I speak at Harvard as it faces its biggest crisis since 1636
scottaaronson.blog
scottaaronson.blog
Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684536 - April 2025 (1215 comments)
Federal Government's letter to Harvard demanding changes [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684386 - April 2025 (92 comments)
I missed this. Good call out.
It would be lovely to have a broad conversation about why it makes no sense for the government to play HR manager for universities, and ALSO ask why billions in tax money is perennially given to ultra-wealthy, exclusive universities who are often more than capable of finding opportunities for profit in the private sector. Because the question seems to be: "Is Harvard capable of remaining solvent without a couple of billion per year? If that's the case, what's going on there? What is the taxpayer getting out of this that it wouldn't be able to get otherwise? Is there no other funding model?"
Then we have this: https://networkcontagion.us/reports/11-6-23-the-corruption-o...
Which opens the question of whether or not cutting funding is likely to get what the government wants, or further drive universities to seek funding from potentially hostile foreign governments.
And I think depending on where the money goes and how it's spent, sometimes the answers range across a whole spectrum. But as I said, instead of that conversation, we're stuck with more politics as a team sport.
You actually want research institutions to be even more patent-happy moneygrubbers than they already are today? That's going to keep even more technologies and drugs unaffordable without licensing and hold back progress.
Some argue that research grants should be deliberately spread wider in order to fund a wider range of ideas. Instead of considering each funding call in isolation and awarding grants to the top 10-20% of applications, maybe existing funding should be considered a negative merit, regardless of its source. Or maybe there should be stricter limits on how many grants a single PI can have at the same time.
I'd think it's safe to say there's a lot more pro-zionist than anti-zionist funding in US academia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_Glo...
It's also made by a number of respected academics and academic institutions, and all you've done is ignore the content in favor of attacking a respectable source.
I think the clearest and most cogent articulation I have seen was given by Marc Andreesen back in January, in a 4 hour podcast on Trump policy with Lex Friedman, starting at 58 min. His position was that University reform is not possible. Instead, the institutions themselves need to be destroyed so that new institutions can replace them with more agreeable values [1].
Relevant highlights IMO:
> I mean, think of the term academic freedom, and then think of what these people have done to it. It’s gone. That entire thing was fake and is completely rotten. And these people are completely giving up the entire moral foundation of the system that’s been built for them, which by the way, is paid for virtually 100% by taxpayer money.
...
>the population at large is going to realize the corruption in their industry and it’s going to withdraw the funding.
...
>Okay, so let’s go through it. So the universities are funded by four primary sources of federal funding. The big one is a federal student loan program, which is in the many trillions of dollars at this point, and then only spiraling way faster than inflation. That’s number one. Number two is federal research funding, which is also very large. And you probably know that when a scientist at the university gets a research grant, the university rakes as much as 70% of the money for central uses. Number three is tax exemption at the operating level, which is based on the idea that these are nonprofit institutions as opposed to, let’s say, political institutions. And then number four is tax exemptions at the endowment level, which is the financial buffer that these places have. Anybody who’s been close to a university budget will basically see that what would happen if you withdrew those sources of federal taxpayer money, and then for the state schools, the state money, they all instantly go bankrupt. And then you could rebuild. Then you could rebuild.
...
>Suppose you and I want to start a new university, and we want to hire all the free thinking professors, and we want to have the place that fixes all this, practically speaking, we can’t do it because we can’t get access to that money.
...
>Charlie Munger actually had the best comment, this great investor, Charlie Munger has great comment. He was once asked, it’s like General Electric was going through all these challenges, and he was asked at a Q&A. It said, “How would you fix the culture at General Electric?” And he said, “Fix the culture at General Electric?” He said, “I couldn’t even fix the culture at a restaurant.” It’s insane, like obviously you can’t do it. Nobody in business thinks you can do that, it’s impossible. Now look, having said all that, I should also express this because I have a lot of friends who work at these places and are involved in various attempts to fix these. I hope that I’m wrong, I would love to be wrong, I would love for the underpants gnome step two to be something clear and straightforward that they can figure out how to do. I would love to fix it, I’d love to see them come back to their spoken principles, I think that’d be great, I’d love to see the professors with tenure get bravery, it would be fantastic
Also, Marc Andreesen is a repugnant neoreactionary toady.
I think a much more interesting idea is breaking the Council for Higher Education Accreditation monopoly on accreditation, and replacing it with some standard metrics.
Letting incumbent universities decide if new universities can exist causes the same problems as giving hospitals a veto over new competition, and education is ripe for disruption.
I would love to see accreditation to any program that produces students that could pass some standard tests or metrics.
(Well, it’s wrong in assuming these institutions would go bankrupt without federal funding. They wouldn’t. The Tier II schools would. But Harvard is absolutely fine running as a private corporation.)
I dont think it would work unless they find a way to impact the public schools. They has far greater PR and legal challenges, but the institutions themselves are far more vulnerable to funding cuts if those are surmounted. For example, the University of California system has a 30 billion endowment, but supports 300k students plus 250k faculty, staff, and administrators. However, the UC endowments are growing rapidly, up from 20 billion in 2019.
If the federal government can somehow blow up all the state universities (e.g. loan denial), it wont matter if there are some Ivy League holdouts. Even then, this is probably worse than the problem.
I wouldn't trust Andreesen and his gang to build anything that is beneficial to the public instead of shareholders.
Did the donors intend to have the entire university system ground down to the point where the ability to fund the donors' plans is completely gone? Donors funding programs to encourage research in to areas of science the Trump administration wants to outlaw... they should just ... sit on the money? Return the money to donors and say "sorry, 49% of voters decided that your family's wishes are illegal"? You want to fund weather research in to climate change, and set up a legacy endowment with your university. Research in to that is outlawed in 2027. What should the university do now, knowing this sort of thing is coming?
The article was about covid. This is about an actual attack on the essence of what makes the universities attractive to donations in the first place.
We shouldn't be flippant about these attacks because these institutions have what appear to be (but functionally are not really) giant war chests.
I was taking issue with this framing: "I don't think the institution will run out of money any time soon. It's a $50bn prop trading firm with a university attached."
Curious as to why do you think this is an overreach.
Did you read the demands?
"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 among faculty, staff, and leadership. Such adoption and implementation must be durable and demonstrated through structural and personnel changes. All existing and prospective faculty shall be reviewed for plagiarism and Harvard’s plagiarism policy consistently enforced. All hiring and related data shall be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by the federal government during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028."
Trump administration is now the defacto HR department for Harvard, and eventually all universities.
But! Also! "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."
Cease all DEI programs, but we require 'viewpoint diversity'...
"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. If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints, hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint diversity."
"Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment."
"The United States has invested in Harvard University’s operations because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence. But an investment is not an entitlement. "
So basically, they are claiming that the Federal government will not invest money until Harvard gets rid of the communist/socialist rhetoric. As far as I can see, they are free to burn their money to fund communist ideals. Who says that they deserve taxpayers money by default?
It's amazing how communist problems always end with: "you eventually run out of other people's money"
They're changing the terms of the trade after a contract was signed. At the very least, this is the U.S. defaulting on commitments.
That said, I broadly agree with you--the U.S. shouldn't be funding Harvard. And the public shouldn't have a say--or continuing economic stake, the way we do with publicly-funded research--in what Harvard does and produces.
As if the taxpayers should automatically give billions to Harvard, no matter what Harvard does. That's insanity (to me at least).
It's amazing how communist problems always end with: "you eventually run out of other people's money"
Humans are creatures of community. There will always be taxes for any sufficiently developed people, the only hope is they serve the public good and aren't funneled into the oligarchs' pockets.
Considering a private university rights to hire and teach as they wish as communism is definitely an odd definition of communism I've rarely seen.
But, as Scott observes, unfortunately the current administration has gone far beyond trying to correct those excesses to a more neutral or balanced median and is, instead, doing the same things (and much worse) that "the other guys" did, just in the opposite direction. That makes the current administration just as wrong as the prior ones were. Only now we're hearing much more about it because the current agenda-driven biases are ones that >85% of academia doesn't hold themselves.
I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. Below, is copied from an NYT article [https://archive.ph/ONxlX]. Which of these did previous administrations do?
===
Some of the actions that the Trump administration demanded of Harvard were:
* Conducting plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members.
* Sharing all its hiring data with the Trump administration, and subjecting itself to audits of its hiring while “reforms are being implemented,” at least through 2028.
* Providing all admissions data to the federal government, including information on both rejected and admitted applicants, sorted by race, national origin, grade-point average and performance on standardized tests.
* Immediately shutting down any programming related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
* Overhauling academic programs that the Trump administration says have “egregious records on antisemitism,” including placing certain departments and programs under an external audit. The list includes the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Education, the School of Public Health and the Medical School, among many others.
To be fair, a defender of the current administration (which I'm obviously not) might point out that "the other guy" administration was pushing an agenda bias on people who broadly agreed with the direction, while the current administration is pushing against strong bias the other direction - so more pressure is justified. While I agree any moves away from the preferred extreme and back toward the middle (and beyond), will meet with resistance from the institution's partisan majority and encounter 'malicious compliance' at best, that still doesn't morally justify bias in the other direction. Eventually, someone needs to have the courage to step up and not play the "Retaliate and Escalate" move on their turn with Power Boost (that's the two years where one party holds control of the executive and congress, which, lately, each side gets approximately every 6-8 years (there is one "Lose Turn" card in the deck but it's rare).
Missing in all that is, of course, the best long-term strategy would be to reverse only to a relatively neutral position and take the moral high-ground of saying that the government shouldn't push agenda positions and try to get the center to rally around you. Basically, really try to be neutral. Protect all viewpoints equally and favor none. No negative biases but also no affirmative action. Previous jihads against one direction don't justify crusades in response. That kind of reasoning was how we got 'affirmative action' in response to OG institutional racism. Now the current administration is justifying going to extremes with the same flawed reasoning of "correcting sins of the past".
For example, "shutting down any programming related to diversity, equity and inclusion" is just as wrong as demanding all departments force everyone to sign DEI pledges or that all students take a DEI class. To me, the real enemy here is government compelling private universities to "always do" or "never do" (forbid or require) any specific thing about any of these culture war topics.
At some point, we need to learn from and remember the past but otherwise decide it's time to let the past go. The current moment would have been a good time to plant a bold flag for no systemic institutional biases for or against any culture war agenda-driven "correction". But the current administration seems set on continuing what looks to be a never-ending culture war. Perhaps the most stupid thing is both sides continue to act like anything which can be accomplished by presidential fiat can't just as easily be undone by presidential fiat. Day one of the next Democrat administration they'll undo most of this and when they get their next turn with Power Boost they'll undo all of it. If the past is any measure, they'll also use all the "New and Improved" methods this administration is coming up with to push in the other direction (just as Trump is using every technique for presidential expansion Obama 'innovated').
Scott Aaronson has perpetuated the false claims about Harvard and other university campuses being antisemitic, because he is unable to separate hatred of Jews from opposition to what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. If you've been told all your life that people hate Israel because they hate the Jews, it's very difficult to break out of that and realize that the Palestinians have been horribly mistreated and have enormous, legitimate grievances against Israel.
But now fake claims of antisemitism are being used as a cudgel to end academic freedom in the US, and suddenly Aaronson and others who share his beliefs are in a difficult situation. They helped create the conditions for Trump's assault on academia.
https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...
Trump administration is both demanding a end to all DEI programs, and mandating "viewpoint diversity".
"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. If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints, hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint diversity."
But... you also can't have any DEI programs.
Give what "freedom of speech absolutism" meant in practice, I'm guessing that "viewpoint diversity" is a demand for primacy of far-right views, but I could certainly be wrong
I can't really see it as a call for anything else. Conservatives often self-select out of attending universities in the first place, so there's already a perceived imbalance.
Yep. Glad everyone is starting to realize this. What we're seeing has nothing to do with antisemitism, it is a blatant attempt to seize ideological control of every single cultural institution of American Power. Nothing that happened at a campus protest can justify the all-out assault on 1A that is happening now.
I applaud Harvard for standing up, but to be honest, anything less (e.g. Columbia's complete capitulation) is simply spineless and unseemly for any mega-endowed university.
It was too far - a crisis! - when Harvard disagreed with the attackers, when the attackers were outsiders.
[1] Required ‘diversity and inclusion’ statements amount to a political litmus test for hiring - https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...
[2] Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
[3] Berkeley Weeded Out Job Applicants Who Didn't Propose Specific Plans To Advance Diversity - https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diver...
[4] A recent report from the Goldwater Institute found that 80% of job postings for Arizona’s public universities required applicants to submit a statement detailing their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. - https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-new-loy...
[5] Mathematicians divided over faculty hiring practices that require proof of efforts to promote diversity - https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mathematicians-divid...
[6] Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...
[7] Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
[8] I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis...
[9] Human subjects review, personal values, and the regulation of social science research. - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1986-12806-001
[10] The National Institutes of Health now blocks access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may enter “forbidden” territory. - https://www.city-journal.org/nih-blocks-access-to-genetics-d...
None of which Harvard opposed, and Harvard itself scored abysmally in support of (or rather tolerance of) free speech [1]. Harvard is merely engaging in self-defense, not defense of any higher principles.
[1] https://unherd.com/newsroom/harvard-ranked-as-americas-worst...
Weird line, but sure. Whatever. Point is the hypocrisy you imply does not exist.
That is dangerously close to blaming Jews for secretly controlling the world.
2) A big part of the Iraq war blunder was planned and promoted by neocons with explicit Zionist intentions.
Great line which sums up the correct stance to take in the current environment.
End it now.
Also, Trump's demands are silly and not even internally consistent.
Furthermore, none of this has to do with an ideological take on "private universities and public funds". This is about Trump controlling the speech and behavior of every institution he can, through defunding and through blackmail.
Yes.
> Furthermore, none of this has to do with an ideological take on "private universities and public funds". This is about Trump controlling the speech and behavior of every institution he can, through defunding and through blackmail.
That is bad too, yes.
The Trump administration is not arguing or even considering that as part of their objectives here.
Harvard was founded to educate America's clergy. If there is a category of non-profits that could hop, skip and jump to religious exemption, it's the Ivy League.
That is a hilariously silly idea.
Only if we do churches at the same time.
I quoted "Hopefully this ends with colleges having their tax exempt status revoked." because I think the US would be better off if churches were not tax exempt.
There are good arguments that we would better off if no non-profits were tax exempt and charitable donations weren't tax deductible.
> Do churches receive billions of funding from the government?
I don't think so.
Oh wait the admin staff is in danger that decided to quadruple their positions and give themselves raises as they torpedoed The quality of education and services on campus. They deserves everything it's getting and more. I say this as somebody that Was a student there and worked for the university.
Please spare me of this selective "antisemitism"!
Are they? If so, they, and the rest of the Ivies, are failing miserably at it: https://archive.org/details/ivy_league