No, it's not a lie that the administration said universities should hire and admit students based on merit. The administration's letter is linked from the university's statement. You can go read it. It's the very first two points.

It's true they also said they want viewpoint diversity quotas and audits. I agree that goes too far. I think they would probably give that up if the university pushed back. This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation. He even wrote an entire book telling you exactly that's what he does, yet somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic. Every plumber, electrician, and carpenter that ever worked with Trump figured this out decades ago.

>This is what Trump does every time - make outlandish demands so you have something to give up in negotiation

Harvard rejected the demands and Trump pulled funding. What negotiation happened?

Also, if everyone knows you're just demanding more than you'd accept what's the value of the negotiation tactic? Everyone would just reject demands initially knowing this

Yes, you reject the first offer and make a counter offer. That is how negotiating works. You ask for more than you expect to get to find out what the limit is that the other party will go up to. How else would you find the limit? You don't know what the other party is thinking or what all of their priorities are. You can't just magically intuit it a priori.

If that's how negotiating works, and Trump cancelled the funding instead of delivering a counteroffer, shouldn't we conclude that Trump is not in fact negotiating? It seems like your vision of negotiation is that Trump does whatever he wants and everyone else politely begs him to be gracious in victory.

Trump made the initial offer. It was up to the university to make a counteroffer and try to meet in the middle. Instead they flatly refused everything. When one party rejects an offer in a negotiation, the other party often walks away. That’s what Trump did. If you aren’t willing and able to walk away, you’re begging, not negotiating.

I find I'm willing and able to walk away from this discussion. I'll keep your strategic advice in mind the next time a Trump supporter tries to explain why I should not shun them or organize a boycott of their business.

>Instead they flatly refused everything

No, they had issues with some of the demands and wanted to open a dialog.

Harvard's response says they changed policies to protect Jewish students, made other changes to related to the protests, etc.

It also states

"It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms ..."

#----------------------------- Finally they said:

"Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration. "

What he explained in his book is that he's an evil, dishonest person, who routinely lies and harms people in negotiations in order to get his way. I agree that being evil and dishonest is often quite effective - if you came up to me with a knife and an outlandish demand that I should give you my wallet, I'd probably concede the negotiation. But I don't at all understand the idea that I have to respect this as some kind of clever negotiating strategy. The innocent researchers whose grants he's cancelled are real people suffering real harm, and they don't become transmuted to a mere negotiating tactic just because Donald Trump doesn't care about them.

If a dishonest person tells you he's dishonest, doesn't that mean he's actually honest?

No because a person isn't "honest" because they make one honest statement.

> somehow the "intellectual elite" cannot wrap their heads around a very simple negotiating tactic

This is extremely disingenous. Throughout this thread you've been arguing on the basis that hiring people simply to fit a political viewoint is wrong, but when it's pointed out that that's exactly what your team wants as well you fall back to name-calling.

What they want is to hire people based on merit, first and foremost. They say that explicitly several times.

That's not the only demand in the letter.

So they need to have a department to ensure a diversity of views are included?

No, that wasn't sufficient. The government specifically demanded that Harvard must commission a government-approved external party to audit viewpoint diversity, and must promise in advance to follow its recommendations, for each of the next three years.

So a government run DEI department? You're aren't the original person but that's my gotcha