Recall that these are grants issued to specific universities for specific reasons, not generally available services it funds provided to everyone. Why are taxpayers required to allocate his money to organizations that (in the view of elected officials) don’t serve the public interest?
On top of that, it’s well accepted that the government can use the threat of revoking federal funds force universities to regulate speech: https://cei.org/blog/obama-administration-undermines-free-sp.... Under Title VI and Title IX, the government can force schools to regulate speech in ways that the government couldn’t regulate directly among private citizens.
Title IX moreover is codified law passed by the legislative branch, not an executive order, and pertains to gender/sex nondiscrimination. It's not an executive order about how students are expressing their opinions about international policy pertaining to a foreign entity (note that no US citizens are being prosecuted currently for any of the things the administration is seeking leverage about with noncitizens, which suggests the viewpoints are protected speech).
It is well established that the government is allowed to make value judgments in deciding what activities to support with discretionary grants: https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/government-funding-a... (“The absence of an affirmative right for individuals to receive government aid has been central to this doctrine and these cases.”).
Title IX is an example of this. As interpreted today, it covers not only sex discrimination, but also speech, including speech by students, relating to sex and gender that would be protected by the first amendment outside the federal funding context: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/education/university-of-por....
If you’re a student or even random staff, you’re not likely even asking for a grant, but you are subject to having your viewpoint assessed under the system demanded by the current administration, for no reason other than the federal government demands it.
Presumably based on the letter prospective students would have to have their viewpoints assessed to make sure they have the correct viewpoints.
Again, this is within precedent. Universities are already required—under threat of loss of federal funds—to have a compliance framework for Title VI and IX that requires, among other things, universities to police campus speech that would be beyond the government’s authority to regulate outside of campus.
This is just so off the wall insane. "These grants are issued to specific universities for specific reasons," indeed. "Why are taxpayers [...] allocating this money to organizations" such as Harvard? Because this organization is a world leading researcher that does top notch research. Because they are perhaps the top institute in the whole world across numerous realms of science.
That's why they have for example 350 medical research grants. Because they are awesome, a national treasure, along with countless other research institutes. Both for the direct science they do, and for the offshoot enterprises, hands on training, and economic development these incredible unparalleled instituions create, that nothing else that we know of can reproduce.
There's no real question that Harvard deserves these grants, that they are very good at this, that they have some of the best research. That their 243 years of doing this have created a worthwhile institution that does amazing work.
But some people can just cast doubt and say these people don't serve the public interest - like you do, incessantly, with endless messages day in and day out Rayiner - because it's inconvenient for the administration that some of these people actually speak their mind. Most of them just do their research, but there's a couple things here & there the administration with it's pathetic streak of authoritianism cannot suffer to allow exist, and so the whole lot of the institution has be to directly assaulted at it's very core. Made to do exactly what Dear Leader insists or else.
You cite a paper vehemently arguing in favor of bullying, so long as it's not based on race or sex. Fine, ok, maybe people have rights to be awful. What I really don't get is what's the offense here? Where's the beef? Why is CEI and you so offended that Obama would write a letter to some universities that were allowing or promoting homophobia or bullying. It seems beyond compare to look at a sole letter, and compare it to cutting off all federal funding: an absurd victimhood complex, mountains of out of molehills. Did anyone feel any need to seek legal guidance or to go to court over this letter, was any damage done at all?
You cite Title VI of presumably the Civil Rights act, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. You cite Title IX, prohibiting sex-based discrimination. It's worth noting that these are negative liberties to citizens, protect their right to be meddled with for who they are, keep government money from being used in ways that constrain or exclude them. So yes, Congress has passed acts that constrain how federal funds are allocated with regards to what speech is acceptable. In Trumplandia there are two notable differences: first, there's no law here, no acts of Congress: Trump is using countless executive orders and hot air to bully & cause as much pain as he possible can, in whatever manner possible. There's sometimes a flimsy excuse that this is entirely over Harvard being anti-Semitic, but it's impossible to take that seriously, and there's nothing but the typical insane bluster of a self-serving authoritarian sniffing his own insane farts without bothering to explain or make a case for how this massive institution is actually doing any real harm or injury. How banning foreign students is going to help or hinder that cause is further unclear: like everything else, there's no moral or just cause, no attempt to improve, only a desire to inflict massive endless & total damage, not to actually find remedy.
So I’m willing to do a lot to ensure my adopted homeland doesn’t suffer the same fate. Because in my estimation, the difference between India/Pakistan and the U.S. isn’t smart people, but the political and civic culture of ordinary people. What makes America great is the participatory democracy and deference to the wisdom of the common man that Alexis de Tocqueville admired. Not the modern trend of democracy as masses of mobilized demographic groups providing nudges to the Harvard-educated civil servants that actually run the country.
And viewing Harvard and its impact on the country as a negative is hardly some Trump invention. The quip that you’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 people listed in the Boston phone directory than the entire Harvard faculty is more than half a century old. The only difference is that the new right is willing to actually try and implement their vision of what would be good for the country. They’re willing to use the same legal and political tools—including control over discretionary federal funds—that liberals have long used to reshape society, culture, and civic institutions.
