Bacon's Rebellion

by Derrick Max

Every taxpayer dollar sent to any university or private entity should be closely scrutinized. In the case of the billions sent to Harvard University and other elite schools, the probe being imposed by the Trump administration is long overdue. 

The research grants which make up the majority of Harvard’s non-medical federal funding, notoriously lack transparency, allow for use of funds for supposed “indirect costs” that go almost unfettered to the University, and are the type of grants that are not available to most other colleges and universities in the country.

When the Harvard Crimson reports that more than three-quarters of Harvard’s faculty self-identify as “left” or “far left” and 65 percent of Harvard graduates identify as “progressive” (only 12 percent identify as “conservative”), the level of federal funding from a progressive leaning federal bureaucracy rightly raises concerns about “self dealing” in the eyes of a newly elected conservative administration.  

With famous liberal graduates like former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama and liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, it is no wonder that Harvard is considered the intellectual center of the failed progressivism that is an offense to much of what was rejected by voters in this last election. President Trump is right to view Harvard with some distrust, if not disdain. On this, we and most conservatives agree.

Throw in the lackluster response to the antisemitism running rampant on Ivy League and other college campuses and you have more than enough reason to take a second look at the taxpayer funding given to these institutions.

But, this disdain and scrutiny should not bleed over into any consideration of challenging Harvard’s tax-exempt status. While President Trump’s mention of removing Harvard’s favored tax status could just be a part of a broader negotiating strategy (three dimensional chess), it would set a dangerous precedent.

Such a move, without question, would put Liberty University — Virginia’s largest University and 18 other Christian colleges in the Commonwealth — square in the crosshairs of some future progressive President who would use Liberty’s policies on homosexuality and gender as justification to end their tax status.