Former NAACP director Cornell William Brooks laid into President Donald Trump's move to freeze billions in federal funding from Harvard University, after the prestigious institution rejected his demands to crack down on the political ideology of its faculty and student body — a similar ultimatum Trump used against Columbia University that that school ultimately complied with.
"We have a wonderful Constitution that contains a First Amendment, which this government, this administration is violating," Brooks told CNN's John Berman. "This is to say, the government does not get to dictate political ideology. It does not get to determine whether faculty or staff or too liberal to conservative to this, to that. The First Amendment has a little something to say about that."
But there's another federal law standing in the way, he continued.
"Title XI is that law which says you can't use government funds to discriminate. This is a law that was brought into being as a consequence of the blood sacrifice of civil rights workers and African Americans, and this administration has taken that law, turned it upside down, and used it to try to micromanage Harvard and essentially make it a satellite campus of the now-defunct Trump University. This is outrageous."
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"But even if you buy your arguments, and even if you admit that the administration is trying to micromanage Harvard University, it is their money," said Berman. "How much will the absence of that money impact Harvard?"
"Well, first of all, let's — John, I want to be very clear about this," said Brooks. "It's not their money. It's the money of the American taxpayer ... and Harvard uses taxpayer money to do research on Alzheimer's, to do research on all manner of illnesses, to advance human knowledge, to send teachers into communities to teach. The point being here is the government, as in the Trump administration, doesn't get to use taxpayer dollars to violate the First Amendment."
"When you read the president of Harvard's letter ... it makes it very clear," he added. "Harvard is not refusing to comply with the government demands, simply out of a matter of personal prerogative, institutional prerogative. It is not doing so because the demands themselves are unlawful. They're unconstitutional. This is not the way government is supposed to behave. And if this were done to any major corporation, everyone would understand. You don't really get to micromanage business. I was a lawyer in the United States Justice Department. I served as president and CEO of the NAACP. I've overseen federal investigations with serious settlements and demand letters. This is not that. This is — this is literally political ransom."
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