U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has informed far-left Harvard University that its free ride on the taxpayers’ gravy train is over. The once-respected university will no longer receive federal funding.
Citing its mostly tax-free, more-than-$50 billion endowment, the rise of hate on its campus, poor financial management, and myriad plagiarism scandals among top officials, McMahon told university President Alan Garber that the anti-American campus will not receive new federal money.
In April, the administration pulled more than $2 billion in federal subsidies to the school, which then sued because the administration had, it argued, broken the law.
That’s doubtful. But even if not, Americans can at least know that no more of their hard-earned money will be thrown away on the disgraced university in the future.
Plagiarism, Far-left Democratic Clowns Teaching, Bad Financial Position
“Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion … endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right,” McMahon wrote. “Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law.”
The next two sentences were non sequiturs. But that error aside, McMahon’s documentation of Harvard’s race to the bottom of academia clarified a truth few would admit. The only thing valuable about a Harvard education is the university’s name on the diploma. Academic standards have plummeted.
“Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system,” McMahon wrote:
It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus. In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor. It [has] scrapped standardized testing requirements and a normalized grading system. This year Harvard was forced to adopt an embarrassing “remedial math” program for undergraduates. Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this “acclaimed university”? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?
McMahon noted its plagiarism scandals, again, as well as the university’s “hateful discrimination.” Amusingly, she observed that “Harvard hired failed Mayors Bill De Blasio and Lori Lightfoot, perhaps the worst mayors ever to preside over major cities in our country’s history, to supposedly teach ‘leadership’ at their School of Public Health. This is like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation to future captains of the sea.”
Upshot: The university is hiring leftist clowns to teach.
McMahon also attacked the university because a far-left Democrat, Penny Pritzker, headmistress of the Harvard Corporation’s board as “senior fellow,” is running the board in a “totally chaotic way.” Commerce Secretary for former President Barack Hussein Obama, Pritzker is the sister of crackpot leftist Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. He thinks that Republicans are “Nazis.”
“Harvard alumnus and highly successful hedge fund manager Bill Ackman noted that, under her leadership, Harvard has become ‘a political advocacy organization for one party,’” McMahon wrote:
Ackman has called for the resignation of Pritzker, concluding that the “[t]he mismanagement here is Penny Pritzker” and noting that any serious corporation would have removed her after a litany of recent failings and the fact that, incredibly, “Harvard is not in a good financial position.” According to Ackman, one of the world’s foremost finance experts, Harvard’s so- called $53 billion endowment is “massively overstated as far as what it’s really worth,” and Harvard has irresponsibly taken out $8 billion in debt.
If this is true, it is concerning evidence of Harvard’s disastrous mismanagement, indicating an urgent need for massive reform — not continued taxpayer investment. If Harvard prefers not to change, then Harvard should have no problem using its overflowing endowment to fund its bloated bureaucracy.
Breaking the Law
Yet “most alarmingly,” McMahon wrote, in rejecting the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Harvard “continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself.” Harvard concomitantly claimed it would follow the Court’s decision yet continue its policy of discriminating on the basis of race.
Thus, “Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided,” McMahon wrote:
Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni. You have an approximately $53 Billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.
Last month, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funds and a $60 million contract with the university because it refused to abide by reforms the administration demanded. Those included ending DEI hiring and viewpoint discrimination in hiring. Harvard then sued the administration.
An example of the university’s mulish refusal to follow even normal academic standards, and its own honor code, is the continued employment of at least three employees, including former president Claudine Gay, after credible allegations of plagiarism.
Tuition, room, and board for students who don’t receive financial aid is $86,926 per year.
