Recall this old joke? A man who asks a pretty woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars, and she gives an enthusiastic yes. He then pulls $100 out of his wallet, and she takes offense, saying, “What do you think I am?” The man replies, “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just negotiating the price.”
Harvard has taken equal offense at negotiations over price. Last week, the New York Times reported that Harvard might be willing to settle their dispute with the Trump administration for $500 million, but only if all the federal funding was restored and the Department of Education didn’t impose a consent decree or monitor. A couple of days later, though, Harvard saw better deals on the table for Columbia and Brown Universities and now takes offense at their price:
By the start of last week, Harvard University had signaled its readiness to meet President Trump’s demand that it spend $500 million to settle its damaging, monthslong battle with the administration and restore its critical research funding.
Then, two days after The New York Times reported that Harvard was open to such a financial commitment, the White House announced a far cheaper deal with Brown University: $50 million, doled out over a decade, to bolster state work force development programs.
The terms stunned officials at Harvard, who marveled that another Ivy League school got away with paying so little, according to three people familiar with the deliberations. But Harvard officials also bristled over how their university, after months of work to address antisemitism on campus and with a seeming advantage in its court fight against the government, was facing a demand from Mr. Trump to pay 10 times more.
The White House scoffed at their offense, pointing out that each of these schools had unique situations:
White House officials are dismissive of the comparison between Brown and Harvard, arguing that their grievances against Harvard are more far-reaching, including assertions that the school has yet to do enough to ensure the safety of Jewish students and their claim that the school is flouting the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-conscious admissions.
“If Harvard wants the Brown deal, then it has to be like Brown, and I just think it’s not,” May Mailman, the top White House official under Stephen Miller who has served as the architect of the administration’s crusade against top schools, said in an interview in the West Wing last week.
Ms. Mailman, who graduated from Harvard Law School, pointed out that Brown, unlike Harvard, did not sue the administration. She challenged Harvard to reach an agreement that included terms that would allow the government to more closely scrutinize its behavior.
Call it a cooperation discount, for want of a better term. But there’s more to it than just the overt defiance from Harvard, too. The school has a far greater amount of federal funding it wants restored, running into the billions of dollars, much larger than Columbia and Brown put together. Even apart from the fact that Harvard’s campus situation was worse than Brown’s (although perhaps roughly similar to Columbia’s), the deal is worth more to Harvard. If they want access to that level of subsidies and grants, the fine should be commensurate with the value if the restoration.
By the way, even the deals cut by Columbia and Brown may not look so good to Harvard today. They coughed up more than cash:
As part of the settlements struck with two Ivy League universities in recent weeks, the Trump administration will gain access to the standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants, including information about their race, a measure that could profoundly alter competitive college admissions. …
The release of such data has been on the wish list of conservatives who are searching for evidence that universities are dodging a 2023 Supreme Court decision barring the consideration of race in college admissions, and will probably be sought in the future from many more of them.
But college officials and experts who support using factors beyond test scores worry that the government — or private groups or individuals — will use the data to file new discrimination charges against universities and threaten their federal funding.
Well, yeah. Evidence of discrimination tends to run that risk. The point of gaining access to this data is to use that threat to ensure that Columbia and Brown end their discriminatory policies and use merit to make hiring and admissions decisions. That, along with ending anti-Semitic discrimination and actions on campuses, was the whole point of Trump’s fight against Academia.
This is why both schools have monitors in place. Even at $500 million, Harvard will have to cough up this data too as part of its deal to regain access to billions of dollars in federal funding. If they don’t like that, Harvard can always choose the Hillsdale financial model and eschew federal funding entirely. Failing that, though, the school isn’t entitled to strings-free federal funding, even if they themselves believe they are. The federal government has enforced Title VI and IX policies via federal funding for decades, and Harvard’s continued defiance only makes the need for federal monitors even more acutely obvious.
At this point, one has to wonder if Harvard will just try to ride out the next three years and wait for another administration to restore funding. Somehow, though, I doubt that President J.D. Vance would relent on these points.
Also, the latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:
- Donald Trump’s endorsement of Sydney Sweeney comes as no surprise, except to the people who keep falling for his trolling.
- Speaking of woke losers, Andrew Malcolm and I also discuss Kamala Harris’ return to the spotlight on Stephen Colbert’s dying platform.
- We also have our jokes of the week, and our observation on the YGBKM choice for Democrats’ voice of conscience these days.
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!
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