$50+ Billion Untaxed Endowment

In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson reminds readers that Harvard is a private university with a largely untaxed endowment of over $50.2 billion. Be that as it may, Harvard still receives some $2.2 billion in federal taxpayer funds (suspended, for now).

The Trump administration task force is not forcing Harvard to run its university according to its version of federal dictates. Rather, the Trump administration “warns Harvard that if, in addition to its huge sources of private funding, it still wishes continuance of some $2.2 billion in public money from the federal government, then it must comply with existing laws and executive orders,” VDH notes in American Greatness.

VDH wonders if Harvard remembers the “embarrassing testimony” of its former president, Claudine Gay?

(C. Gay) failed to assure a congressional committee that Harvard had taken action against openly hostile anti-Semitic student protestors during its growing protest movements.

VDH is not content with just criticizing Harvard. He also offers advice: Why doesn’t Harvard put its money where its mouth is? To be free of federal dictates, Harvard could give up federal funding. It makes one suspicious that Harvard does not understand that it has violated the “Equal Protection Clause” of the 14^th Amendment.

Please note, VDH has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.

A Critical Distinction

Harvard is at war with the Trump administration. It seemingly has had no problem with an activist federal government as long as it was a liberal one, forcing all sorts of Title IX or DEI initiatives on private and Christian colleges that apparently lost their autonomy by accepting federal money. Nothing was mentioned in the past when state and federal governments gratuitously hounded; for example, Hillsdale College adds VDH.

So, Harvard loudly can set itself free by permanently pursuing its agenda on its own $50 billion, in the same manner Hillsdale does quietly with its $1 billion—without the taxpayer’s dime, whether Democratic or Republican.