Stephen Downes

This is the one good thing about being a private university: the ability (and the right) to say 'no' to demands from an over-reaching government. Harvard's lawyers write, "The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government." This, frankly, should be the response of any university, whether publicly or privately funded, because the creation of a university, as opposed to (say) a department of education, is the creation of an institution where those specific rights and freedoms are necessary in order to create the benefits we all, as a society, enjoy.