Do taxpayers have a constitutional duty to bankroll Harvard University?
On MSNBC, David French argued that the Trump administration’s defunding of Harvard is little more than “political retaliation.” In the United States, we don’t sentence people before hearing the verdict, the New York Times columnist said. Ignoring due process is “directly contrary to our constitutional principles.”
French might not be aware that in addition to the joint-government task force’s claim that Harvard leadership failed to meaningfully confront pervasive insults, physical assault, and intimidation of Jewish students, there’s also a blistering internal university task force report that maintains that Harvard allowed antisemitism to permeate “coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.” Harvard concedes, “members of the Jewish and Israeli communities at Harvard reported treatment that was vicious and reprehensible.”
The verdict is in.
But, I suppose, I’d pose the situation in another way: If a government investigation and internal review both found that white supremacists on Harvard campus were terrorizing black students and engaging in racist marchers and that their violent beliefs had found favor in the school’s curriculums and in social life, would anyone on MSNBC argue that the government had an obligation to keep funding this school until a civil lawsuit worked its way through the courts? One suspects not.
Now, I’m not accusing French of being blind to the struggles of Jewish students. I am accusing him of being blinded by the presence of President Donald Trump. Are the president’s motivations political? Probably. So what? So are those of Harvard’s defenders.
Harvard, a private institution, can do as it likes. There’s nothing illegal about coddling extremists or pumping out credentialed pseudointellectuals. If the Trump administration failed to follow a bureaucratic process before freezing funds to the university, fine. Get it done. But what “constitutional principle” dictates that the federal government must provide this specific institution with $3 billion in federal contracts and grants? Giving it to them was a policy decision made by the executive branch. Withdrawing the funding is the same.
French reasons that the administration should, at the very least, “target the entity and individuals responsible” for the bad behavior. Defund the Middle Eastern studies department, rather than, say, the pediatric cancer research department. I’m sympathetic to this idea. But funding, as we all understand, is fungible. Targeting one department will do nothing to change the culture.
Moreover, leadership is responsible for the culture. It allowed, nay, nurtured, a Middle East studies department staffed by a slew of nutjobs. It’s not the only department. Think about it this way: There is a far higher likelihood of finding an apologist of Islamic terrorism than a Christian conservative on the Harvard faculty. Less than 3% of the Harvard faculty identify as conservative. There are real-world consequences for Harvard’s radicalism, as their grads are staffing newsrooms, influential law firms, and government agencies without ever hearing a dissenting view.
Anyway, if the school values its pediatric cancer research efforts so highly, why does it sacrifice grants and prestige by allowing bigoted bullies to run around campus targeting Jews? That’s a choice. As far as I can tell, not one student was expelled, much less suspended, for antisemitism in the two years since Oct. 7, 2023.
If your answer is that the school feels a profound obligation to defend free expression, I suggest you speak to some pro-Israeli or pro-capitalist or pro-American or social conservative students on campus and see how comfortable they feel about airing opinions. Harvard finished last for the second year running in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s “College Free Speech Rankings” in 2024, along with Columbia University and New York University. The only speech Harvard values is the extremist variety.
We should feel no patriotic imperative to fund speech we dislike, which is very different from the imperative of protecting speech we dislike. This distinction seems to be lost on many.
Harvard, along with many left-wingers, argues that Trump’s funding freeze violates its First Amendment rights. Who knows what the courts will say? If they force the funding to continue, something is seriously wrong. Anyway, perhaps Harvard should dip into the $53 billion hedge fund it runs to backfill some of the funding. Or maybe it can hit up the Islamic sheiks of Qatar for some more cash. How about those Chicom apparatchiks? Maybe they can chip in. But taxpayers shouldn’t be compelled to subsidize an institution that almost exclusively teaches students to hate their values.
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