Harvard University and the Trump Administration have collided. The Crimson reports that:
Harvard will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a message to affiliates Monday afternoon.
The sequence of events suggests that the Trump Administration may be less interested in changing Harvard’s behavior than in breaking up Harvard itself.
The Administration’s first letter on April 3 demanded various changes, some of which Harvard was already doing and some more problematic. But the demands were such that Harvard was at least willing to discuss the issues. The second letter, dated April 11, was much more extreme, seemingly constructed to force Harvard to refuse, which it then did. But perhaps that was what the Administration wanted, hence the second, more extreme, letter after the first one failed to have the intended effect?
There are three main strategies for the right to fight the left: build new institutions, like the University of Austin; take over and reform existing institutions, as with New College of Florida; and weaken existing left-dominated institutions, which is what we are seeing with Harvard and other Ivy League schools today.
But to understand the dynamic, recall the joke about when the Lone Ranger and Tonto were surrounded by Cherokee warriors.
Lone Ranger: What are we going to do, Tonto?
Tonto: What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?
Similarly, the connection between Harvard and much of this federal spending is not as tight as one might assume. First, Harvard is a big place, but much of what outsiders consider “Harvard” is not, strictly speaking, Harvard. Note:
The Task Force [to Combat Anti-Semitism] will review the more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates and the Federal Government.
Some of these “affiliates” are completely controlled by Harvard, but others, including major institutions like Mass General Brigham (MGB) and the Broad Institute, are independent. Much of the federal research money does not go to Harvard directly, although Harvard receives a small amount of this money via items like tuition for graduate students and the like. Instead, it goes to an affiliated institution and to the researchers who work there. Many of these researchers have Harvard appointments, but when push comes to shove, it is not clear how much that will matter. Who is “we” when Chris Rufo comes calling?
To see the beginnings of this split, consider:
[Mass General Brigham CEO Anne] Klibanski distanced MGB’s hospitals from Harvard University in her message, emphasizing that ‘the government’s requests of Harvard University are not applicable to our separately incorporated and independently operated medical and research hospitals.’
‘We do not set Harvard University’s policies with respect to its students, faculty and other employees, or conduct on its campus,’ Klibanski wrote.
[RELATED: NAS Statement: Fighting Harvard and the Other Cultural Warlords]
The New York Times reports that:
The Trump administration responded by instituting a funding freeze of more than $2 billion, though details of the funds were unclear. Harvard receives some $9 billion in federal funding, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.
Did the Harvard press office write this paragraph for the NYT? Note how the two specific affiliates mentioned serve children and fight cancer! Note the listing of projects poll-tested to be the most popular.
Regardless, the distinction between money to Harvard and money to MGB is somewhat unclear. Does funding for an investigator with a Harvard faculty appointment and an office at MGB count as Harvard or MGB funding? Regardless of the breakdown, the effect—and intent—of threatening a funding cut is to pit Harvard against all these affiliates, most of whom have little interest in defending Harvard.
The Trump Administration can now tell Klibanski: “This grant is cancelled, even though all the research is conducted at MGB. After all, the primary investigator is a Harvard professor. However, if you cut all ties to Harvard, we will reinstate the funding. MGB does great research, and we want to support you!”
Harvard President Garber: What are we going to do, Klibanski?
MGB CEO Klibanski: What do you mean by “we,” Harvard?
Klibanski is now in a bind. She wants and needs that funding, and she believes in the work that her scientists are doing. If the Trump Administration is willing to restart the money, why shouldn’t she accept some reasonable constraints? She always found those Harvard types insufferable anyway.
That is how the Harvard breakup might begin.
Of course, there are thousands of details left to work through. Does the primary investigator leave Harvard and become just an MGB employee? What about students who work in the lab? But, from the right’s point of view, anything which makes Harvard smaller—and other, less ideologically motivated institutions bigger—is progress. A world in which not a single scientist at MGB or Broad has any affiliation with Harvard, and in which Harvard receives hundreds of millions of dollars less from the federal government, is a better world, at least from Chris Rufo’s point of view.
Image: “Mass General Brigham Headquarters” by Mangocove on Wikimedia Commons
Option B, which makes more sense, is a breakup of Harvard University with Harvard Med becoming a separate entity.
The larger issue is anti trust. There are four medical schools in Massachusetts — Harvard, Tufts, BU, and UMass — and every hospital in the Commonwealth is “owned” by one of the four for its exclusive use. This is what Bob Holub of UMass Amherst got into trouble for, he proposed a UMass Amherst Medical School (which had been planned in the 1960s) and using Bay State Hospital in Springfield to train residents — except that Bay State is “owned” by Tufts for that purpose.
But the thing to remember here is that it isn’t just research, the MDs who treat people at these hospitals are Harvard Med professors, and their students are involved in actually helping to treat patients. So it would get really messy were these hospitals to try to divorce themselves from Harvard because they not only are getting the grants because the PIs are Harvard faculty, but the same people are their staff.
Mass General was founded in 1811 by Harvard Med professors, with the med school then being moved next door. (This side of the river is Boston, the other side Cambridge.) So you’ve got two centuries of donations made to these hospitals, and hence to Harvard Med and things could get quite messy were you to try to segregate them.
Holub