 |
|
|
|||||
Harvard is the first university to reject President Donald Trumps demands, which require the university to make sweeping changes in order to keep its $2.2 billion in federal funding, and is subsequently now facing a freeze of those funds, which the university has called both unlawful and unconstitutional. The governments demands follow a review of nearly $9 billion in federal funding to Harvard, and come amid a broad crackdown on college campuses aimed at axing DEI and limiting free speech, under the guise of eliminating so-called left-wing ideology and antisemitism. Harvard faculty have sued to block Trump from pulling their funding, and filed a temporary restraining order labeling the threats a “gun to the head.” Harvard’s act of resistance brings up two very different but important questions, one political, and one financial: Will this set a precedent for other universities to follow, and where does Harvard get its funding, anyway? What does Harvard’s decision mean for other universities? First things first: Harvard University didn’t just quietly reject Trump’s overreach. President Alan Garber made a bold show of resistance, in a letter to the campus community, stating that the government’s demands “violate Harvards First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the governments authority under Title VI,” and that “no governmentregardless of which party is in powershould dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” Some commentators have said Harvard learned from Columbia University’s mistake. In caving to Trump‘s demands, Columbia will be forced to acquiesce in a number of ways, including hiring three dozen campus officers “who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them when appropriate.” The administration also has paused federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Princeton University, Cornell University, and Northwestern University, according to the AP. Former President Barack Obama praised Harvard’s decision and encouraged other institutions to do the same. As The New York Times noted, Harvard’s stance could set a precedent for other universities, and empower law firms, the media and courts, and other targets to also push back. (In fact, on Tuesday, Columbia’s president released a statement seemingly backtracking and perhaps following Harvard’s lead: “We have not reached any agreement with the government at this point [. . .] We would reject any agreement in which the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire.”) Where does Harvard get its money? This leads us to our second point, where does Harvard get its funding? It might come as a surprise, but while Harvard has a vast endowment of $53.2 billion, it relies on several other sources beyond that for its funding. These include federal and non-federal research grants, tuition and fees, and gifts from alumni and others. Harvard received approximately $2.4 billion from its endowment in fiscal 2024, which made up only 37.5% of its overall operating budget of $6.4 billion. The university’s $686 million in federal funding representing roughly 16% of its operating revenue. However, Harvard can only tap 20% of its endowment for discretionary spending, to go toward the money lost by Trump’s freezes. A majority of the endowment distributions are restricted by donors, both legally and from stipulations from donors, in regard to how Harvard can spend that money. Another way Harvard is able to cover its high costs is that it does not pay federal or state taxes. Many people don’t know that Harvard, and most major colleges and universities, are tax-exempt organizations. On Tuesday, Trump threatened to eliminate Harvard’s tax-exempt status in a post on Truth Social, saying, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting Sickness?'”According to its website, Harvard is exempt from federal income tax as an educational institution under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. As an educational institution, Harvard is also exempt from state income tax in Massachusetts, where it is located.
Category:
E-Commerce
President Donald Trump‘s administration has ordered U.S. Justice Department employees not to post anything on social media related to their government work, after a wave of new political appointees took to cheering Trump and castigating his opponents online. The directive, which was emailed to U.S. Attorneys’ offices late on Monday, appears to prohibit the types of social media posts that Trump’s political appointees routinely make on their official government accounts. The change was made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has become frustrated by some of the rhetoric being posted by political appointees, according to one person familiar with the matter. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. While the department has always placed restrictions on social media use by employees, such as prohibiting them from discussing non-public investigations or making politically-charged statements that could damage the department’s impartiality, the new policy is much broader. It restricts employees from including their department titles on any social media activity or reposting official government information such as press releases. Employees must not use any social media “in a way that damages the efficiency of the department,” the policy says. Stacey Young, a former department civil rights attorney who recently left to create a DOJ employee advocacy organization called Justice Connection, said the policy could chill employees’ speech. “The new policy represents another unwarranted attack on DOJ employees – one that stifles their free speech in their private lives and creates new ways for the administration to oust career public servants who don’t toe the party line,” said Young. Many of the department’s top Trump-appointed leaders in recent weeks have posted messages that would have run afoul of the policy, which tells them to avoid “injecting their political views into the work they perform” and refrain from making comments “in reckless disregard for the truth” about any person the department engages with, including judges. It also says they cannot post anything that might prejudice a proceeding or “heighten condemnation of an accused.” Leo Terrell, a senior counsel in the Civil Rights Division who is leading its antisemitism task force, for instance, makes near-daily posts on X about his support for Trump. “Democrats are jealous of President Trump!” he wrote on X on Saturday. Last month, Terrell shared a post on his X account from Patrick Casey, a white nationalist who ran the now-defunct Identity Evropa, that said Trump could “revoke someone’s Jew card.” Aaron Reitz, the department’s head of the Office of Legal Policy, in an April 8 post on social media accused “Dem-appointed judges” of siding with cartels to usurp Trump’s “authority to conduct foreign policy.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a March 27 post on X, claimed that law enforcement had arrested a “top MS-13 national leader,” referring to the street gang MS-13. The criminal complaint against the suspect, 24-year-old Henrry Josue Villatoro Santos, made no such claim, stating instead that investigators had found only “indicia of MS-13 association.” The department has since moved to drop the charges and have him deported. Ari Cohn, the tech policy lead counsel with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said while government has some authority to restrict the use of personal social media accounts to conduct official business, the new policy is so broad that it places employees at risk of being targeted for their views as private citizens. “The risk that these rules will be wielded in a partisan way to purge the DOJ of anyone who expresses a political view out of step with the leadership or administration is deeply concerning,” he told Reuters in a statement. Sarah N. Lynch, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
The 4chan website is down, and continues not to load for many users, according to Downdetector. (Downdetector is a platform that monitors online services and internet-related issues, and is essentially a crowd-sourced outage reporting tool.) This outage comes amid unconfirmed reports on social media, including on Reddit, that the internet message board was hacked. Fast Company has reached out to 4chan for comment and did not hear back immediately. The outage was first reported on Downdetector at around 9:57 p.m. ET on Monday night, and peaked soon after around 10:12 p.m. ET, when 1,265 users reported the problem. Since then, users have taken to monitoring the platform, turning Downdetector’s comments section into a virtual 4chan chat forum with some 7,464 comments already. 4chan can best be described as an image board or bulletin board site similar to Reddit, and is known for controversial, right-wing content, which some critics argue often contains hate speech. Founded in 2003 by then-15-year-old Christopher Poole, it started as a website to share anime and manga among its mostly young male audience, but has been called “a breeding ground for the far right.” A breach could potentially reveal the identities and opinions of moderators and users, which could be highly compromising, given the nature of the site’s content. As of this writing, most of the reported problems had to do with 4chan’s website (71%). Another 24% of users reported problems with the server connection, and another 5% said they could not post. Outages were registered across the country in a heat map on Downdetector. Here is a list of the cities included: Seattle Los Angeles Phoenix San Francisco Dallas Houston Minneapolis Chicago St. Louis Detroit Atlanta Tampa Boston New York Washington Users also submitted problem reports in Canada in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||