I think the fundamental problem for Harvard and other institutions like it is that they inaccurately calibrated how dependent they are on the rubes in the American hinterlands for their sustenance. They had their endowment/tax-free hedge fund throwing off billions every year, an unending stream of rich parents from all over the globe willing to write six-figure checks to assure their kids a spot in the global elite, and unfettered access as the nerve center of the "ascendant majority" to billions in federal research grants with 70% "indirect" cost allowances, what could they possibly have to fear from those people? Well, now they're finding out.
Considering that the top 1% of tax payers account for something like 40% of federal tax income in any given year, the rubes in the hinterlands are definitely NOT subsidizing Harvard with their tax dollars.
The federal government is (or was!) subsidizing Harvard massively, not only directly but also indirectly through stuff like allowing student visas and tax exemptions, and the rubes in the hinterlands have the ability to vote for a change in federal policy unfavorable to Harvard. So yes, Harvard is very dependent on the goodwill of the rubes in the hinterlands for its sustenance.
The rubes in the heartlands aren't paying any more for Harvard than the elites on the coast, and they are likely paying less. I'm not arguing that Harvard is entitled to government largesse, but making this about "real heartland America" subsidizing "elite America" is not a compelling or accurate argument.
Also, voting for a "change in federal policy" does not make unconstitutional actions by the executive branch on a private institution constitutional. If that's what the rubes in the heartland think it means, they are about to learn a very severe lesson in civics.
The government is deficit spending, so tax percentages really aren't a view of contributions. One could even argue that consumption distribution is the better view, since consumption is impacted by fed-induced inflation.
I never said the heartland is subsidizing the elite. My point is that Harvard thought they could treat the rubes with contempt because they were rich and powerful and immune. It's the same thing that a lot of civil society institutions are dealing with right now, the media, NGO's, etc. They all bought into this idea of a sort of "ascendent majority" of educated elites, immigrants and minorities, and the rubes were basically yesterdays news ,a bunch of bigots and ignoramuses who would gradually just die out. Harvard had affirmative action for "Latinx" presumably to include even Latin American elites, but the chances of even an exceptional kid from an unexceptional working or even middle class background getting into Harvard was negligible. So who's now going to defend Harvard against Trump's assault? Certainly, nobody representing those people.
Expecting Harvard or any other Ivy League/gentry progressive institution to reform is like buying a ticket to see the Harlem Globetrotters play and hoping the Washington Generals win this one or like Charlie Brown expecting Lucy to finally let him kick that football. Never happen.
Why would you "reform" when you know you reside on the Right Side of History (the Social Justice Right Hand of God), when everyone you know has the exact same beliefs, values and ideas, and when you know your opponents are benighted bigots, stupid and/or evil at best? Our progressive clerisy won't even listen to gelded mainstream conservatives like David Brooks, they're certainly never going to listen to anyone w the stink of Trump on them.
Even in the middle of this existential battle Harvard Law just awarded a $65k fellowship to a Hamasnik who was charged w assaulting a Jewish student and whose entire raison d'etre seems to be delegitimizing the Jewish state:
And if there's any doubt, Steven Pinker proves that our liberal class is completely impotent and will never be able to do more than write a strongly worded letter filled w platitudes about opposing "hate". Pinker of all people has done the most to delineate and display the hateful rot at the heart of Left "scholarship" (The Blank Slate), and I'm sure he still has the scars for when his book was met with the usual bigotry accusations and accusations of intolerable privilege. Yet when a fight breaks out of course he protects his enemies and reveals that his real devotion is to Western liberalism and its greatest citadel, even if Western liberalism has now devolved into an extension of the Marcuse cult with a wing of it controlled by the Edward Said School of Applied Jihad (which hates and attacks Jews, Pinker's own people).
These fools w zero real-life experience who've never once been in a real fight imagined they could seize the political playing field and that no opponent would ever appear that might want to kick their asses.
Liberals had their chance to stand up to the Social Justice takeover of academia. Now Trump is doing it for them.
"how to make democracies work: How democratic governance and democratic practices can actually . . . provide a blueprint for how democratic governance can work . . . to individual citizens who want to see their democratic governments."
Where does this style of speaking come from? Did Obama blather on in this way?
All I care about is the overt and wanton discrimination.
By design, federal funding was contingent upon complying with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The precise remedy to the failure was to cut funding. Hence funding being cut due to overt and wanton discrimination.
People crying foul now ("but think of all the valuable research!") ignore the whole apparatus was assembled based upon not discriminating on protected characteristics. Shame on them for their deliberate (or ignorant) subterfuge, ignoring and evading the prime issue.
Everything else is a distraction, or a secondary effect, in my opinion. If Harvard couldn't discriminate, they'd have a more (genuinely, not superficially) diverse student body in terms of upbringing, values, and underlying beliefs and would necessary need to unwind many of the malicious and discriminatory DEI policies/administrations/etc to comply with their legal obligations. I truly do believe so much of the secondary effects ("why are Jews held to a higher standard to show discrimination?") would resolve if the decisionmakers were conscious and alert to their true legal obligations and couldn't engage in niche discriminatory interests that otherwise receive resounding applause from the progressive majority that has taken hold on campuses.
What Jewish students have been enduring is precisely what James Meredith had to endure at the University of Mississippi. The relevant parts of the Civil Rights Act were written to deal with exactly that situation. They establish the university’s obligation to maintain a safe, non discriminatory environment, and, as you note, funding cutoff is the enforcement mechanism for that. It is alarming that people who regard themselves as the smartest people in the world can’t seem to understand that, which is why that institution needs the strap now, to teach them the error of their ways. They are willful miscreants who have been begging for this punishment for many years now. It’s a big country. Others can do what they do.
“Hoover and Fryer represent the tip of iceberg, and that there were hundreds of instances of ideological intimidation that occurred over the years of which only a small handful reached the surface and public view.”
Everybody knows this. Pinker is either living in a bubble or not being honest about what is happening.
What is also significant is the speed with which it’s all flipping. MAGA will never be chic, but it is not nearly as taboo as it once was; even my beloved middle aged yenta English teacher colleagues kind of smirk cheekily when you have no choice but to utter the consonant triumph of his name.
The Trump vs. Harvard dynamic can only take us so far because arguments from each party are, for the most part, abstractions. Trump says Woke Harvard discriminates against Jews and White men. Harvard replies that its research has saved the world and Trump is a big fascist. I would argue that a massive class action lawsuit representing every White male who applied to Harvard during the last 15 years might force the university, through the discovery process, to explain exactly how some applicants were accepted while others were not. Likewise, Jewish, Asian and South Asian applicants could file similar class suits. Such efforts could put a human face on this struggle and force both sides of the current debate to rely more heavily on facts than on soundbites and insults.
It is almost laughable that we're expected to take the Trump administration seriously on the biological study replication issue when they are issuing reports that reference scientific studies that don't exist:
Do you think that's more laughable than trusting the same system that's responsible for the crisis and has been either unwilling or unable to institute meaningful reform to address it?
Yes, because citing non-existent research is a sign of laziness, stupidity, and incompetence. If Trump's HHS were truly concerned about the reproducibility crisis, they'd at least meet the lowest of bars, which is "don't make up fake research and cite it in your papers."
I and many like me would have agreed with you in 2005, however the inability or refusal of the academy to reform itself has led to the point where we have no faith in the possibility of reform.
And it destruction is preferable to its continuation.
"And if leftists want to protest illegitimately, screaming insults at Israeli students and disrupting core university functions, that’s fine too."
No, it's not fine and it depresses me when otherwise intelligent people say this.
So you think that leftists should terrorize Israelis/Jews because it makes them look bad? It's a "countersignal"? Fuck that.
We have laws, we have civilization, it's time we started enforcing the former and standing up for the latter. I'm not going to be your sidewalk to power.
You hit on two critical points regarding trends that have yet to be fully appreciated.
Harvard has found itself in a blind spot where it both took the "controlled opposition" for granted while also making it far more difficult for aspirant elites to gain admission.
I'm an Elder Millennial. I didn't go to HYPS for grad school, but (being deliberately vague on the internet), I did go to a place that ranks just after them in the Top 10 of brand recognition. My program had an application to acceptance rate of 14:1, which was considered unusually high at the time. That ratio would be considered exceptionally generous today.
Elite universities have not expanded their slots as the population itself has expanded, ostensibly so as to not dilute the brand. What they have done is greatly expand set-asides for favored groups. Unless someone's family is truly connected, the average regional elite of the formerly controlled opposition, let alone aspirational one, knows there's no point in having their children even apply to Harvard or its peers. They're just not getting in. And without the incentive that crossing HYPS could cause the plausible, if slight, chance of admission to evaporate, that aspiration will instead become targeted resentment.
“These were the stakes at play and they were defined by libs. As such, what remaining norms should restrain MAGA in going after a hostile institution and major lib power center? Libs explicitly advocated for changing the rules to assure themselves semi-permanent political rule. Going after Havard seems like fair game in return” ~ CHEF’s KISS.
I only read the headline, BUT. Trump has many good reasons for launching tactical nuclear weapons against Harvard and as a political realist should strongly consider this option. Tactical nuclear weapons should NOT be off the table.
The basic political calculation of high-status American institutions for the past 50 years is: “we can be as leftist as we like because the rightists, feeling a general sense of patriotism and proprietorship for the country, will not use political power to harm us for fear of harming the country”. They ofc have various self-flattering justifications for their behavior, but as a practical matter it always relied on Rightist goodwill.
And that works pretty well so long as the Right is run by “they’re not our enemies, they’re just misguided” types, which until Trump II, it largely was.
But for many reasons large parts of the Right generally and certainly Trump specifically no longer abides by that mindset. The Friend-Enemy distinction increasingly characterizes political life and I predict will only accelerate along with all the other nation-unraveling trends in American life.
I think the fundamental problem for Harvard and other institutions like it is that they inaccurately calibrated how dependent they are on the rubes in the American hinterlands for their sustenance. They had their endowment/tax-free hedge fund throwing off billions every year, an unending stream of rich parents from all over the globe willing to write six-figure checks to assure their kids a spot in the global elite, and unfettered access as the nerve center of the "ascendant majority" to billions in federal research grants with 70% "indirect" cost allowances, what could they possibly have to fear from those people? Well, now they're finding out.
The Left doesn't merely underestimate its dependence on the Right; it thinks that it's the other way around.
Considering that the top 1% of tax payers account for something like 40% of federal tax income in any given year, the rubes in the hinterlands are definitely NOT subsidizing Harvard with their tax dollars.
The federal government is (or was!) subsidizing Harvard massively, not only directly but also indirectly through stuff like allowing student visas and tax exemptions, and the rubes in the hinterlands have the ability to vote for a change in federal policy unfavorable to Harvard. So yes, Harvard is very dependent on the goodwill of the rubes in the hinterlands for its sustenance.
The rubes in the heartlands aren't paying any more for Harvard than the elites on the coast, and they are likely paying less. I'm not arguing that Harvard is entitled to government largesse, but making this about "real heartland America" subsidizing "elite America" is not a compelling or accurate argument.
Also, voting for a "change in federal policy" does not make unconstitutional actions by the executive branch on a private institution constitutional. If that's what the rubes in the heartland think it means, they are about to learn a very severe lesson in civics.
The government is deficit spending, so tax percentages really aren't a view of contributions. One could even argue that consumption distribution is the better view, since consumption is impacted by fed-induced inflation.
I never said the heartland is subsidizing the elite. My point is that Harvard thought they could treat the rubes with contempt because they were rich and powerful and immune. It's the same thing that a lot of civil society institutions are dealing with right now, the media, NGO's, etc. They all bought into this idea of a sort of "ascendent majority" of educated elites, immigrants and minorities, and the rubes were basically yesterdays news ,a bunch of bigots and ignoramuses who would gradually just die out. Harvard had affirmative action for "Latinx" presumably to include even Latin American elites, but the chances of even an exceptional kid from an unexceptional working or even middle class background getting into Harvard was negligible. So who's now going to defend Harvard against Trump's assault? Certainly, nobody representing those people.
"my preference for focused reform..."
Expecting Harvard or any other Ivy League/gentry progressive institution to reform is like buying a ticket to see the Harlem Globetrotters play and hoping the Washington Generals win this one or like Charlie Brown expecting Lucy to finally let him kick that football. Never happen.
Why would you "reform" when you know you reside on the Right Side of History (the Social Justice Right Hand of God), when everyone you know has the exact same beliefs, values and ideas, and when you know your opponents are benighted bigots, stupid and/or evil at best? Our progressive clerisy won't even listen to gelded mainstream conservatives like David Brooks, they're certainly never going to listen to anyone w the stink of Trump on them.
Even in the middle of this existential battle Harvard Law just awarded a $65k fellowship to a Hamasnik who was charged w assaulting a Jewish student and whose entire raison d'etre seems to be delegitimizing the Jewish state:
https://www.theeditors.com/p/harvard-law-review-gives-65000-fellowship-to-bharmal
And if there's any doubt, Steven Pinker proves that our liberal class is completely impotent and will never be able to do more than write a strongly worded letter filled w platitudes about opposing "hate". Pinker of all people has done the most to delineate and display the hateful rot at the heart of Left "scholarship" (The Blank Slate), and I'm sure he still has the scars for when his book was met with the usual bigotry accusations and accusations of intolerable privilege. Yet when a fight breaks out of course he protects his enemies and reveals that his real devotion is to Western liberalism and its greatest citadel, even if Western liberalism has now devolved into an extension of the Marcuse cult with a wing of it controlled by the Edward Said School of Applied Jihad (which hates and attacks Jews, Pinker's own people).
These fools w zero real-life experience who've never once been in a real fight imagined they could seize the political playing field and that no opponent would ever appear that might want to kick their asses.
Liberals had their chance to stand up to the Social Justice takeover of academia. Now Trump is doing it for them.
“Liberals had their chance to stand up to the Social Justice takeover of academia. Now Trump is doing it for them.”- 👏🏻
"You bet all your money against the Harlem Globetrotters?"
Krusty: "I thought the Generals were due!"
lololol
"how to make democracies work: How democratic governance and democratic practices can actually . . . provide a blueprint for how democratic governance can work . . . to individual citizens who want to see their democratic governments."
Where does this style of speaking come from? Did Obama blather on in this way?
“…screaming insults at Israeli students and disrupting core university functions, that’s fine too.”
Substitute Black for Israeli and tell me how that plays.
All I care about is the overt and wanton discrimination.
By design, federal funding was contingent upon complying with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The precise remedy to the failure was to cut funding. Hence funding being cut due to overt and wanton discrimination.
People crying foul now ("but think of all the valuable research!") ignore the whole apparatus was assembled based upon not discriminating on protected characteristics. Shame on them for their deliberate (or ignorant) subterfuge, ignoring and evading the prime issue.
Everything else is a distraction, or a secondary effect, in my opinion. If Harvard couldn't discriminate, they'd have a more (genuinely, not superficially) diverse student body in terms of upbringing, values, and underlying beliefs and would necessary need to unwind many of the malicious and discriminatory DEI policies/administrations/etc to comply with their legal obligations. I truly do believe so much of the secondary effects ("why are Jews held to a higher standard to show discrimination?") would resolve if the decisionmakers were conscious and alert to their true legal obligations and couldn't engage in niche discriminatory interests that otherwise receive resounding applause from the progressive majority that has taken hold on campuses.
What Jewish students have been enduring is precisely what James Meredith had to endure at the University of Mississippi. The relevant parts of the Civil Rights Act were written to deal with exactly that situation. They establish the university’s obligation to maintain a safe, non discriminatory environment, and, as you note, funding cutoff is the enforcement mechanism for that. It is alarming that people who regard themselves as the smartest people in the world can’t seem to understand that, which is why that institution needs the strap now, to teach them the error of their ways. They are willful miscreants who have been begging for this punishment for many years now. It’s a big country. Others can do what they do.
“Hoover and Fryer represent the tip of iceberg, and that there were hundreds of instances of ideological intimidation that occurred over the years of which only a small handful reached the surface and public view.”
Everybody knows this. Pinker is either living in a bubble or not being honest about what is happening.
What is also significant is the speed with which it’s all flipping. MAGA will never be chic, but it is not nearly as taboo as it once was; even my beloved middle aged yenta English teacher colleagues kind of smirk cheekily when you have no choice but to utter the consonant triumph of his name.
The Trump vs. Harvard dynamic can only take us so far because arguments from each party are, for the most part, abstractions. Trump says Woke Harvard discriminates against Jews and White men. Harvard replies that its research has saved the world and Trump is a big fascist. I would argue that a massive class action lawsuit representing every White male who applied to Harvard during the last 15 years might force the university, through the discovery process, to explain exactly how some applicants were accepted while others were not. Likewise, Jewish, Asian and South Asian applicants could file similar class suits. Such efforts could put a human face on this struggle and force both sides of the current debate to rely more heavily on facts than on soundbites and insults.
Great article. The inability to deal with the replication crisis is another strike against academia.
So obviously the solution is to defund scientific research.
Academia has had multiple decades to address the replication crisis which permeates every field, not just the fake ones.
It is almost laughable that we're expected to take the Trump administration seriously on the biological study replication issue when they are issuing reports that reference scientific studies that don't exist:
https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors
Do you think that's more laughable than trusting the same system that's responsible for the crisis and has been either unwilling or unable to institute meaningful reform to address it?
Yes, because citing non-existent research is a sign of laziness, stupidity, and incompetence. If Trump's HHS were truly concerned about the reproducibility crisis, they'd at least meet the lowest of bars, which is "don't make up fake research and cite it in your papers."
You just don’t get it.
I and many like me would have agreed with you in 2005, however the inability or refusal of the academy to reform itself has led to the point where we have no faith in the possibility of reform.
And it destruction is preferable to its continuation.
"And if leftists want to protest illegitimately, screaming insults at Israeli students and disrupting core university functions, that’s fine too."
No, it's not fine and it depresses me when otherwise intelligent people say this.
So you think that leftists should terrorize Israelis/Jews because it makes them look bad? It's a "countersignal"? Fuck that.
We have laws, we have civilization, it's time we started enforcing the former and standing up for the latter. I'm not going to be your sidewalk to power.
No COVID or opioids and also the iPhone/streaming slop/DoorDash doesn't exist. What's the downside?
You hit on two critical points regarding trends that have yet to be fully appreciated.
Harvard has found itself in a blind spot where it both took the "controlled opposition" for granted while also making it far more difficult for aspirant elites to gain admission.
I'm an Elder Millennial. I didn't go to HYPS for grad school, but (being deliberately vague on the internet), I did go to a place that ranks just after them in the Top 10 of brand recognition. My program had an application to acceptance rate of 14:1, which was considered unusually high at the time. That ratio would be considered exceptionally generous today.
Elite universities have not expanded their slots as the population itself has expanded, ostensibly so as to not dilute the brand. What they have done is greatly expand set-asides for favored groups. Unless someone's family is truly connected, the average regional elite of the formerly controlled opposition, let alone aspirational one, knows there's no point in having their children even apply to Harvard or its peers. They're just not getting in. And without the incentive that crossing HYPS could cause the plausible, if slight, chance of admission to evaporate, that aspiration will instead become targeted resentment.
Tough but fair, and surprisingly magnanimous!
“These were the stakes at play and they were defined by libs. As such, what remaining norms should restrain MAGA in going after a hostile institution and major lib power center? Libs explicitly advocated for changing the rules to assure themselves semi-permanent political rule. Going after Havard seems like fair game in return” ~ CHEF’s KISS.
I only read the headline, BUT. Trump has many good reasons for launching tactical nuclear weapons against Harvard and as a political realist should strongly consider this option. Tactical nuclear weapons should NOT be off the table.
The basic political calculation of high-status American institutions for the past 50 years is: “we can be as leftist as we like because the rightists, feeling a general sense of patriotism and proprietorship for the country, will not use political power to harm us for fear of harming the country”. They ofc have various self-flattering justifications for their behavior, but as a practical matter it always relied on Rightist goodwill.
And that works pretty well so long as the Right is run by “they’re not our enemies, they’re just misguided” types, which until Trump II, it largely was.
But for many reasons large parts of the Right generally and certainly Trump specifically no longer abides by that mindset. The Friend-Enemy distinction increasingly characterizes political life and I predict will only accelerate along with all the other nation-unraveling trends in American life.
They’re all just very expensive trade schools for bureaucracies! You cannot hate them enough - well, ok, hold them in disdain!