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Comment by acmj | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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.

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