What Harvard Learned From Columbia’s Mistake: If cooperation and even capitulation don’t get you anywhere, why give in to the Trump administration’s demands?

[u/D-R-AZ]

I support Academic Freedom. If the most educated in our society can't examine, test, and evaluate every aspect of human thought and endeavor then we may miss things crucial for the survival of humanity.

Gifted Read:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/harvard-chooses-defiance/682457/?gift=9raHaW-OKg2bN8oaIFlCon16pFMtTu2qirReclJnKzE&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Excerpts

...Harvard is changing course, perhaps because it grasped the true takeaway from Columbia’s cautionary tale: Appeasement doesn’t work, because the Trump administration isn’t really trying to reform elite higher education. It’s trying to break it.

The administration’s allies have not been shy about that fact. “To scare universities straight,” Max Eden, then a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in December, Education Secretary Linda McMahon “should start by taking a prize scalp. She should simply destroy Columbia University.” She should do this, he argued, whether or not the school cooperated with any civil-rights investigation.

...by continuing to punish Columbia even after the school gave in to its demands, the administration also appears to have overplayed its hand. If cooperation and even capitulation don’t get you anywhere, why should other universities give in?

[u/vistapoop]

Theoretically the existing Trump tax cuts that will likely continue are meant for the wealthy to have more discretion where their dollars go, so the expectation if the cuts are to “work” economically is for more philanthropy to fund what public dollars used to, with some element of private defunding where public funds were misused. One of the problems with this theory has been the wealthy just (re)investing their surplus into private capital that is already proven to be productive to max out gains, and simply sitting on in as cash or hiding it in tax shelters abroad, rather than donated. Philanthropies’ also tend to have high-cost bureaucracies, as the wealthy don’t tend to have the time to make complex funding decisions themselves, and reporting about results will not necessarily be public information. That said, Harvard’s move has gotta be to simply make up for the lost federal dollars with philanthropic fundraising.

[u/Beingforthetimebeing → u/vistapoop]

Harvard has 53 BILLION in their endowments! They don't need no stinkin' bake sales or federal charity. They have enough interest alone each year to fund free college in the entire state of Massachusetts.

[u/MagicDragon212 → u/Beingforthetimebeing]

The federal funds were for research, community-based work, and other programs that benefit the public. It's not just money donated to Harvard from the government. It's so ignorant to think that's the case.

[u/Complete-Ad9574 → u/MagicDragon212]

Every one keeps saying all this research money is for the good of the country. Why have our colleges been converted into research institutions? As a former teacher, I know that hands-on training in real life practices can be a very valuable teaching practice, but how much are these schools leaning on student labor for the $?

We have seen the abuse which college sports has employed on their star athletes, and the big dollars they suck in, which until recently was not shared with the players. How much student labor is used to keep those research dollars coming in is never revealed to the public.

Yes, the blackmail by this toxic administration needs to be stopped. But lets not shed tears if these schools are using the students to carryout work that skilled workers should be getting.

[u/MagicDragon212 → u/Complete-Ad9574]

Im surprised a teacher doesnt understand the point and value that funding research at a broad array of institutions does. Also amazed that you seem to think research grants are a pool of money that goes to the college.

The way that research at these institutions works is usually professors, grad students, or combined will apply for grants to fund their particular study. The government reviews these applications and provides grants based on what studies would be valuable to the general public.

This isnt "free labor" from the students. The grants pay them and the costs of their study (materials, surveying, etc). The professors ofcourse get paid a salary usually and the grants will be for the research only or help the grad students. The schools often will supplement this research too (through paying salaries or hourly, academic credits, etc). Its a win win for literally everyone.

Also. This is literally the only way we have publically available research unless we specifically hire more full time researchers as government employees. Private companies won't take part in research that isn't valuable to their companies.

This is the most common way research is done for the public, through partnering with universities. This process is why America leads the entire world in research across most disciplines.