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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23475 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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Fact is, the right has tried that, most recently with SFFA v Harvard, which Harvard essentially thumbed its nose at. And Pinker himself, by his own testimony in this article, has tried that. It did diddlysquat; Harvard doubled down on the bad behavior. So either those opposed to what Harvard is doing must back down, or they must escalate.

If you want to govern, you're going to deal with problems that transcend politics. There are potholes in the road, Democrats and Republicans both want them fixed. You might need to work with the guy who fixes them even if he's an a**hole.

The "friend-enemy distinction" people lack a theory of politics for that. Harvard is the enemy, Carl Schmitt, blah blah blah. Never occurs to them that their job fight involve literal or figurative pothole-filling rather than zero-sum political warfare. As Pinker said:

Just as clear is what won’t work: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.

If you want to govern, you're going to deal with problems that transcend politics. There are potholes in the road, Democrats and Republicans both want them fixed. You might need to work with the guy who fixes them even if he's an a**hole.

LOL. Harvard, and in general the entire left, have refused to do that when presented with said "a**hole". (Two of them, actually, Trump and Musk). Because this is false. Democrats (except a few marginalized dissidents) are happy with the situation as it is, and Republicans are extremely unhappy with it. If Democrats in general wanted to fix the racial discrimination problem at Harvard, they could have done so by now. If Democrats in general wanted to fix the issue of violent Palestinian protests at universities, they could have done a more credible job at it by now. If Democrats wanted to fix the problem of ideological uniformity at universities, they could have not contributed to it on purpose.

Just as clear is what won’t work: the Trump administration’s punitive defunding of science at Harvard. Contrary to a widespread misunderstanding, a federal grant is not alms to the university, nor may the executive branch dangle it to force grantees to do whatever it wants. It is a fee for a service — namely, a research project that the government decides (after fierce competitive review) would benefit the country. The grant pays for the people and equipment needed to carry out that research, which would not be done otherwise.

This is a theory, anyway. But dangling funding to force grantees to do whatever it wants is the standard situation -- he who pays the piper calls the tune; Trump, as you may recall, eliminated some of that which was pointing the other way (requiring various DEI things), to a lot of crying from the same people crying about Trump's actions against Harvard. In fact the government funds a lot of useless stuff that is basically alms for the universities, and that stuff which isn't... well, there are other universities which aren't so intransigent.

It becomes inevitable, at the start of the new dynasty: to throw all the old scholars and burn them with their books. There is approximately a snowball's chance in hell that anyone in Harvard will cooperate, Politics is the question of the posssible. It is impossible to do politics with the left. Best to cut the gordiian knot.

If someone calls you Hitler, believe them as an honest expression of non-cooperation.

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