Victor Davis Hanson, a true intellectual from California, asks a good question in a recent column: “Will Harvard go full Hillsdale? He is referring to Harvard University’s fit throwing over President Trump’s taking away the Ivy League school’s $2.2 billion (billion with a “B”) annual grant from the federal treasury (your tax dollars).

Hanson, a noted historian and social critic whose philosophies are rooted in classicism, is an author, contributing editor and professor and writes a world affairs column syndicated by Tribune Media Services.

He begins his Harvard observations this way: “Harvard University has rejected various demands of a presidential commission on antisemitism.

“The task force wants to persuade Harvard to ensure Jewish students on its campus are no longer harassed, or else lose its federal funding.

“Harvard retorts that it won’t be bullied by Washington.”

The Trump administration advised Harvard to quit using race as a criterion in admissions, hiring and promotion, contrary to law.

While Harvard has been in the news in recent times, along with a number of other “premier” universities, regarding violent demonstrations during the post-COVID era, it apparently thinks it is above requirements of civil rights law, not to mention a Supreme Court decision specifically banning affirmative action across the college spectrum.

Harvard’s administration rejected the administration’s efforts, claiming the administration is infringing on its First Amendment rights.

The mention of Hillsdale College refers to that independent college in Michigan’s policy of never accepting a penny of federal money - even government scholarships – in order to maintain its independence from federal edicts.

Hillsdale College, as you might have guessed, is a defender of constitutional government.

Hillsdale’s president, Larry P. Arnn, who apparently abhors centralized government, cited in a recent article in the college’s magazine, Imprimis, the changes that have occurred in America over the years.

“(B)etween the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, the government owned the biggest asset any government ever owned: the western lands, most of the area of the country. The Homestead Act, signed by Lincoln in 1862, gave away 10% of the land of the United States to anyone who would live on it and work it...

“Over the past century, the transfer of assets has been moving the other way. Somehow, we have come to think that the fruited plains bear more fruit when the government owns them. Certainly, we should have national and state parks and open expanses. But to enjoy them, we must make a living. We must farm, mine, travel, and work as we please. We must act on our own initiative and by our own efforts. We need resources to live on and use, readily available to anyone who wants to work. That is the spirit of a free people,” he wrote.

I, personally, have never heard anyone say they were happy to see $2 billion-plus of government tax dollars a year go to an East Coast university with a $50 million plus trust fund.

Hanson notes that former President Barack Obama, among others, lauded Harvard’s rejection of the demands of the administration’s antisemitism task force. Obama claimed the Trump administration’s efforts were “ham-handed.”

Then Hanson asks this pertinent question: “But what academic freedom are Harvard and Obama talking about? “The freedom to discriminate and segregate by race in hiring, admissions, dorms, and graduations?

“The freedom of 500 Harvard students to crash the classes of others, shut down traffic, and harass students on the basis of their religion or views on Israel?

“Despite all of Harvard’s platitudes, its classrooms are still being disrupted. Jewish students remain fearful.”

Hanson also points out that unlike Hillsdale, Harvard, also a private school, has no problem with an activist federal government, as long as it is a liberal one forcing all sorts of Title IX or DEI initiatives on private and Christian colleges that apparently lost their autonomy by accepting federal money. It has said nothing when state and federal governments in the past gratuitously hounded Hillsdale.”

Hanson concludes: “So, Harvard loudly can set itself free by permanently pursuing its agenda on its own $50 billion endowment fund, in the same manner Hillsdale does quietly with its $1 billion – without the taxpayer’s dime, whether Democratic or Republican.”

Another national columnist, Laura Hollis, wrote in Sunday’s Kingfisher Times and Free Press that Harvard’s admission policies in the past have created problems for the school.

Many highly qualified students have been turned down by Harvard and other elitist schools and earned quality educations elsewhere leading to rewarding careers.

The result is that a trend often overlooked is the large number of Ph.D.s in the sciences and engineering as well as in the humanities, social sciences and business. Everyone with a doctorate cannot teach in the Ivy League, at Stanford or the University of Chicago. So where do they go? Wherever the jobs are. And this means that talented young faculty in all disciplines have found their way into every conceivable nook and cranny of higher education, including junior colleges, vocational programs and even online educational programs.

Hollis also remarks on another plus for the supposed lower-tier schools.

“Events in recent years have exposed the seamy underbelly of higher education, particularly at the most prestigious and highly ranked institutions in the country: antisemitism, racism, Marxist indoctrination, censorship and unconstitutional speech codes, vulgar behavior and even violence directed at speakers whose views are unpopular, denial of due process for students (and faculty) accused of sexual misconduct, defamation, laughably poor “scholarship” and plagiarism, grade inflation, violent “protests” and other appallingly bad behavior.”

And this doesn’t touch on the cost of a degree from an elite school – a quarter of a million dollars for a fouryear degree.