Harvard Threatens To Euthanize Lab Animals

According to The Daily Beast,

Harvard academics have warned they will be forced to euthanize animals used for medical research because of Donald Trump’s $2.2 billion funding freeze.

This is disingenuous. According to this site,

Animals are typically killed once an experiment is over so that their tissues and organs can be examined, although it is not unusual for animals to be used in multiple experiments over many years.

If the lab animals are going to be euthanized no matter what, why the fuss? The answer is fairly clear, Harvard wants to portray the Trump administration as being cruel to animals, when the Harvard researchers are routinely cruel to animals no matter what, just as long as they get their money. Cutting off their money sounds like it would actually benefit future generations of lab animals.

But this is an indication of how seriously Harvard takes the current threats from the Trump administration. On top of threats to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll highly profitable foreign students, there are continuing questions about foreign funds:

The Trump administration is pressing Harvard University to turn over records on the money it receives from foreign sources going back a decade, the latest in a growing pressure campaign against the nation’s most prominent university.

American universities get billions in grants, contracts or gifts from foreign sources, which they must report semiannually to the government. In a Thursday letter to Harvard President Alan Garber, the U.S. Department of Education’s office of the General Counsel wrote that Harvard made “incomplete and inaccurate” disclosures between 2014 and 2019.

In light of all these threats, though, retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz suggests Harvard is taking them very seriously:

You may have expected Harvard's President Alan Garber, a man I know and admire, to be defiant in the face of such an onslaught, and while he is putting up a combative front, he seems to be preparing to negotiate a settlement.

That's something that legions of far-left academicians and advisers may find abhorrent. But it's the reality.

. . . Indeed, Garber has issued a bellicose response to Trump in the form of a letter, publicly refusing to compromise the academic independence of the institution, writing: 'No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.'

. . . But at the same time, Harvard has retained lawyers — Ballard Partners — who are close to Trump and his administration and have a history of arranging complex agreements.

. . . For all of Garber's maneuvering, he surely realizes that he is unlikely to emerge victorious from a long drawn-out courtroom confrontation with Trump. He also must know that the Trump administration would benefit politically from a courtroom fight with Harvard, regardless of the legal outcome which is anything but certain. So, instead, Harvard has sent a more subtle message to the Trump administration by retaining lawyers that he can work with.

. . . Well, reforming our corrupted academic elitist class and fighting antisemitic bigotry is not wrong. That is why I support a negotiated compromise. In fact, it is essential.

The truth is that many of the government's demands are quite reasonable and necessary.

As I've been pointing out, Trump's strategy has been to pull out multiple legs of any stool on which a problem sits. He's threatened Harvard's admission system, which is acknowledged to have discriminated against Jewish applicants for over a century, and if Harvard is forced to change it fundamentally, it could make Harvard and other selective universities unrecognizable -- and there could be ripple effects like reducing the incentive to send children to prep schools.

Most recently, in response to Monday's letter from Harvard President Garber, Trump has threatened Harvard's tax exempt status:

The Internal Revenue Service is making plans to rescind the tax-exempt status of Harvard University, according to two sources familiar with the matter, which would be an extraordinary step of retaliation as the Trump administration seeks to turn up pressure on the university that has defied its demands to change its hiring and other practices.

A final decision on rescinding the university’s tax exemption is expected soon, the sources said.

This would be a direct blow to what figures like Ferdinand Lundberg claim is the main purpose of univeristy endowments -- to provide a tax-sheltered means for the very wealthy as members of boards of trustees to control corporations via the endowments' stock ownership. It should be no surprise that Penny Pritzker, sister of Illinois Gov J B Pritzker and billionaire member of the Pritzker family, is "senior fellow" of the Harvard Corporation, what would normally be characterized as chair of the board of trustees.

Removal of Harvard's tax-exempt status would simply remove the incentive for this sort of generational family wealth to donate stock to the Harvard endowment and exercise control over corporations without owning the stock outright. Many board members would resign, no longer having a need to serve, and donations would move to institutions that still had tax exemptions. It would effectively destroy Harvard's institutional influence overnight.

I'm not sure if Dershowitz understands the full implications of this particular threat to Harvard, but President Garber and "Senior Fellow" Pritzker certainly must. Their challenge will be to preserve what they can of Harvard as an institution. Solving the problem will require a lot more than threatening to euthanize lab animals.