Harvard meets the head of all crime families

[Now with a bonus update.]

Quite a few organized crime members have become long-term guests of the federal government for running protection rackets and extorting legitimate businesses. These are lucrative enterprises; they require no capital investment, the hours are good and labor costs are next to nothing. You might even say these family-owned businesses are every entrepeneur's dream in that they market virtually overhead-free, thus better mouse traps while needing to make no mouse traps at all. Still, the government hosts these men of affairs for one simple reason: Protection rackets and extortion are illegal as hell.

My guess is that the businessmen involved are now pretty resentful of their incarceration, that they're feeling a little bit hurt, even put upon. Because it turns out that Richard Nixon — as crooked then as any president could be — was right: "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." And now his present-day successor has seemingly codified the thesis into a kind of anti-law: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."

All of which means, of course, that Donald Trump is perfectly free to run a protection racket on American universities and extort the bejesus out of them until they capitulate. He had already succeeded with one heavy hitter, too "woke" Columbia University. But mobsters are greedy, so, soon after, he cooked up another scheme — this one against Harvard University. (Columbia is now paying for protection, so it's safe.) He began as criminal custum dictates, he sent Harvard an extortion note (if by post, no problem, Trump is allowed to save his Country my mail fraud): Comply with my demands or lose $2.2 billion in federal grants, for starters.

The Times has the backstory to this development — as appalling and stomach-turning as any other Trumpian crime in the making. It seems that on 1 April, sitting with mob associates in his private dining room, "[he] floated an astounding proposal: What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?" Said Trump, "What if we never pay them? Wouldn’t that be cool?" (italics mine). When the big boss asks his crime family members if something would be cool, they say Yes.

And so the extortion note went out to Harvard, demanding:

• Governance and leadership reforms.

• Merit-Based Hiring Reform.

• Merit-Based Admissions Reform.

  
  

• International Admissions Reform.

  
  

• Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring.

• Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias.

  
  

• Discontinuation of DEI.

• Student Discipline Reform and Accountability.

• Whistleblower Reporting and Protections.

• Transparency and Monitoring.

I was going to dissect each ludicrous demand, but this post would have grown to novella-length. Just keep in mind that the above list of do thises and do thats or we'll screw you but good emerged from Trump's pledge to battle antisemitism (because of anti-Israel campus protests). No surprise, his antisemitism crusade was merely an artifice — a camel's nose, you might say — a way in which the regime's malefactors could threaten universities with the loss federal funding so that they can heave the ideological tendencies of higher education out of the way — and impose their own ideology.

In an open letter to the Harvard community, its president, Alan Garber, observed the scam being perpetrated: "Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the 'intellectual conditions' at Harvard." He also noted that Harvard has already instituted many of the demands made on it. For instance, Trump insists on "merit-based admissions reform," to which Garber replied: "We will ... continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions 'on the basis of race.'" 

Harvard's legal counsel replied to the White House goons as well, repeating the university president's point: "It is unfortunate that your letter disregards Harvard's efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court." Added the lawyers: "No less objectionable is the condition ... that Harvard accede to these terms or risk the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding critical to vital research and innovation."

Both letters, Garber's and the university's legal team's, are worth reading in full. But because Harvard is being terrorized by a criminal bunch of protection racket and extortion specialists, only the attorneys' final sentence was fundamentally necessary and cuts-through-it-all essential:

Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.

***

The update, 5:44 p.m. ET:

NY Times headline: "Trump Threatens Harvard’s Tax Status, Escalating Billion-Dollar Pressure Campaign." Subhead: "Federal law prohibits the president from telling the I.R.S. to conduct specific tax investigations."

I haven't laughed so hard since Trump delivered his opening 2015 tangle of sheer incoherence after descending on his gaudy Trump Tower escalator. I laughed, anyway, until I realized a lot of Americans took him seriously. (Not even Trump had done that.)