If accepting public money is the criteria for waiving your rights, wouldn’t that apply to anyone who attended public school, took a mortgage interest tax deduction, or cashed a Social Security check?
Those are individuals. Harvard is an institution, and in accepting public money, it falls into a gray area where it might be considered a state sponsored institution.
As to your three examples... public schools are "we paid for a government service," mortgage interest deduction is "I get to keep a bit more of my money," and we've been told a zillion times that SS is "our money, being returned to us." No matter the sophistry of that last, the big difference is that Harvard is glomming OPM, where individuals are merely getting stuff they've paid for.
If you are paying tax deductible mortgage interest and have a couple of tax deductible kids in free public schools, you are paying less taxes than (and in effect being subsidized by) a childless apartment dweller with the same income. (of course, whether the school is any good is another story)
Here's another take. Public accommodation laws prohibit businesses with public interface from discriminating. The same rule should apply to schools, no?
If we get rid of public accommodation laws, and Harvard, with its massive endowment, gets off the public teat, then, sure, discriminate away and let the market sort it out.
Amen brother 😃
The right to say no has become grotesquely complicated.
Applying this principle, should Harvard, as a private organization, be allowed to continue race-based affirmative action?
Harvard could, if it eschewed all public money. It gets more than half a billion a year from the government, however.
If accepting public money is the criteria for waiving your rights, wouldn’t that apply to anyone who attended public school, took a mortgage interest tax deduction, or cashed a Social Security check?
Those are individuals. Harvard is an institution, and in accepting public money, it falls into a gray area where it might be considered a state sponsored institution.
As to your three examples... public schools are "we paid for a government service," mortgage interest deduction is "I get to keep a bit more of my money," and we've been told a zillion times that SS is "our money, being returned to us." No matter the sophistry of that last, the big difference is that Harvard is glomming OPM, where individuals are merely getting stuff they've paid for.
If you are paying tax deductible mortgage interest and have a couple of tax deductible kids in free public schools, you are paying less taxes than (and in effect being subsidized by) a childless apartment dweller with the same income. (of course, whether the school is any good is another story)
All true, but just one of countless inequities in our tax code.
Here's another take. Public accommodation laws prohibit businesses with public interface from discriminating. The same rule should apply to schools, no?
If we get rid of public accommodation laws, and Harvard, with its massive endowment, gets off the public teat, then, sure, discriminate away and let the market sort it out.