On masks, my understanding is that students protesting wore masks in order to avoid being identified in photographs, thereby limiting a school, or law enforcement’s, ability to discipline/prosecute. So masks are seen by the current administration as a way to “thwart” justice.
I think the issue here is that schools, Harvard being only one of many, were not enforcing their own rules with respect to the obstruction of classes, discrimination (threatening Jews or blocking them from attending classes), or occupying and/or destroying private property. Even if an administration tried to enforce it, the penalties were wiped out by various faculty bodies. I’m pretty sure that on most colleges, occupying and camping out on a quad violated school rules but they were never enforced. Blocking access to buildings would almost certainly violate most school’s rules. And, schools pulled back on enforcement if their own rules, when applied to foreign students, would cause those students’ visas to be at risk of revocation.
On your second point, @Midwestmomofboys is on target. The purpose of the masks was to eliminate or reduce the threat of being identified protesting and possibly harrassing students. The threat of doxxing is real.
But, this generation has forgotten the lessons of civil disobedience as explicated by Thoreau, Gandhi and King. You violate the law (or rules) with the expectation that you will pay the legal consequences. These masked protests are more like mob rule – intimidation. The students are outraged if rules are enforced. Note that this assumption is not limited to the left. Protestors on the right like the Proud Boys also are masked to avoid identification and probably to be more intimidating.
6 Likes
But masks are OK for those who are taking folks into custody? Sorry, that is hypocritical.
8 Likes
The time and place restrictions are pretty rich and they effectively shut down free speech on campus. Classroom disturbance? Every Friday for 30+ on campus, I’ve listened to loud music blaring from speakers from campus quads as this and that festival is taking place, bands, dancing, etc. It’s a constant. And approved by the office of student life. Suddenly they are concerned!
So many of these stories in the media have overblown what’s gone on at protests that are 99.9% peaceful. The famous incident at Harvard of the student being prevented from moving occurred right after he purposely stepped on people’s heads who were participating in a die-in, but the media never reported that.
1 Like
Just to be clear, the hypocrisy is the government’s but not mine. I don’t see why law enforcement officers should be wearing masks either.
2 Likes
One thing does seem to be clear: Harvard’s reaction has galvanized its community and made them proud. I heard one student being interviewed say that the feeling on campus is “joyous”.
4 Likes
When I read the mask thing, I thought of COVID-era masks. 
I think the kinds of incidents that I am aware of involved blocking people from getting to class, going into classes with megaphones or otherwise making it impossible to have a class, occupying university buildings to administrators could not work and/or classes could not be held, and blocking off a quad for days or weeks, making them impassable. I think these are qualitatively different from a music festival, which is time-limited and approved.
Just recently, the Student Union at McGill sponsored a two or three day strike in which masked representatives went into each classroom, stood at the podium and strongly encouraged students to leave and professors not to teach. I saw on a video the student organization blocking people from getting into the building in which classes should have been taking place. I would be stunned if those behaviors did not violate McGill’s rules but McGill does not appear to be enforcing its rules. I don’t have firsthand knowledge but see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUeMj53iHTU – the reporter clearly has a viewpoint but the video of the classrooms and of blocking entry to buildings is what I am addressing.
I’m not a fan of giving up control to the Federal government, but willful failure to enforce rules is the reason why the administration included enforcement of rules in their demands. As far as I know, Harvard has been working on changing procedures to enable it to enforce its own rules and not have them overridden by a faculty senate.
What do you mean by “Friday for 30+ on campus?”
2 Likes
Adulting is challenging at times. And sometimes, that includes learning tough lessons like how the right to free speech does not absolve you from the consequences of saying whatever it is that you (the proverbial “you”) said.
Just like how my eldest kid has learned some lessons through the school of hard knocks.
I don’t have any sympathy for people engaging in violent protests or destruction of property or preventing students of certain groups from being able to get to/from class. If those students broke the law, then they will have to face the consequences of breaking those laws. It would be wise for those individuals to maybe think first before they act.
And I don’t think very highly of institutions of higher learning which look the other way and basically allow months’ long harassment to occur without doing anything about it.
Last year’s incidents at some college campuses basically confirmed what I’d suspected about them for awhile. And I absolutely do not respect the administration of places like Harvard or Columbia. Thankfully, my opinion about it really doesn’t matter to them because I’m not a multi million dollar donor nor would my kids ever attend either of those colleges AND there’s plenty of other places for my kids to attend instead.
Frankly, I’m pretty indifferent overall on the whole topic and don’t really care what Harvard and other peer institutions choose to do about it. It doesn’t affect me. But it’s interesting to watch it all unfold. It’s sort of like watching a wrestling match on pay-per-view.
1 Like
Are you sure it doesn’t affect you?
The research partnership between the federal government and American universities that was established nearly a century ago has led to advances in science and technology that many now take for granted.
The return on investment to the federal government has been enormous even if measured only in financial terms. But the return to society in terms of health and well-being has been even greater. It is one of the great bipartisan public policy achievements in American history, and without it we’d be sicker, poorer, and frankly dumber.
If the federal government thinks a particular college has violated a particular law, there are legal avenues it can pursue. Using lab and research funding as leverage is not one of those legal avenues.
32 Likes
I have not been a fan of what universities have done in the last 20 years. I think they have weakened themselves by their choices. I won’t go into it here because I am sure my analysis would be deemed political. I understand why some of the government is trying to effect some of these changes.
However, the remedies that the Federal government is demanding are self-destructive.
I would agree with everything that @politeperson said and then some. The US has a competitive advantage in the tech and biopharma sectors because of its investment through military spending, NIH, NSF and other federal research spending. A substantial fraction of our higher-paying jobs are in these sectors and support for them. To cut off funding of research will weaken our economy dramatically.
The biggest cluster of life science companies and life science venture capitalists in the world is in and around Cambridge, MA, which follows directly from the research done at Harvard, MIT, and other schools. Silicon Valley is in the South Bay because of Stanford. For years, all the major VC firms were on Sand Hill Road, which borders Stanford’s campus. Other tech cities include Boston, Austin, and Raleigh Durham, which again are tied to research universities. And Austin’s tech strength came from government choices to spend money there on research and the semiconductor center.
Even in the defense world, one key reason the US is as predominant as it is because of defense spending on research. Our technology is better.
Choosing to pull research funding from the universities with the best researchers seems like shooting ourselves as a nation in both feet.
Larry Summers did a very good interview a couple of months ago on video for something called the 1636 Forum. In it, he pointed out a big difference between academic freedom and freedom of speech. Universities depend in part upon academic freedom, which protects professors against punishment or retaliation for working on unpopular research areas. This is to be distinguished with freedom of speech, which involves people being able to say whatever they choose without government intervention. Private universities, including the Ivy League, have no obligation to allow or enforce freedom of speech generally. They should be zealous in defending academic freedom. They have not done that very well over the last 20 years. For example, Harvard stripped funding and a center away from Roland Fryer, a black Harvard economist and MacArthur genius fellow whose research questioned the findings of disproportionate policing and violence against minorities. The university essentially derailed his career because people did not like his conclusions (to be fair, people were concerned about his methodology and allegations of sexual banter and bullying in his lab, but that would not have gotten him the nearly complete censure he received – it was really because people couldn’t abide his conclusions). I don’t want the Federal government, whether from the right or left, trying to abridge professors’ ability to do research on controversial areas, whether the subject is policing or climate change.
8 Likes
Well this is escalating quickly.
1 Like
3 Likes
What the administration wants to do is illegal. Period. If it is allowed, discussion will have to be moved to the political forum.
1 Like
Whether or not it’s illegal will likely be resolved in the court system.
Some posters may want to review the text at this link, which discusses the revocation of tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University in the early 1980s:
The government certainly can revoke tax-exempt status from universities based on prejudice, equal rights, etc.
While Harvard’s administration has condemned anti-Semitic actions/speech, etc., including the infamous cartoon posted by various of its student and faculty-led bodies, my understanding is that actual punishments have been rare or nonexistent (none I can find for the cartoon, for example), and strongly resisted by faculty.
With the size of its endowment and of the wallets of its alumni, plus all the billions of dollars in other private hands in this country and elsewhere, Harvard should be able to survive without funding from the government. I know I don’t want my tax dollars going there.
Wow.
2 Likes
So they want diversity when it benefits them, but not when it benefits others. Got it.
2 Likes
Which “they” are you talking about? Harvard or the federal gov’t?
I believe that the comments are verging into political territory. While we could say that we simply disagree, the disagreement is rooted in politics.
3 Likes