Yes, Harvard has been threatened by the Trump Administration with funding cuts exceeding two billion dollars. Liberals are rightly outraged by the Administration's reasons for the funding cuts, but they appear to be blind to the inequitable distribution of funds allotted to institutions of higher education. We live in a
"winner take all" society in which the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer. That system of inequity extends to American colleges and universities—staffed, though they may be, by avowed "Liberals."
If you've
been following this story, you will have seen that billionaires have
been rushing to Harvard's aid to make up the shortfall. That's what you
call "resources."
Meanwhile, a school like Boise State (for example), may not see its
federal funding cut—but then, it never
had the kind of funding Harvard enjoys to begin with.
Researchers have to go where the money is,
so those who try to justify Harvard's level of funding by pointing out that the school has some of the top scholars in their respective fields are only acknowledging the existence of these inequities
without admitting to the reasons for them.
The silver lining to Trump's
Presidency (yes, there is one) is how it exposes to view the many ways
in which our institutions (public and private and across all fields of
endeavor) are weak, flawed, and unfair.
We have an opportunity here to
finally recognize some of the fundamental problems that have beset this
country since at least the end of WWII and consider ways to correct
them.
I don't have a lot of confidence that this will happen, however,
because far too many people (who, in my opinion, should know better)
appear to believe that everything was just fine until Trump got into
office and that things will return to being just fine as soon as we can
get rid of him and his cronies.
While I will admit that the "Liberals
just want to get back to brunch" meme is insulting, it succinctly
summarizes where things stand with many (if not most) of those who are
in the best position, politically, to effect the drastic changes that
need to occur if we are ever going to address the inequities baked in to
our current system.
