Pun Salad

But that's exactly what greeted my bleary eyes this morn. Specifically: Stocks, Dollar Nosedive As Trump Flogs Fed.

Ah, well.

Bryan Caplan posts a long and relevant excerpt from his book The Myth of the Rational Voter, dealing with The Political Economy of Faith. (I've left his references intact.)

I read The Myth of the Rational Voter back in 2007; might be time for a reread.

Also of note:

• 

  "Who is more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?" Norbert Michel and Jerome Famularo argue that Trying to “Bring Back” Manufacturing Jobs Is a Fool’s Errand. There are graphs at the link, from Norbert's new book, Amazon link at your right.

  The Trump administration’s trade policy has taken a serious beating during the past few weeks, with good reason. Okay, for many good reasons, some of which we’ll expand on in this post.

  But what’s encouraging is that more and more polls suggest Americans understand these trade policies are harmful. And one explanation could be that most Americans recognize that service jobs are good.

  In other words, even though the Trump administration seems bent on “bringing back” manufacturing jobs to the United States, most Americans recognize that service sector jobs have already made America great.

  I realize that Norbert's "encouraging" news pales somewhat in the face of Bryan Caplan's discouraging words about voters.

• Perhaps remedial classes at the local community college would help? Tal Fortgang's LTE in yesterday's WSJ manages to capture my own thoughts precisely: Neither Harvard Nor Trump Gets a Good Grade (gifted link).

  Your editorial “Donald Trump Tries to Run Harvard” (April 16) offers an excellent analysis of the administration’s overreach in bringing Harvard to heel. Federal funding comes with civil-rights strings attached, not viewpoint-diversity strings. Yet no one in Cambridge, Mass., or Washington is handling this affair especially well. Both parties are lumping discrete issues together.

  The government has the better of at least one argument: It can and should use funding as leverage to force Harvard to confront its national-origin-discrimination problem. Harvard admits that it has had severe issues with anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli harassment, and though it settled with one group of Jewish plaintiffs, it remains locked in litigation with others. It is likewise under Education Department investigation for failing to handle discrimination adequately. The school can’t simply claim it is trying its best and expect the feds to go away. It certainly can’t do so without attempting to identify and expel students who harassed Jews and Israelis, or those who led groups that did the same. It is absurd to suggest that federal civil-rights enforcement is a violation of academic freedom. That’s an argument against civil-rights law, not heroic defiance of an overweening government.

  But the Trump administration does itself a disservice when it lumps in related but not fully congruent gripes about how Harvard conducts its academic affairs. The lack of viewpoint diversity may contribute to discrimination—e.g., biasing students against Zionism—but combined with tangential demands about DEI and administrative bloat, it looks as if it’s bullying for the sake of a larger anti-Harvard campaign. If the administration is going to freeze funding due to discrimination, it needs to ensure that it connects its means and ends logically and then follows the proper procedures so it doesn’t lose its progress in court.

  Well said, Tal. Although "connecting means and ends logically" doesn't seem to be Team Orange's strong point.

• In other good news… John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty think Trump Could Have a Strong Case to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status (gifted link). We've previously alluded to the precedent to which John and Robert refer:

  Thanks to a 1983 Supreme Court opinion widely hailed by progressives at the time, the Trump administration may have stronger grounds than at first appears to reconsider Harvard’s tax status. Harvard is a tax-exempt organization as an educational institution under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 501(c)(3) exempts organizations “operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes.” Tax-exempt status carries great advantages, because it frees Harvard from federal income tax and its donors can make tax-deductible contributions. Loss of the exemption would cost Harvard an estimated $500 million annually.

  But the IRS can remove 501(c)(3) designation if the organization engages in conduct that violates “established public policy.” The Supreme Court recognized this public policy doctrine in Bob Jones University v. United States (1983). Bob Jones was a private Christian university that prohibited interracial dating and marriage based on its understanding of biblical teachings. The IRS concluded that Bob Jones’s rule violated fundamental national policy. Agreeing with the IRS, the Supreme Court found that the institution’s purpose “must not be so at odds with the common community conscience as to undermine any public benefit that might otherwise be conferred.” It concluded, “it would be wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption to grant the benefit of tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory educational entities.”

  John and Robert also note the points on which "e the Trump administration has gone too far in its efforts to reshape Harvard." Which is a shame.

• I'm skeptical of Trump's negotiation talents. But let's see what Stanley Kurtz recommends anyway: Donald Trump vs. Harvard: A Negotiated Education Reform. He recommends this One Weird Trick:

  The solution is suggested by model legislation called General Education Act (GEA), a limited version of which just became law in Utah, and which is likely to be considered by other states in 2026. (I am a co-author of the model GEA.)

  The GEA works by establishing an independent School of General Education, where the governing dean and the newly recruited faculty are committed to a traditional “great books” approach. No doubt such a faculty would proportionately include more conservatives than are typical in academia, yet by no means will the scholars be of a single political stripe. There are still plenty of old-fashioned liberals who believe in a great books approach.

  The distinctive feature of this plan is that the new School of General Education is put in charge of teaching a set of great books and Western Civ–focused courses required of every student at the university in question. This magnifies the reach of a relatively limited number of new academic appointments, because every student has to take at least a few classic-style courses taught by teachers committed to traditionalist methods. Also, the independence of the School of General Education means that its hiring and governance cannot be hampered by hostile faculty or departments.

  Sounds crazy, but it just might work.