The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funds for Harvard, out of some $9-ish billion in progress, over Harvard’s refusal to rid itself of the antisemitic bigots and terrorist-supporters in its student, professor, and school management populations. The editors at The Wall Street Journal object, but they’re missing the point.
Stipulate that the feds have a duty to enforce civil-rights laws, and Harvard failed to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests. But the university agreed to strengthen protections for Jewish students in a legal settlement with Students Against Antisemitism, which praised it for “implementing effective long-term changes.”
The Trump Administration nonetheless demanded last week that Harvard accede to what is effectively a federal receivership under threat of losing $9 billion. Some of the demands are within the government’s civil-rights purview, such as requiring Harvard to discipline students who violate its discrimination policies. It also wants Harvard to “shutter all diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, under “whatever name,” that violate federal law.
But the Administration runs off the legal rails by ordering Harvard to reduce “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization.” It also orders the school to review “all existing and prospective faculty…for plagiarism” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit.”
Leave aside the underlying premise that the words of “the university” have any value given the ongoing assaults against Jewish students, interference with their getting to class and the ability to participate in class/hear the lecture of those who do make it, interference with their ability to speak at all, and the ongoing disruptions by the terrorist supporters.
Stipulate that Harvard is a private institution, and it can do pretty much what it wants concerning “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization,” “plagiarism,” and “viewpoint diversity.” As long as the school takes Federal dollars, the Federal government gets to specify how those dollars get used, just as any other donor can do.
Harvard doesn’t have to accept the deal on offer. Harvard also doesn’t have to get Federal dollars. The one is intrinsic in the school’s status as a private enterprise. The other is not at all intrinsic in it. Those Federal donations are nothing more than that—a privilege being received by Harvard, not anything to which Harvard has any right, in any sense of that term.