Harvard has gone ahead and done what Columbia should have done a month and a half ago: filed a lawsuit over the Trump administration’s illegal cutoff of funding for grants hosted at the university. The statement from Harvard about this is here, the complaint itself is here. Obviously I’m not a lawyer, but it’s impossible for me to believe that under the US constitutional system the president can legally issue an order to remove funding from an institution either because he thinks (see point 67 in the complaint) “Wouldn’t that be cool?” or because he wishes to take control of an institution he doesn’t like and remake it to his liking.
The acting president of Columbia a few days ago was complaining to the faculty that a way needed to be found to “change the narrative.” Right now, there’s an obvious way to get started on that: Columbia needs to file a similar lawsuit or take part in a joint lawsuit on this issue with Harvard and other institutions. I’m hoping we’ll hear encouraging news about this soon.
In the day’s local news, some students have chained themselves to one of the university gates to protest the arrest and imprisonment of Khalid and Mahdawi. Note that the gate the students locked themselves to is a gate that already is locked and not in use, so by doing this they are in no way interfering with anyone in any way. If acting president Shipman really wants to change the narrative, she could speak out against the treatment of Khalid and Mahdawi on behalf of the university.
Update: First response from the Trump administration here. It’s not about anti-semitism, it’s about defunding science at research universities because of their “grossly overpaid bureaucrats”:
“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, wrote in an emailed statement in response to the lawsuit.
He added: “Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.”
About the “grossly overpaid bureaucrats” argument, while I don’t think that’s going to help the Trump side win in court, at least it’s finally something on which some faculty will agree with Trump…
