Which is worse: an institution being coerced into accepting a $500 million penalty (bribe), or an institution being punished and prosecuted for sticking to their absolutely legal and legitimate mission and values? It depends, I guess, on who we are talking about. If the first happens to be the wealthiest university in the country and the second a university with a long tradition of contrarian/libertarian thought, the calculus might get tricky.
What is certain is that the first (a wealthy institution paying a ransom) is hardly news. It might be a headline, but news it is not. The rich have paid their way out of authoritarian yolks for centuries. When they can’t pay their way out, when they can’t leverage their wealth to buy back into the system of power, they are often seen as victims of history, unwilling exiles who must now live off their offshore accounts from a palatial apartment on Champs Elysees. Anyway. Not an exceptional event. Awkward perhaps, given it happening in public, and given the unpalatable sense of having succumbed to the authoritarian state, but not unexpected. (Summers may have to sip cheaper champagne, and Pinker travel in discounted first class, but an existential threat this is not.)
The second is more concerning. A federal investigation into faculty engaged in one of the most basic forms of academic, shared governance (the production of a resolution) is a form of overreach and oppression that should keep us awake at night. This is frightening for much more than just the fact that it involves an overt attack on academic freedom and free speech. It is, too, a signal from the top to get the knives ready to dismantle yet again another institution that, unlike Harvard, lacks the relative independence and deep pockets that it would need to stand up in defense of its faculty and staff (George Mason’s Board of Visitors is packed with Youngkin friendly anti-wokers). By all measures, there is more at stake here than in Harvard’s pocket change bribe.