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Harvard decides to decline Trump's administration's "agreement in principle" for continuing to provide Federal grants and contracts. The Trump administration freezes their $2.2 billion funds.
Unlike Columbia, Harvard is willing to send a costly signal that it is, indeed, an elite private university, and it plans to stay that way.
The Fed's letter included contradictory demands. One can't require merit-based admissions and hiring while also requiring viewpoint-diversity admissions and hiring:
I would have loved to see that viewpoint diversity report on an Abstract Algebra class. It should at least require the elimination of radical ideals.
The way I see it, what makes Harvard University elite is that it both draws and correctly chooses the elite. The elite want to go there because other elite will be there, and admission of the non-elites is carefully curated for their usefulness. It's like an exclusive party that's awesome because a whole bunch of awesome people are there, and boring people aren't, with a few useful wingmen. If the party's host was required to invite a bunch of boring people, the party will break up as awesome people take off. There might be a brief party hiatus for the awesome people as they coordinate where to have the next awesome exclusive party, but awesome people seem to coordinate pretty quickly, so that party will resume. Just not at the current host's place.
So Harvard looked at the $2.2 billion, looked at their party, and decided to party on.
I don't even understand how exactly viewpoint diversity is supposed to be done? Almost any topic you can think of has a litany of varied views available. Even within something like "pro-life vs pro-choice", does viewpoint diversity mean you need
1: A person who believes in abortion at all times
2: A person who believes in abortion before it can survive outside the womb on its own
3: A person who believes in abortion before it can survive outside the womb with support
4-~22: A person respectively setting their limit at each month.
23: A person who believes in no abortions except for X, Y, Z etc etc exceptions (like rape, severe disease, risk to the mother).
23-29+: A person who believes in any mixture of the exceptions like XY but not Z or YZ but not X.
Whatever number we're at now: A person who believes in no abortions no matter what.
And you might think that sounds silly, but do you think the person who believes "no abortions no matter what" feels properly represented by the "no abortions except if it's rape or risky to the mother or blah blah blah reasons"? No, they wouldn't. Does the person who thinks abortions in the later parts of the second trimester feel represented by the person who says only in the first month? No, they wouldn't.
You have to flatten out viewpoints and beliefs to get anything close to functional, leaving many different views unrepresented.
But even outside of that it's still insane. Some viewpoints are just stupid and wrong. Do we want an economics course to be forced to hire a literal Chinese Marxist to teach Xi Jingping Thought? A German history class to be required to be taught by a Holocaust denier? A biology class led by someone who thinks dinosaurs are a hoax and evolution is a lie?
There's no reason to have DEI for idiots. We shouldn't be censoring well made criticisms or ideas but tons of viewpoints simply don't belong in a serious educational establishment because they're stupid. We don't need viewpoint diversity on if the earth is flat.
You're overthinking it. It's affirmative action for right-wingers. You do it by hiring right-wingers into faculty positions until the Viewpoint Diversity Czar is satisfied. The specifics of their viewpoints are largely irrelevant, because the actual point is to try and install a bunch of Trumpist faculty.
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