I'm a scientist and I've spent a lot of time at Harvard, including working there for years.

These demands seem on point to me. I see a lot of uninformed opposition in this thread, but I think most of you all don't have any idea how it actually is at elite universities.

- Political tests for employment, or continued employment. The UC system (a public system!) is one of the worst offenders here, but Harvard is really, really bad.

- Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion (or lack thereof). The number of academics who aren't even aware that this sort of discrimination is illegal is mind-boggling. I would say 9 months ago it was 80% or more. The number of emails I've received either indicating a candidate isn't viable because of his genitalia or skin color, or telling me this is the reason I didn't get the job is crazy. They literally don't know and don't care.

- Compelled speech. This is a bright line we have so far, as a society, successfully succeeded in not crossing. Harvard and other elite universities were crossing it, and the Biden admin's Title IX rules overtly crossed it. A bad look, to put it mildly.

- Widespread censorship, to the point where we (social scientists) have developed code to talk about certain things "nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus" hahaha...dear lord.

And these aren't small effects. It's not 55% / 45% type scenarios. You have to view the Administration's requests in the light of: Harvard is 95+% Blue Team, and that's largely because they actively filter. There are plenty of people who aren't willing to bend the knee who don't have jobs because of it. Harvard has created an intellectual monoculture. They want "diversity" in the sense that they want people who look different on the outside, but who are all the same on the inside.

Asking for monitoring to make sure they're no longer illegally and immorally discriminating in hiring and admission is warranted, indeed it would be kind of crazy to not monitor. They'll just continue racist and sexist hiring otherwise.

What's in this letter is a reasonable set of asks in response to a situation that is so off the rails it's hard to describe.