Harvard University’s lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from freezing billions of dollars of federal funding encapsulates a tendency among those who receive grants and other taxpayer largesse to treat these subventions not as privileges but as entitlements.

There is an old insightful maxim that he who pays the piper calls the tune. It should apply as much to the nation’s most prestigious university as it does to everyone else. And as a practical matter, it does, or will. It is patently absurd for Harvard to claim that it must be allowed to hypothecate billions of dollars, to be dependent on federal handouts, in order to be “independent.”

Harvard could ensure real and complete independence the same way Hillsdale and some other colleges do, by refusing to take even one red cent of federal money. This would leave it free to run its academy in whatever way it sees fit. 

People who hold out their hat in one hand demanding money, and brandish a weapon in the other hand, are called highwaymen. They are not standing for principle, as Harvard pretends to be in its lawsuit, but are threatening our elected government........

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