The Ivy League shakedowns
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Yet more elites who think that when you get extorted in a protection racket you’re actually buying protection:
Harvard University has signaled a willingness to meet the Trump administration’s demand to spend as much as $500 million to end its dispute with the White House as talks between the two sides intensify, four people familiar with the negotiations said.
According to one of the people, Harvard is reluctant to directly pay the federal government, but negotiators are still discussing the exact financial terms.
The sum sought by the government, which recently accused Harvard of civil rights violations, is more than twice as much as the $200 million fine that Columbia University said it would pay when it settled antisemitism claims with the White House last week. Neither Harvard nor the government has publicly detailed potential terms for a settlement and what allegations the money would be intended to resolve.
President Trump has privately demanded that Harvard pay far more than Columbia. The people who described the talks and the dynamics surrounding them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential negotiations.
Although the two sides have made progress toward a deal, Harvard is also skeptical of Columbia’s agreement to allow an outside monitor to oversee its sweeping arrangement with the government. Harvard officials have signaled that such a requirement for their own settlement could be a redline as a potential infringement on the university’s academic freedom.
University officials, though, concluded months ago that even if they prevailed in their court fight against the government, a deal could help Harvard to avoid more troubles over the course of Mr. Trump’s term.
To make a point that should be obvious to people to whom it apparently isn’t, once you’ve accepted the principle that the government can make you pay half a billion dollars in exchange for charges that have virtually no chance of standing up in court so you can stop them from pulling funding, whether the government has a formal monitoring role is beside the point — they can always take funding away again and/or come back and demand more money. How any halfway intelligent person could believe that agreeing to a shakedown will help “avoid more troubles” is beyond me.
The hosannas given to the Columbia shakedown by Harvard’s former president, though, makes me wonder if something even more sinister is going on:
I just cannot believe that someone who as gotten to the top of as many greasy poles as Summers has over the years could be this naive about how power works. The more likely possibility is that he sees what kind of speech and speakers will be favored by Columbia’s new accommodation with the caudillo and what kind of speech and speakers will be disfavored, and likes this arrangement fine.