition Blanket Order:
Calls for total shutdown of all DEI offices and functions, regardless of their form or function, eliminating even neutral or inclusive programs not tied to race-based quotas.
Summary Judgment
The letter does address real legal and policy issues—especially around race- and gender-based preferences, antisemitism, and bureaucratic governance. But it leverages these issues to justify a comprehensive, ideologically driven restructuring of a university. The result is a state-imposed orthodoxy enforced through threats of defunding, loyalty tests, and discipline, extending well beyond what’s required for civil rights compliance.
One framework I like to use is, “If this thing didn’t exist today, and someone proposed it, how would people react to it?”
I think it’s fair to say that if none of this existed today, and someone proposed that the federal government simply give universities like Harvard seemingly endless billions, it would be laughed out of existence by republicans and democrats alike. All of this is the product of inertia at best, corruption at worst. It’s a different world today and we don’t need our tax dollars going to these places.
"If thing doesn't exist, gets proposed, gets laughed out of the room, good idea" is your framework? It doesn't sound like a good framework.
Wait till you hear of countries where university education is 100% tax funded. And you get money from the government while you're a full-time student.
What an outrageous and incoherent letter
So much for academic freedom
Awesome response from Alan Garber
With their large untaxed endowment, they should be fine without federal funding. Make it so.
They are already are spending billions a year from their endowment, which covers nearly 40% of their operating revenue, which is around the maximum they can sustainably spend.
Sustainable spending is the whole point of an endowment.
Also endowments are created by a vast number of individual donations which often come with restrictions. For example someone leaves a bunch of money to university to support a professorship. That money and its earnings can only be used for that.
Generally the things that are funded by research grants from the government are things that cannot be funded from the endowment.
Harvard received the "worst score ever" clamped at 0.0 in 2023. By the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The actual score was -10.69.
They were particularly oppressive on anyone espousing opinions on the political right...Both leaning toward Individual liberty & stateist inclined.
While I believe that freedom of speech is a right not to be infringed on. Their current stance is selective. They have a massive endowment. So Harvard doesn't need subsidies. Since their endowment benefits private parties, Harvard can be funded by private parties.
https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...
Lot of bluster from Harvard. Harvard is free to not do what the gov't is requesting, they just don't get the fed money.
Public funds should not be subsidizing wealthy private universities. The end.
Unless you're speaking about the high overhead rates, that's really the wrong framing. The public funds at issue are buying things like research, or hospital services.
Whats the problem.. just get your pal Soros to give you the money instead.. With $36T debt, Federal Government cannot continue splashing out money like there is no tomorrow
If they were concerned with spending, they’d just cut the spending.
They’re making the spending conditional on Harvard following their ideological instructions.
Trump is increasing the debt tho and did in his first term.
Republicans only care about debt when it can be used to either bash Democrats or used as a talking point to eliminate something they don't like. Lookup "Starve The Beast".
Republicans do not care about the debt. They care that it can be used as a tool. That's it.
They run up the debt when they want and then turn around to blame Democrats for the debt they ran up.
Nobody is really concerned with the US debt outside of silly wanna-be patriots and the politicians who use it to scare them. Now, one way to make the US debt a much bigger deal is to cause a recession...hmm...wonder if anyone is trying to do that...
Almost every economist believes there is no serious and immediate problem with our current debt level (which is actually increasing under both Trump administrations, despite their fake expressions of concern). Why do you believe you are right and they are all collectively wrong?
The law in the immigration act to disallow people who espouse support for terrorism is a good one.
We protect freedom of speech for citizens because we have to. They are part of our country.
I don’t believe this extends to foreigners. We should allow only immigrants who do not support terrorism and want to be productive members of society. This isn’t too much to ask.
This is not a right or left issue. This is a pro-America vs con-America issue.
Define “terrorism.”
The administration, for example, freely uses the word to describe someone with no criminal record and no proven gang affiliations: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
They also use the word to describe Tesla vandals: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/03/25/us/fbi-task-force-tesla-a...
The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang. Also, the government of El Salvador confirmed this.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
I believe that setting Teslas on fire is domestic terrorism. They were politically motivated to specifically target a political figure to intimidate other citizens. I think setting ballot boxes on fire is also domestic terrorism.
> The US government has determined that the individual belonged to a gang.
The executive branch has made that allegation. The person didn't have a trial in the judicial branch.
Please look up "habeas corpus", and Article 1 Section 9 Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution.
The fact that the lawyer for the person says "there's no evidence" doesn't mean there actually isn't any evidence. It just hasn't been revealed.
This is the law department. Religion is down the hall and around the corner.
"Congress shall make no law" is not unclear, nor is the idea from the declaration that " all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights". There is no spot in the founding philosophy of this nation that makes a home for "rights of citizens" only, and there was copious space to fill that in if they wanted. You made that shit up.
What you're doing is scriptural prestidigitation. It's the equivalent of christians deciding that Satan and the serpent in the garden are the same entity, even though it's very clear that they aren't[1]. You're doing it because it makes your world view seem like less of an incoherent mess, not because it's true.
Assumption: everything critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza is supporting terrorism. That’s quite the take.
The evidence presented to the judge that allowed the deportation was that he specifically supported Hamas. He wasn't just pro-Palestinian. This is why he is being deported.
The university, as a private institution, has every right to hold whatever views and enforce whatever policies it sees fit within itself.
The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It's best when the bargaining about such conditions happens with mutual respect and without overreach, but respect and sobriety are in very short supply in the current administration. Even better it is when a university does not need to receive the government money and can run off the gigantic endowment it already has, thus having no need to comply with any such conditions.
(It's additionally unfun how the antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem, in a very muffed way, and any other kind of discrimination based on ethnicity, culture, or religion is not mentioned at all. Is fighting discrimination out of fashion now?..)
> The government, on the other hand, has every right to put conditions its counterparty should conform to in order to get money from the government.
It really doesn't. There are both normal laws and Constitutional restrictions on how the government can make decisions, and the reasons it can have for making those decisions.
I'm very much not an expert here, but this includes restrictions on viewpoint discrimination in funding.
I agree! The government is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions. But it's entitled to set some. I suspect that some acts of Congress require the government to set some conditions on providing governmental funding, as the Constitution prescribes: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46827
> is not entitled to set arbitrary conditions
Indeed, but most of these conditions _are_ arbitrary and often mutually-conflicting. Mask ban? What is the scientific basis for this?
The government already set numerous conditions on research funding relating to accounting, ethical conduct and so forth. Attaching conditions that are only tangentially related to the purpose of the funding is almost arbitrary by definition.
The governments conditions are not unlimited.
Their proposed "viewpoint diversity" is absurd at face value.
Indeed. I wish the government side was more reasonable, but it's hard to expect now; they are into running a TV show :(
I think this administration never had the intent to be "reasonable".
If they were concerned about out of control diversity efforts, I might even semi agree with them.
But this administration and the GOP doesn't value free speech. Despite their complaints they're not the least bit opposed to the government enforcing their viewpoints on people, in fact they just want to do it in spades.
Do you believe antisemitism is a problem at Harvard? If so, what led you to believe this?
Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning? I'm sorry but the continuously faithless positioning of the Trump administration right now makes me believe the antisemitic accusations are a pretext.
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I'm not an expert, but definitely there were Jewish thinkers who opposed the idea of rebuilding Israel (Mt Zion and all) and argued that living as a diaspora is a better way. A quick web search / AI inquiry gives a variety of examples.
Yes, they are called Neturei Karta, and there are maybe 100 of them out there.
But it doesn't matter who is espousing the idea: just because a Jew says something doesn't make it _not_ antisemitic. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that it is not bigoted to selectively deny the Jewish people a right to a state from which to defend themselves.
Depends on what you mean by anti-Zionism. It's not a natural congregation point -- even those that don't think Israel should exist don't generally call themselves anti-Zionist. As a label from the outside, it's thus very flexible. A lot of mere criticisms of Israeli actions gets labeled anti-Zionist.
Zionism to me means that the Jews are entitled to self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of that promise.
Anti-Zionism is the negation of that idea; namely that Jews are not entitled to self-determination and therefore should live at the whims of the countries where they are a minority for their security.
Merely objecting to an Israeli policy or even a Jewish value is not intrinsically antisemitic. But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I think I agree nearly 100% with this. The tricky part is always selective-enforcement:
> But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
I do believe that (a) in aggregate, Israel has far more vitriol directed towards it for any given action vs comparable actions by other nations. However I also believe (b) that there aren't actually any materially more significant penalties attached to them than other nations.
I also believe that (c) most of (a) is due to Israel having a higher salience. People get informed more about Israel's bad actions than comparable ones in other nations. When informed of comparable things, people are generally upset about those in similar amounts. Further (d) Other nations should get a lot more complaints about their bad behavior. Finally, (e) comparisons to other nations in these discussions is useless, because it's whataboutism. The bad behavior of Israel is indeed often bad, but saying someone else does it too isn't a good response unless you actually think the standard is wrong. That has to happen in another discussion.
The government does not have all that right tho. First amendment and all.
I would invite you to read the government letter if you have not, but look at each demand and put yourself in the position of the recently affected but also try to see if you can hold a "controversial" view of the world that should be fine but would be put in danger by these demands: https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Civil rights, suffrage, they were all the controversial opinion at some point. Some people still argue that they are but anyone against those can go pound sand.
I don't think that the government's demands are all reasonable, or even permissible. Some things read like they were written in the height of the civil rights movement in 1960s:
> By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices
Some though read as if they were written in an advent to a totalitarian dystopia:
> Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation.
To my mind Harvard is right in bringing this to the public attention. It's also free to walk away from governmental financing programs that stipulate such conditions (if they are even found legitimate), and is even in a position to do so.
> antisemitism is barely mentioned as a problem
Because it's very obviously being used as a cover to exert control over universities which are deemed to be too "woke" (which has nothing to do with anti-semitism).
Yes, antisemitism exists, like many other social ills. But is it a major problem at Harvard and these elite institutions? No, it is not.
The government subsidizes a private institution that cuts class sizes. Clearly education isn't their priority, so the subsidy can go.
The government's list of requests is reasonable, moral and necessary. It's the taxpayers' prerogative to demand a merit based system that, in conjunction, upholds the values and freedoms they hold dear.
The elitist and morally detached Harvard and its fellow privileged, largely useless, institutions can exercise their right to refuse the demands and the money.
No need to complicate it further.