Welcome to Money for the rest of us. This is a personal finance show on money, how it works,

how to invest it, and how to live without worrying about it. I'm your host, David Stein. Today is

Episode 524. It's titled, Facing a Financial Squeeze, What Harvard's response can teach the rest of us?

Last month, representatives of the Trump administration

from the General Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department

of Health and Human Services sent a letter to the president of Harvard University, Dr. Allen

M. Garber. The letter stated that Harvard, in recent years, failed to live up to both the

intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. Harvard University,

including its medical school, receives billions of dollars in federal grants. The letter demanded reforms on the part of Harvard as it relates to governance and

leadership, its hiring practices, its admissions practices, it demanded changes regarding

its programs, its approach to student discipline and accountability, protections for whistleblowers,

and additional reforms related to transparency and monitoring.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which tends to skew very conservative,

said that these demands by the Trump administration were de facto

federal receivership. In other words, the federal government taking over Harvard University.

Harvard, in turn, responded with its own letter that said over the past 15 months,

the university has undertaken substantial policy and programmatic measures, new accountability

procedures, and discipline adjustments in order to combat hate and bias and enhance safety

and security measures. Letter said Harvard's a very different place today from where it was a year

ago. At that point, the letter said that Harvard felt

that the federal government's demand invaded the university's freedoms that have been long

recognized by the Supreme Court, as well as from the First Amendment of the Constitution.

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