Wait until Trump & Co. find out about Harvard Law's initiatives to "honor the enslaved people whose labor generated wealth that contributed to the school's founding." By Hal M. Brown

Harvard took a stand for truth, justice, and what should be the American way.

Trump’s war against Harvard is all over the news, but he has missed Harvard Law in particular.

In 2021 Harvard Law School changed it’s crest because the previous one had a connection to a slave owner. The Latin words mean truth, law, and justice. This is similar to Superman’s slogan about his fighting for “truth, justice, and the American way” which also has a complicated, albeit not tawdry, history (here).

Here’s an article about this from The Harvard Crimson:

The dean of the school, John F. Manning, wrote “I believe that the simple, elegant, and beautiful design of the new shield captures the complexity, the diversity, the limitlessness, the transformative power, the strength, and the energy that the HLS community, in Cambridge and throughout the world, sees in Harvard Law School.” There’s that verboten D word, diversity.

As if this isn’t enough reason for Trumpworld to go after Harvard here’s another.

Trump continues to try to make good on his promises about ending wokeness in universities:

Donald Trump’s vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America’s schools of perceived “ wokeness ” and “left-wing indoctrination.”

The president-elect wants to forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and structural racism. He wants to abolish diversity and inclusion offices. He wants to keep transgender athletes out of girls’ sports.

Throughout his campaign, the Republican depicted schools as a political battleground to be won back from the left. Now that he’s won the White House, he plans to use federal money as leverage to advance his vision of education across the nation.

Trump’s education plan pledges to cut funding for schools that defy him on a multitude of issues.

On his first day in office, Trump has repeatedly said he will cut money to “any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content on our children.” On the campaign trail, Trump said he would “not give one penny” to schools with vaccine or mask requirements. Reference.

I don’t want to give the Trump and his anti-woke sleuths another reason to go after Harvard, and especially such a bastion of liberalism as their law school. This reputation is in spite of the fact that notable conservatives like Ted Cruz got their law degrees there. While not lawyers, Trump has had many advisors who went to Harvard including Stephen K. Bannon, Jared C. Kushner ’03, Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Michael R. Pompeo, and Elaine Chao (Reference).

From: Harvard Alumni Have Powered the Trump Administration.

Harvard’s silence on graduates as recent as 2016 using their Harvard degrees to wage a full-fledged assault on the truth is unworthy of the University’s own “Veritas” motto. Failure to take a position or set the record straight on Harvard’s expectations of its alumni is a tacit endorsement that power itself is the school’s only true value. Discussions of ethical and moral leadership in my classes at Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School ring hollow against this reality. Harvard should publicly commit to higher expectations for its alumni than achieving the social cachet to dance with the stars (as former Harvard Institute of Politics fellow Sean Spicer quite literally did last year).

I am getting off-topic here.

Back to Harvard Law: I am surprised the Trumpers haven’t already found out about Harvard Law and gone after it in particular. Not only about the logo change, but what they did the following year:

Excerpt:

A report issued on April 26 by the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery recounts in detail the many ways Harvard University participated in, and profited from, slavery, and the long history of discrimination against, and exclusion of, Black people by the university long after slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.

In a statement to the Harvard Law School community shortly after the release of the committee’s report, Dean John F. Manning ’85 commented on the report and the law school’s own connections with slavery, and he announced several initiatives to honor and commemorate the enslaved people whose labor generated wealth that contributed to Harvard Law School’s founding and to better understand the legacy of slavery and the as yet unfinished business of advancing racial justice.

“[T]hough it is difficult, indeed heartbreaking, to read in cumulative detail the pervasive and grievous wrongs committed here at our university, only by honestly reckoning with this history can we together find new ways to make meaning of our past,” said Manning.

“We must also do these things in part because of the distinctive roles that law and the legal profession, at their best, can play in furthering the highest ideals of law and justice,” Manning wrote, stating that the law school must recommit itself to remedying the ills of “racism, inequality, and many other injustices that continue to this day in our society.”

Harvard Law is proudly woke, but when it comes to teaching about slavery, so is the the rest of the university. For example here’s just one of their courses from their Department of Continuing Education: Slavery and Race in American Law. “This course explores the relationship between enslavement and racialization in American law. The course starts from the premise that American slavery was an institution that enlisted law in support of power and exploitation.”

I do not think this it is any accident that if you look up Harvard Medical School this is what you see on their website:

Here’s the article about Harvard rejecting the Trump administration’s demands.

Trump obviously is going after Harvard with a vengeance because it is our preeminent university and has a legitimate reputation as being liberal.

He’s going after Columbia and other colleges too, see for example “Trump demands unprecedented control at Columbia, alarming scholars and speech groups.”

The Trump administration brushed aside decades of precedent when it ordered Columbia University to oust the leadership of an academic department, a demand seen as a direct attack on academic freedom and a warning of what’s to come for other colleges facing federal scrutiny.

Federal officials told the university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years.” The demand was among several described as conditions for receiving federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations of antisemitism.

I think that the anti-Semitism rationale is merely an excuse. The same goes of all the transgended and DEI attacks. If it wasn’t these issues Trump would find another reason to attack and try to control what universities taught. He may not know much about Mao’s reeducation camps where for decades, the Communist Party of China relied on reeducation camps to reform “parasites” and persuade people to support the communist cause. I have no doubt he wants our universities to be loyal and obedient supporters of him personally and his regime.

Here’s another quote from the article about Columbia:

President Donald Trump has been threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges that do not get in line with his agenda, from transgender athletes’ participating in women’s sports to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. On Friday, his administration announced investigations into 52 universities as part of his DEI crackdown.

What do freedom loving people around the world think about all of this? What do they think about the fact that the United States not only has an Education Secretary whose assigned mission is to demolish the Department of Education and comes from the world of Professional Wrestling, but who earned herself a fact check on Snopes? It is true that U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon twice referred to artificial intelligence — AI — as "A1."

Here she is in one of her X posts:

It has become hackneyed to bring up 1984 where the truth is what Big Brother says it is and to share this photo from the movie, but in closing, I will do it anyway.

On a related matter:

What I don’t understand is how Trump can take away the tax exempt status of a university. I can see him having legal grounds for cutting their federal funding, but eliminating the tax exempt status of Harvard or any other university seems problematic.

Even the Church of Scientology, after a several years long battle, maintained their tax exempt status as a religious insitition.

This is what the Association of American Universities says about the tax exempt status of colleges. The detailed article begins:

The vast majority of public and private universities and colleges are tax-exempt entities as defined by IRC Section 501(c)(3) because of their educational purposes—purposes that the federal government has long recognized as fundamental to fostering the productive and civic capacity of its citizens—and/or the fact that they are state governmental entities. In turn, states generally grant tax-exempt status to organizations, including universities and colleges, which qualify as tax-exempt entities under Federal law.

This is from The NY Times: I.R.S. Is Said to Be Considering Whether to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status, The move would be a major escalation of the Trump administration’s attempts to choke off federal money and support for the leading research university. (Sub.)

Federal law bars the president from either directly or indirectly requesting the I.R.S. to investigate or audit specific targets. The I.R.S. does at times revoke tax exemptions from organizations for conducting too many political or commercial activities, but those groups can appeal the agency’s decision in court. Any attempt to take away Harvard’s tax exemption would be likely to face a legal challenge, which tax experts expect would be successful.

Addendum:

If you have 22 minutes I strongly recommend you watch this video.

Read my previous Substacks.