Harvard is free to say whatever it wants and operate without government funds. A shocking idea may be for a school to actually use the tuition paid by students to educate them.

This is forced speech for all those of us who disagree with Harvard's politics and yet have our tax dollars sent to support it anyways.

That’s a very odd perspective.

Could you explain how government research funding constitutes forced speech?

If an individual who receives a government tax credit (say EITC) speaks out contrary to your politics, is the government allowed to withhold that credit too?

My money is taken from me at gunpoint by government forces I cannot resist without facing life in prison. I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with. The government should be far smaller or we cannot have rights as the government will intrude on us more and more.

> I don't want this money going to random causes I disagree with.

There certainly is _no_ government spending supported by _all_ Americans, so your position isn't a very practical approach to governance.

Lots of government spending is supported by the vast majority of Americans. Police, courts, fire, ambulance, and military (though size is up for debate).

1st Amendment is more important than you not liking a specific spending of government funds.

> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed. I don't want my tax dollars going to support discrimination against Asians and others.

This is absolutely NOT what the 1st amendment is about, you are confusing tax and speech but they are treated separately in the Constitution.

The reason for that is simple, if every taxpayer could deny the funding of everything they didn't agree with, we'd have a very different Constitution. The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king... If you scale that ambition back a little and ask only for the power to decide where YOUR own money goes, you'd be speaking of something other than a tax because this isn't the way taxes work.

I'm not explaining this because I see much good coming out of Harvard, in fact I don't, but that's a different conversation. Both political parties, as well as certain private organizations have their hands deep in students' brains - it's the ultimate cookie jar after all. The real problem is the attempt to legitimize overt government meddling in the "cookie jar" instead of focusing on transparency and examination of the current forces involved in that process.

BTW can you elaborate on your assertion about "discrimination against Asians"? Neither the government letter nor Harvard's response mention Asians! Were you trying to comment on another post? Maybe something about the tariffs?

  > The ability to FULLY defund something YOU don't agree with requires the powers of a king...

the unitary executive theory?

You have a very strange idea of how government works.

You don’t get a veto on all speech from anyone who receives funds from the public purse, and it’s not a First Amendment issue that you don’t.

That’s such an incredibly odd premise; where do you get that idea from?

It's conservative doublespeak in regards to free speech and small government we've been seeing for the past 10 years.

By free speech, they mean the lack thereof. By small government, they mean a monarch.

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past"

- Jean-Paul Sartre

You don't need the whole bloated government if you just have one guy at the top making all the decisions /s

> My first amendment right not to be forced to support causes I disagree with is being harmed.

Fascinating. Do I have a similar right to stop paying taxes, because I don’t support the things the President is saying, or the causes Mike Johnston is adding to the budget?

Somehow I doubt you would apply these same principles to someone who doesn't believe in police and objects to their taxes being used to fund them.

Republicans won the presidency and both branches of the legislature. The people voted for their money to no longer be spent foolishly.

So you support impinging on free speech as long as the majority of voters is against something? That's exactly the kind of thing the Constitution is meant to prevent.

Or do you agree that it is not a violation of free speech to fund police when there are citizens who disagree with it? You can't have it both ways.

I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.

> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...

I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.

I don't want the government to fund any of that. The government should be far far smaller. The bigger the government is, the less rights you have.

That's just how government works, buddy. I disagree with my tax dollars being spent to shoot wild horses and fund Lockheed-Martin, but here we are. It's not forced speech, because you have representatives who (in a working system) you could ask to fight against tax dollars being spent on something you dislike. You have a voice, you just don't get to have the only voice.

The majority of Americans elected Republicans specifically based on their platform of eliminating waste and corruption like these funds that go to Harvard and directly fund anti Asian discrimination. The President is simply following through on his mandate. Why do you oppose democracy?

Communicating to elected officials that you will not vote for them if they continue their current behaviour is not anti-democracy, it's the main feature of democracy. You are actively participating in the democratic process by doing so.

Democracy doesn't mean that a plurality of voters in a single presidential election gets to overturn the Constitution and established law.

Okay, disband all of CBP and then we can talk.

Just watch what happens when they exercise their Constiutional right to "say whatever it wants."

Stephen Miller made it clear this morning: "Under this country, under this administration, under President Trump, people who hate America, who threaten our citizens, who rape, who murder, and who support those who rape and murder are going to be ejected from this country."

If the government decides you "hate America" or your business supports some hypothetical rapist/murderer they imagined, you're going to end up ejected from this country without due process.

They're absolutely teeing up to be able to deport whoever they want. Reasonable people should be (and are) very afraid.

Irrelevant and without basis.

Basis: words of the president on various different occasions, for example Trump wants to send U.S. citizens with criminal records to be imprisoned in EL Salvador.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-citizens-prison-el-salvador...

Relevance is subjective.

i disagree with you but i still think you should be allowed to drive on public roads and access publicly-funded health care that are funded by my tax dollars.