Donald Trump’s attacks on DEI, while heinous to their core, have provided an opportunity for the public to see who is going to stand on business and who is going to fold like a Montgomery brawl chair. BOSSIP has previously reported on the financial hit that companies like Target are taking after capitulating to Trump’s demands and losing customers as a result. Unfortunately, even those entities that give Trump the Dikembe Mutombo finger (and perhaps a different finger…) are also putting their financial futures at risk by loudly defying the orange man’s racist requests.
According to CNBC, the Trump administration has frozen, wait for it…$2.2 billion worth of grants awarded to Harvard University after President Alan Garber released a lengthy and biting letter that blatantly rejects the Trump’s demands to delete DEI in order to “combat antisemitism.”
No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a note to the university community detailing his reasons for not complying with the demands.
“Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard,” Garber said.
Source: Chip Somodevilla
In response, the Department of Education alongside the U.S. General Services Administration released a disingenuous joint statement that attempts to position them as having the moral high-ground.
Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” the federal agencies said.
“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable,” the agencies said. “It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.”
In no way, shape, or form do we believe for a minute that anything Trump and his cabinet of deplorables is doing is to ward off bigotry. Antisemitism is as wrong as the day is long but this financial punishment is nothing more political posturing and international dog-whistling to Israel that “America has got your back.”
President Obama caught wind of news about the frozen grants and took to Twitter to encourage other schools to follow in Harvard’s footsteps and give Trump’s policy the one-finger salute.
Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions—rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.
We will be keeping a close eye on which institutions bend the knee and which retain their dignity and morality. Only time will tell.
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