A new episode of the Academic Freedom Podcast has been released. The podcast is sponsored by the Academic Freedom Alliance and the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech at Yale Law School.
This episode features a conversation with Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School and former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His recent working paper, "'Our Money or Your Life!' Higher Education and the First Amendment," explores the First Amendment constraints federal funding to American universities.
In the last few weeks, the Trump administration has made several announcements that it is withholding a significant amount of federal funds from specific universities, notably Columbia University and Harvard University, and that those funds will not be released until those universities comply with a set of demands. Harvard received a letter on April 11 demanding changes in Harvard's governance, faculty hiring practices, student admissions practices, viewpoint diversity among the faculty, and student disciplinary policies, among other things. On May 5, the Secretary of Education sent a letter to Harvard informing the university that the federal government will award it no grants for scholarly research in the future. Reportedly, there is more than $2 billion dollars at stake.
On the podcast we talk through what the Trump administration is doing, what the consequences are for Harvard and other affected universities, and what constitutional issues are raised by the administration's actions in denying Harvard access to federal research funds. In the process, we get a short course on First Amendment doctrine relating to viewpoint discrimination and unconstitutional conditions.
The post Academic Freedom Podcast on the Federal Funding Freeze Aimed at Harvard University appeared first on Reason.com.
