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Comment by rofo1 | Hacker News Reader

You say that they are "demands". As if the taxpayers should automatically give billions to Harvard, no matter what Harvard does. That's insanity (to me at least).

"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"

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> they are claiming that the Federal government will not invest money until Harvard gets rid of the communist/socialist rhetoric

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.

This is Trump's trademark move, writ large. We've all read the reports of him refusing to pay contractors after work is done, ignoring the contracts and saying "sue me". This is who he is, and he's just bringing this playbook (back) to the federal government, cheered on by people until they're personally and directly affected by this behaviour.

Research grants come with stipulations on how research is conducted, these grants were already granted so this is essentially breaking their contract. So there is no by default grant, generally the grants also don't delve into what the school can teach and hire for teaching which is very much protected by first amendment rights.

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.

  As if the taxpayers should automatically give billions to Harvard, no matter what Harvard does. That's insanity (to me at least).

AFAIK, Harvard doesn't get money for nothing -- it's primarily for research. The demands are orthogonal to what Harvard provides: top tier talent for whatever the government sees fit to fund.

  It's amazing how communist problems always end with: "you eventually run out of other people's money"

It's always someone else's money. Roads suck? You probably have too many roads for other people's money to fix. The list goes on. Libertarian dreams of self-sufficiently die when their money has to pay for things. Unless you meant feudalism or plutocracy, where wealth primarily flows away from the working class.

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.

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