The current motto of Harvard is "Veritas" meaning "Truth". Which is hilarious because most people there don't think truth even exists. But Harvard's original motto was "For The Glory Of Christ." How far they've fallen! And it might be Trump who hits the final blow.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Thanks for taking time to listen to this podcast. I hope what we've been putting together here has been helpful for you. We talked a bit about Harvard today. Trump v Harvard.
We've been talking about education a lot. We do on the show a lot because it's the root of almost everything. We used to have an education system that, where the purpose was to cultivate virtue. And only recently have we changed the purpose of education for college and career readiness. And we failed at both. Kids can't read, kids are lazy, entitled, don't work hard, don't care, and don't have virtue. So they're not college career ready.
Harvard now has remedial math classes. Harvard has remedial math classes. So they're not college ready, they're not career ready. And certainly virtue has not been cultivated. But if you work on cultivating virtue, then of course there'll be college and career ready
and better people. We have strayed very far off the path. But with Harvard and Trump, it's pretty interesting. Trump wrote a letter, his administration wrote a letter to Harvard basically saying, stop being racist and woke or else we're not gonna give you $2.2 billion
like we normally do. The federal government, you, the taxpayer, gives Harvard $9 billion a year. They have a $53 billion endowment, which results in them spending out of that or from that 2.4 billion a year.
It's 37% of their operating budget. We give them 9 billion total, but 7 billion of that goes to 11 different hospitals that are affiliated with Harvard. So they're just focusing on 2.2 billion that goes to other things, 2.2 billion dollars.
So it's saying if you don't stop being racist in your admissions and your hiring, and if you don't stop being woke in general, we're not gonna give you this 2.2 billion dollars. And we went over in detail, that's the gist of it. They're demanding merit-based hiring reform,
merit-based admissions reform, international admissions reform. Like, hey, maybe you stop letting people into Harvard from around the world who hate us and who are anti-Semitic, maybe. Stop with that.
Viewpoint diversity in admissions and hiring came out that 97% of all Harvard faculty who donated donated to Democrats, of course, and an end to DEI. So those were the demands from the Trump administration and the president of Harvard said, no. Said no government, regardless of which party's in power,
should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
Okay.
That's fine. Then I guess you won't be needing this $9 billion anymore, private school. That's what it says here. It says, no government should dictate to private universities. You're, like, are you?
If you get $9 billion? We'll just call it the two. We'll go with the two. If you get $2 billion from the federal government, are you really a private school anymore? So the way the letter was written
and the demands that Trump made in it, the Trump administration, led me to believe that they don't want Harvard to actually agree to these terms. It's a win-win for Trump. Either Harvard does agree to him and we're like, okay, or they don't and we cannot give them $2.2 billion,
but it's even more than that. There's two other things that conservatives around Trump have wanted to do to universities and that is tax their endowments and take away their 501c3 status. Here's what Trump wrote.
Perhaps Harvard should lose its tax exempt status, be taxed as a political entity, if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired supporting sickness. Remember, tax exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest. Now this happens all the time where Trump will do a thing
and then the media acts like this is unprecedented, it's never happened before, it's so evil and awful and wicked and terrible. This has happened before. The Supreme Court saw or heard a case against Bob Jones University, it was 1983.
And the case was on whether the IRS could revoke the tax-exempt status of a religious university if their policies were racially discriminatory. Bob Jones had a policy that banned interracial dating and marriage among their students. And they said, this is our sincerely held
religious beliefs, First Amendment rights. And it's the same thing Harvard says, right? Trump comes in and says, you have to do XYZ. And they say, no, it's our First Amendment rights. We don't have to do those things. Okay, Trump says, well, we're gonna revoke your 501C3.
Oh, you can't do that. In an eight to one decision, the Supreme Court said, yes, we can. The opinion was written by the chief justice. He said the government is a fundamental overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education. And Harvard just lost a Supreme Court case, not put a year and a half ago, where the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard's admission policies were indeed racist against Asian people in particular. The Supreme Court in 1983 said tax-exempt status under 501c3 is only available to organizations
that serve a public purpose and do not violate established public policy, such as the prohibition of racial discrimination. Again, Supreme Court ruled, not even two years ago, that what Harvard did with their emissions for a long time was racist,
and that's true also in their hiring practices and other things. So that's the news on that. We'll see how that plays itself out. I brought up this question on the air though, that does this set a precedent
for when a Democrats back in power that they'll go after the 501c3 status of churches? Now, there's a general question here that we need to figure out as a MAGA movement, if you're in the MAGA movement. And there's this hesitation, oh, we can't do that
because then when the Democrats get in party, they'll do it to us. We don't wanna start a precedent. And it turns out pretty much every single thing that's happened so far has happened before. Like there's been precedent to it.
Trump's not doing anything new or different. We talk about the tariffs. Oh, the tariff never been done before. The very first bill that Congress ever passed was a tariff bill. The very first one.
Oh, this deportation, deporting people like this has never happened before. Yes, it did. Eisenhower, Operation Wetback. All this stuff has happened before. There's nothing new with most of this stuff. It's just been a long time, sure.
Oh, no presidency's ever taken away the 501c3 status of a university? Yes, they did, which I told you about. Supreme Court case, 1983. So all this stuff's happened before. So this argument that, oh, it's precedent. He's creating precedent. No, the precedent's already been set. And I don't know if the
conservative movement should operate in fear that, oh, we don't want to do this because they may do it back to us because they've been doing it back to us. This is why Hillsdale doesn't take any federal money because they know that the federal government uses that, those strings attached to control the university. So we have been in an active state
of the federal government controlling universities who take federal money, which is pretty much all of them, except for Hillsdale, maybe a few other. So then Trump uses, is now in power, and uses the same tool, the same strings to do what a majority of Americans
want the universities to do. And now it's this huge outrage, never done before. No, definitely done before. Done always actually, just never this way, in this direction I mean. That's what they're really outraged about.
Not the power, but the one who happens to be wielding the power right now. So the concern is, well, should we not do it? Because then if we do it, then they'll do it back to us. They've been doing it back to us. And do you really think they'll stop if we take the quote unquote high road and don't do it to them right now?
So that's a bigger question, but specifically on this one, are you afraid, is there a concern, that if the left takes over again, oh, by the way, the way to resolve this also is to make sure we win every election. But if a Democrat or someone on the left ever takes power again, will they use this power
to take away the 501c3 status of churches? Now we were talking to a congressman recently who actually just wrote a bill that protects 501c3 status specifically of churches, so that's good. But regardless of that, what would happen if a government one day did that?
We got a caller from Tennessee, and I wanna play what he said about it.
I've been an associate pastor of church several different times from different places, and I would just as soon just go ahead and drop it and let them have it because you know it's coming. They've already started doing it. And some churches coming in and say,
you can't preach against this sin or that sin. Going back to the same thing that we had when you read the gospels about John the Baptist, when he come in and he told me, he said, you can't have her. That's adultery. You can't have your brother's wife. And they beheaded him.
So, I mean, that's the kind of thing that's coming to. So they're gonna come in, and they've already come into some churches and said that's hate speech, to preach against that kind of sin. So they're gonna tell us what we can
and what we cannot preach and tell us we're going to pull our 501Cs, we'll pull it, because that money, God don't care. God owns everything. So the money is not a big deal. I know some churches, that's what they're all about, but the churches that are about spreading the gospel and letting people know and fathering the kingdom of God, they don't care about the money.
We need money to operate, but God can provide what we can't. So I'll say let them have it, if that's what they want, to keep them out of our churches and keep them from telling us what we're going to preach. But even when they do that, I'm telling you, they're still going to come in and they're going to try it, and they're going to try to force us to not preach
against certain sins, because they're going to say it's a hate speech to do that. Yeah, I mean that's that you have the right take. That's I 100% agree. Would, do you think people would not donate money to the church or to a religious organization because it's not tax-exempt anymore? No, they will. They'll
probably give more. Yeah.
Certain people might not cause they're just using it as a tax write off. They might,
they might cut back if they say that you've given money to the church. It's not a tax write off anymore. Some of these bigger churches, mega churches with them are their big donors would probably cut back on some of their giving. But the rural churches and stuff that we have around in Tennessee and the other areas, they're not going to stop giving to their churches because they lost their 501c. That's not why they're there. There's a few of them there, but most of them are there because they love God and
they want to know more about God, and they're about trying to help the community, and they want to know more about God and they're about trying to help the community and they're about trying to get to heaven and increase their rewards by the things that they do here. Yeah, they'll get... I think... It's not about people.
I think that is the right take. Tim here is not operating out of a posture of fear. That is for certain. And of course I'm gonna go right to Joseph. He went to John the Baptist but I'm gonna go to Joseph. Joseph hated by his brothers, left for dead, sold to slavery, you know the rest of the story, and then forgave his brothers. And the brothers were so worried that Joseph would kill him. But Joseph told them, Genesis 50, 20, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
Man, never forget that. What they meant for evil, God meant it for good. Our timelines may not be the same. That's God's. We just got to get over that. Joseph had some ups and downs in the meantime, but in the end, God meant it for good. So I say take away the 501c3 of Harvard. By the way, original motto of Harvard, Harvard's motto right now is Veritas, which means truth, which is pretty funny because people there don't think that truth exists.
But do you know the original motto of Harvard? The original motto of Harvard is for the glory of Christ. That's where Harvard used to be. Their motto was for the glory of Christ. That's where Harvard used to be. Their motto was for the glory of Christ. All the Ivy League schools started as seminaries. How far we've fallen.
So take away their 501c3. And if you want to retaliate and take away the church's 501c3 or religious organizations or whatever, I agree with Tim in Tennessee, that's fine. Anything that separates the chaff from the wheat, anything that scares away the lukewarm is a good thing.
What was meant for evil, God will meet it for good. Mike said it out, locals.com, transcript. By the way, he was from West Tennessee, that caller. My first stop after college was in Jackson, Tennessee. That is where I really learned to become a conservative. Meeting with, talking with every single day for four years, the people of West Tennessee.
I am the West Tennessee brand of conservatism. And my wife is the East Tennessee brand of conservatism and my wife is the East Tennessee brand of conservatism which is different. It's a fun little mix maybe one day we'll do a sociological analysis of either but it's fun to hear people from West Tennessee who I think are fearless. Mike Slater dot locals dot com transcript commercial-free on the website, Mike Slater dot locals dot com transcript commercial-free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript commercial-free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
