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  • Trump freezes $2bn in Harvard funding after university rejects demands

    From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Mon Apr 14 21:42:55 2025
    Trump freezes $2bn in Harvard funding after university rejects demands

    It is the first major US university to defy pressure from the Trump administration to change its policies. The sweeping changes demanded
    by the White House would have transformed its operations and ceded a
    large amount of control to the government.
    ...
    ..
    Harvard professors filed a lawsuit in response, alleging the
    government was unlawfully attacking freedom of speech and academic
    freedom.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz01y9gkdm3o

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to JAB on Mon Apr 14 22:10:51 2025
    On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 21:42:55 -0500, JAB <here@is.invalid> wrote:

    Harvard professors filed a lawsuit in response, alleging the
    government was unlawfully attacking freedom of speech and academic
    freedom.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz01y9gkdm3o

    MIT following Harvard's lead here
    Text Pic <https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:au53gk265ykqxctmavcoljrn/bafkreigd2wqbfckw2aajxae25jmc3qiitfnbgvv4siz5vuzxd35megk7oe@jpeg>

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  • From Eli the Bearded@21:1/5 to here@is.invalid on Tue Apr 15 23:38:21 2025
    In misc.news.internet.discuss, JAB <here@is.invalid> wrote:
    Trump freezes $2bn in Harvard funding after university rejects demands

    Harvard's student newspaper suspects the administration is also going to
    be cutting funds to Boston area hospitals affliated with (but not run
    by) Harvard.

    https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-hospitals/

    The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts
    and estimated that the five hospitals' multi-year commitment from
    the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University's multi-year federal
    research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.

    The combined figure nears the $9 billion cited by federal officials,
    but it remains unclear if the funding review is limited to these
    select grants.
    ...
    These hospitals -- despite employing Harvard Medical School faculty
    and co-sponsoring research projects -- are not governed by the
    University and are not backed by Harvard's $53.2 billion endowment.
    Instead, they operate as financially independent nonprofits, with
    federal grants comprising a large share of their research budgets.

    (Article originally pointed out to me in another place by dannyb, he
    posts in this group sometimes, too.)

    Elijah
    ------
    what's a little collateral damage matter if it's just Boston?

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to *@eli.users.panix.com on Tue Apr 15 20:36:02 2025
    On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:38:21 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:

    what's a little collateral damage matter if it's just Boston?

    Collateral damage...take a deep dive into tariff topic....lots of
    bystanders (businesses/farmers/consumers) will be affected.

    With that anti-DEI warfare, there will be causalities there too.

    It would appear an analogous "eugenics" movement is afoot, but this
    time, Christians are tooting their horns with a heathen in charge of
    their brigade.

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 16 07:26:31 2025
    WASHINGTON (AP) -- The two attorneys representing Harvard University
    in a pitched fight with the Trump administration are no strangers to
    the spotlight or to Washington investigations that reach into the
    White House.

    One of them, Robert Hur, was a senior Justice Department official
    during President Donald Trump's first term and served for a time as
    the top federal prosecutor in Maryland. But he's perhaps best known as
    the special counsel who investigated President Joe Biden's handling of classified information and produced a report that painted a damaging
    assessment of Biden's mental acuity months before the Democrat dropped
    his bid for reelection.

    The other, William Burck, has been a go-to attorney for Washington
    legal crises dating back years. A former lawyer in President George W.
    Bush's White House, he represented multiple Trump associates during
    special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference and has more recently defended New York Mayor Eric Adams
    in a corruption case that was brought, and later dropped, by the
    Justice Department.

    The involvement of the lawyers -- both well-known in conservative
    legal circles and both selected in the past for prominent Trump orbit
    positions -- is an interesting wrinkle to a hugely consequential
    dispute between the federal government and the country’s oldest and
    wealthiest university. The clash is shaping up to be a seminal moment
    in Trump's ongoing efforts to bend elite universities to his will by threatening to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding if they
    don't agree to major campus reforms.

    https://apnews.com/article/trump-harvard-lawyers-mueller-biden-dde164955122391ee05f8a10f9b70507

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 16 19:23:28 2025
    Trump administration asks IRS to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status

    The Trump administration has asked the Internal Revenue Service's top
    attorney to revoke Harvard University's tax-exempt status, according
    to three people familiar with the situation, amid President Donald
    Trump's row with the institution over its handling of antisemitism and diversity practices

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/16/trump-harvard-tax-exempt-irs/

    Off-hand, other institutions like Harvard would have their tax-exempt
    status terminated.

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Wed Apr 16 20:40:58 2025
    "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."
    President Alan Garber

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to JAB on Wed Apr 16 21:51:58 2025
    On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:23:28 -0500, JAB <here@is.invalid> wrote:

    Trump administration asks IRS to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status

    I suspect the T-Borg is blowing smoke in an attempt to put fear into
    those who oppose his will.
    ===============================================
    If the IRS did find that its tax-exempt status should be revoked,
    Harvard would need to be warned and given an opportunity to contest
    the finding. It would also have the opportunity to challenge the IRS
    in court.
    ...
    ...
    'In harmony with the public interest'

    The IRS and the US have challenged the tax-exempt status of
    universities and other organizations, as occurred with South
    Carolina's fundamentalist Bob Jones University.

    The IRS challenged Bob Jones' status in 1970, but the Supreme Court
    didn't rule until 1983 that in order to be tax-exempt an organization
    must, "demonstrably serve and be in harmony with the public interest,
    and the institution's purpose must not be so at odds with the common
    community conscience as to undermine any public benefit that might
    otherwise be conferred."

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/16/politics/universities-tax-exemption-trump-harvard-irs-what-matters/index.html

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  • From JAB@21:1/5 to All on Thu Apr 17 20:25:23 2025
    WSJ EDITORIAL BOARD: "...The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that
    the government may not use federal benefits or funds to coerce parties
    to surrender their constitutional rights. This is what the
    Administration is doing..."

    https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social/post/3lmx43uhl6k2a

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