In the battle over funding between multiple college campuses and universities across the country and the Trump administration. Harvard University seems to be the latest defendant, and our very own Rob with two b's is going to take it away.
Rob. Thanks, it's two bees for now. On Friday, the eleventh of April, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard outlining changes that they demand Harvard make to their policies and procedures. Because Harvard failed to comply and indeed openly condemned the letter and the demands, Trump then froze who two point two billion dollars of grants on Monday
the fourteenth. The University of Pennsylvania, Brown, Princeton, Cornell, and Northwestern have all been targeted by the Trump administration, and they have all similarly acquiesced to their demands. Harvard, however, has sued the Trump administration for failing to follow the outlying steps on changes to funds. Except Trump has already openly defied court orders, so I suspect that this will go similarly. This story is from AP News by Michael Casey on April fourteen, twenty twenty five.
Thanks Rob. You know in the article there is a very detailed. Actually the actual memo that was sent by the Trump administration, and it was it was I believe the I have it right here, and I want to
pull it up. It was sent to Harvard University by the Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Services, the Acting General Council for the US Department of Education, and the Acting General Council by the US Department of Health and Human Services, and it outlines everything that the administration expects Harvard to
do in order to maintain its funding. And while it started off as two point two billion in being funded, it is going to be potentially three point two billion the total nine billion that Harvard could or Harvard receives from the government. So with that, Rob, what can you say about what the demand letter actually requires?
Yeah, so the demand letter is seven pages long, and I was I didn't go through the whole thing with a fine, fine tooth comb, but I was definitely checking out some of the more specific demands, and just a couple of that stuck out to me. It's it's one of those things where someone will name something that should be good, but it's the exact opposite, Like, for example, the Ministry of Truth in a lot of like fiction
tends to end up being about lies. So in this case, the letter, the demand letter says things like it requires merit based hiring. Who would disagree with that, But it has some writers, it has some things attached to it. One of the things that's attached to this and the other one that I noticed because there's merit based hires and merit based admissions, and in both cases hiring or admissions.
Let's see here it says, quote, all hiring and related to data shall be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by the federal government during the period in which the reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of twenty twenty eight, which is conveniently you know his term length. So if
you're hiring, they want all your data. And then if you are applying to get in, and if they're trying to admit you to Harvard, they want all your information there as well, including your oh did I copy it? Sex race, academic achievements in the past. They want all your data. And I'm not saying this is the case, but it definitely made me think of McCarthyism because we got to fill out them dossiers.
Yeah, and I have so many questions about this, and Tracy, I want to kick it over to you. There are you know, Rob brings up merit based hiring, merit based admissions. You talk a little bit about your issue with viewpoint diversity. I'd like to ask you about that, but if you can comment ahead, go ahead, Rob.
No, no, no, keep it going, because that was the other thing in the letter was viewpoint diversity. It's like, what does that even mean? Go for it?
Right?
And I could steel that sigh from here.
Yeah, And I think Tracy makes a you know, he makes a good point about bringing that up. What the hell is even viewpoint diversity. I've got much more than I want to ask you, but I need to get to the bottom of this, so Tracy, please.
Well, I don't really understand what they mean by viewpoint diversity. They don't really elaborate. It just seems to be we think you have too many liberals and we want more conservatives. And I'm just sitting here like, okay, well, what are the actual parameters of viewpoint diversity? Is the African American Studies Board supposed to have a klansman on the sitting there, like what do we want? What do you actually want?
Is the like is the art department? Do we have to admit the mustache man to the art department to make sure that he doesn't go off and do terrible things? I don't know what sort of questions would even be an ideological litmus test. That's a direct quote from that letter. An ideological litmus test is that asking how old the earth is? And so if they say it's six thousand years old, maybe they shouldn't be in the geology department. Like, I don't know what they want. And with the merit
based hiring, I agree Rob. Everybody thinks merit based hiring is a good idea. The best person should have the job. But you have to think about this in the macro scale. If we only ever give the most qualified person each job in every situation, then that is going to compound on itself for those families that are in higher socioeconomic levels, such that the rich keep getting richer and the poor
stay poor forever. It's gonna shrink, our middle class, grow our lower class, and the upper class is gonna stay the same size. And that's just not feasible because eventually people in the lower class are gonna get mad and
they're gonna take what they want. So instead of getting that way, let's try and build up our middle class and upper class rather than keep people in the lower class, which is what you would wind up with if we just always pick the absolute best in each category for these things.
Well, sometime, well, I.
Think what you're referencing, and rightfully so, is the idea that there is some systemic oppression built.
Into This's what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, systemic racism, systemic oppression against women in LGBTQ people. I think that that can be supported by data. I certainly understand. For example, I know that countries with I talk about this a lot because it was kind of an area of study for me when I was doing
my masters. But countries with low women or female participation in the workforce because they're orthodox countries and women are relegated to the household actually have poorer economies than than countries with UH with a large percentage of women actually in the workforce.
What's because I have less workers in general, I mean, like more people work, letting women in the workforce, you know, diversity is a strength every metric you check across diversity. That's why America cleans up at the Olympics because we have such a diverse culture and ethnic and everything.
You need to understand that the Trump administration is trying to support a sufficiently diverse viewpoint.
Basis it is and there it is, and you know what on that point, on Tracy's point, as far as the litmus test is concerned, and you give the example, Tracy, I have to say you said, well, if somebody thinks the Earth is six thousand years old, maybe they shouldn't be in the geology department. I'm surprised you said that.
I agree with you, but I'm surprised you said that because if you consider the alignment with Evangelical Christians and the Republican Party nowadays, I would consider it the opposite. I feel like the board would be like, they think that the Earth is six thousand years old, put them in charge of geology. So I could I could see
that going that way. But Eja, without further ado, I would like to get to you, and I want to ask you, so is this legitimate claim that the administration has if they're going to be delving out high amounts of funding. Do they have a right to know where their funding is going? Or do you think this is something else? Could this perhaps be an attempt at overreach? And I'd like to get your perspective there.
I think it is. Trump's famous for saying things like I love uneducated people. And I'm sure we've all heard the action the acronym kiss, keep it simple, stupid for explaining thing. I think Trump's trying to do that with the population. He seems to do a lot generally, He oversimplifies, He uses a lot of catchy catchphrases that tend to catch on in the public eye, that are that are good for sound bites, and he never really says anything substantial.
You could listen A lot of politicians don't, but you could listen to the top for a while and he wouldn't really say anything. And I think that's in part uh that that same philosophy, I guess is in part with the administration trying to be here. It's especially a great institution like Harvard, which is world renowned for the people it produces in the research it does. Freezing the funding helps no one if you want to actually make changes to so called uh what was the phrase viewpoint diversity,
your point diversity. Yeah, if you do want to do that, don't freeze the funding. Try to work. Try to work that and somehow to the research. I mean, I don't know how you would, since they wouldn't define it, but point as their said goal and what they're doing to reach it doesn't lie up. It seems there as an ulterior motivate play what it is, we could only speculate.
Okay, Rob, I'm going to go to you just by the hand gesture alone. I know that you're I know that you're ready.
I knew the hand you got to So I remember in the nineties, I feel like this is just dawn on me and everybody already knew this. I remember in the nineties my dad was talking about how they're trying to put intelligent design into schools and teach that alongside evolution. And then my dad got really upset and he was like, this is just creationism. They're just calling it a different thing. And like, in my heart as a little kid, I didn't really fully understand that it's a same thing by
a different name. But it's the thing they're always preaching, right. It was just like, oh, so you're going to say in this castle's say evolutions, Like, so you're going to say that we came about via evolution. Well, really, we should have diverse viewpoints. Who are we to say that? You're right? So I get it now, I fully understand it.
They want to have a the ability to, via the administration, insert people for their more core belief systems, because they do not respect that colleges, universities, and places of higher academia try to teach either truth or the best understanding of truth as we have it. Now they want to They want to have their thing too.
Sure, Yeah, and how how are they trying to do it? Well, it looks like they may be using government funding to try and align the school with the administration's political agenda. At least that is the claim that the president of Harvard. Harvard is making. Excuse me and the White House accusation actually is that the government has expressly invoked the protections against discrimination contained in Title six of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four as a basis for its action.
So the White House that the Trump administration has routinely warned schools that if they do not do something to quell anti Semitism on their campuses, they will pull funding, and that is where Harvard finds itself today. The President claims that this is an attempt to align the university with the administration's political agenda, and says in his countersuit, so update there that Harvard is now suing the administration that no administration has the right to dictate what private
universities can teach. And I thought that that was interesting because at first I didn't see the administration saying, hey, you must teach this, But with the vague viewpoint diversity claim, I can see how that can filter in, and with the fact that the White House has named eleven different schools and programs in this in Harvard that have to quote unquote and I don't see it right here, Oh, reforms make reforms with egregious records of anti semitism. Well
what kind of reforms? What are they talking about? What are the specific things that have to be outlined that these schools and programs need to do And it's really not defined. And all we know is that they have to just turn over this data to the government. And I think that's the concerning thing.
That's the thing is because like, who the hell's gonna say. Okay, so they come in and say, hey, calm down the anti semitism, otherwise we're going to cancel some money, and everybody's gonna be like, that's a good idea, we shouldn't have anti semitism. Sure, yeah, no problem, awesome. What does merit based hiring have anything to do with anti semitism?
That could have just been its own thing. And then why does anything but merit based hiring have anything to do with also giving all of the information to the government. So it's like they're using exactly one thing to be like, we're doing it for anti Semitism, which is good, we should stop that. But it doesn't stop there. There's more. It just keeps going on. The frankly scary amount of information that they want to control and take.
Yeah, and with that, you know, I want to mention too that the president of Harvard, Garber, says, hey, look, we've taken steps to quell anti semitism, and he's Jewish by the way, and said, we've also taken steps to quell anti Muslim behavior on campus. And I don't hear any of that coming out in the demands from the White House. And so I'm a little confused as as to why the Civil Rights Act is being suited, so we EJ. I want to come back to you on this.
Is this an attempt to quell anti Semitism? What else might it be? And are some of the how do some of these arguments that we're stating regularly resonate with you?
Well, I think lake Role was mentioning the whole oh well, we need to stop anti semitism is a very very good goal. The issue is, like Rob was mentioning, there's not well, at least apparently in the course is mentioned there isn't a lot of obvious anti semitism, And it brings me back to what I was thinking, there might be an ulterior motive, and it is what it seems
to be, at least for me. It may possibly be in reference to a current conflict, as there is a lot of claims of anti semitism around the current world conflict, which the administration is currently very vocal in supporting one side, and I know at least Harvard has had a few student protests supporting the side that the administration does not support, so it may possibly be referring to that. However, aside
from that I wouldn't know. I don't know enough about the administrations in our thoughts and I only have speculation.
Well in that case, you know, I just want to say that the nonprofits and the ACA are a five oh one C three and we are not disparaging or supporting any political party or member of the government. We are just simply stating facts. And so I want to reiterate that and with that. With that, Tracy, I know that I owe you some airtime and I've been saving a question for you, but I can see you swirming
in your seat to speak about other things. So why don't you go ahead and say what you want to say and then I can I can pitch to you my question. Bob, I see, I see your very I want to hear Tracy smile too. I will get back to you.
Jimmy. I frankly, I love the Jews. I think they're fantastic people. And what I have heard from my Jewish contacts is that what's been happening a lot in the media and among people nowadays is that they're conflating anti Zionism with anti Semitism. Those are not the same thing. You can have ab absolutely nothing wrong with Jews think they're fantastic people appreciate their culture, and still not think that it's okay to bomb children. It's that it's that simple.
But in the current media, people think that if you are against Israel, that you are against the Jewish people, and that is simply not the case. Go ahead, Rob, I heard your intake of breast.
No, I agree, But like that speaks to a much deeper problem that I think a lot of religious people are going to have. Because one of my best friends is Jewish and he's an atheist, but and his dad is a secular rabbi, So what ends? And I didn't know you could do that.
So for like seventy percent of Israel is actually secular.
Yeah, which is fascinating. So, like I think, to the Christian mind, it is literally impossible to be the name of your religion and not also be practicing that relig because you could be Jewish without being Jewish.
That no religious group is.
Yeah, So you actually people take their religion and they make it their whole entire identity. So then when you have a completely separate culture of people who can't even separate those two things, you're going to muddy the water in conversation, no matter which way you go, no matter what.
Well, I do want to expand on what we're exactly talking about. And I don't think any of our viewers are stupid or uninformed. I think that I think that it's worth noting that, of course there is a there is a conflict between Israel and Gaza. Some might not call it a conflict. They might use much harsher words judging the the Israeli military and the Israeli government. Others
might do the same judging Hamas in Gaza. But but what's really happening is that is the support for or against either side is transpiring on college campuses, just like it did in Vietnam, and for anybody who lived through that should be able to understand what's happening there. The educated classes of people, the ones that are out there studying the world, have different opinions, and they're very energetic and vocal about it as young people, young scholars often are.
And that is in conflict with some of the administration's official policies. And so here we are now, Tracy, I said, I wanted to get back to you about something, and I want to pivot back to a point that you made, which I thought was a very good one, and expand upon what is it that you mean when you say economically or socially advantage the advantageous positions, because you talk about people of a socially or advantageous position will have better access to a better life. And what do you
mean by that? How does that relate to the merit based hiring that we started this segment with.
So we're going to start off with a few examples from the real world. If your father, I'm using the Royal you, I'm not talking to you, Jimmy. If your father works in a company and has contacts from when he was in college, and has contacts in the college and in other companies, then he can arrange for you to get into a better school as well as he has the money to pay for you to go to that better school, which then he can contact his buddy to get your application actually put forward and make sure
it's seen. So now not only is your application being seen, you went to a good school and you are like well connected, so you may have gotten access to an internship, which is not a hiring, So it wouldn't be part
of merit based anything. It would, but it would elevate your position on a merit based scale, having an internship that you only have access to due to your parents' previous networking, and thus ensuring for you a position that you would not have otherwise been able to get if you did not have access to the resources from your parents.
And so you have this stacking effect of the richest children get rich, and their children get rich, and so on and so forth because they can be standing on the shoulders of their parents, Whereas if you don't have access to those things, it is entirely on you to make it into a good school, to pay your way in, to secure an internship, and then even get your application in front of somebody. All of these things are what works to keep a person in a lower socioeconomic tier.
I guess you could call it it works to keep them down, because there isn't really such thing as a self made man. Every rich person got a huge like investment from a loved one, or is standing on the shoulders of somebody else.
That might be a little bit of a sweeping statement.
I am, I am being hyperballic. I'll admit to that.
Yeah, you're right, though, So I think the point that you're making is a valid one. And that's where we come into the systemic the systemic issues that we have, uh and where where merit based doesn't always solve the problem. You know, there, there's there. There probably does need to be some governmental controls, and it seems like those are being repealed in rapid fashion. And with that, you know, we we are over a little bit of time. But I don't want to go anywhere without without hearing from
EJ and Rob to close us out. So EJ, please, the floor is yours.
Thank you, I think to back off what Tracy was saying there, Yeah, merit based hiring does sound absolutely amazing the lake Tracy just said. It gives an advantage to people who have or at least entirely Merit based hiring and placement and skills does give a huge advantage to people who already have networks due to their appearance. Because as much as we'd rather not NEP it doesn't place
a huge part in the world. And unless we're willing to make changes on some level, whether it be bring this cost of schools down or have some sort of intervention from the government and the schooling systems for things like hiring, then I don't exactly know how we would fix.
On those two points from you two gentlemen. I can tell you that I never got the dance around in the White House like Elon musk Son did. So when I was a kid. You know, I was playing in the street and stuff. I wasn't wiping boggers on the President's desk, and that probably is going to bring that
kid pretty far. But anyway, I digress, Rob. Please, we've talked a lot about about the mayors meriage based hiring, but more specifically because I use that as the container to couch all of the other things that they're doing, which is the accumulation of information of private citizens so that they can keep track of them. Otherwise, why else would they be doing that. They're just using these as opportunities to do that. I don't hate merit based hiring.
I understand Tracy's in EJ's point of view and actually very likely correct position on a lot of that. However, I would say that having access to people when I think of merit okay, the problems that requires a steal man and people to actually believe that you have good faith in this merit based hiring would be the person who can do the job. The merit is the person who can do the thing, not necessarily the person.
Who knows the people. However, the people that they know helped them gain the skills to do the thing better. This doesn't sound like a problem with merit based hiring. This problem sounds like a problem of not being able to help other disadvantaged people, because as a social animal, we're just going to always gravitate towards people, so we should help the lower I.
Was trying to express that, and you did a great job actually putting it in one sentence of thanks.
Thanks Tracy. You put them in my brain, and then I used my tongue to say.
I was doing a bad job, represented that you did a great job.
Good job in the spirit of the atheist community of Austin's mission and us here at the nonprofits, I have to say we've covered a lot socially disadvantaged people, bombings and protests between religion and where is God in all of this? Play and hide and seek? Play and hide and seek? And I want to leave everybody with that. Thank you for tuning in, and be sure to tune in on Friday for our next segment.