[rayiner]

Going after universities using government contracts as leverage was literally on Trump’s platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. People voted the guy who promised to do that to be CEO of the branch of government that manages government contracts.

I don’t even know what to call someone who thinks the government should give private parties discretionary grants and contracts, but shouldn’t be able to use those to influence private actors. I’d call it libertarianism, but the principled libertarian would say we should abolish all funding to private universities.

[jhp123]

> I don’t even know what to call someone who thinks the government should give private parties discretionary grants and contracts, but shouldn’t be able to use those to influence private actors.

The idea that the sovereign should be limited to follow law, due process, and the advice of experts in the administration of grants goes back at least to the magna carta and is so widespread that you would use a more specific term — a "constitutional monarchist", "republican", "democrat", or "democratic socialist", etc., would all agree on this point. The opposite point of view however, has a name — authoritarian — so you could call such a person "anti-authoritarian".

[rayiner]

> The idea that the sovereign should be limited to follow law, due process

Due process protects rights and entitlements. Nobody has a right to receive discretionary government contracts or grants. To the extent we’re taking about preexisting contracts, the universities can sue to enforce whatever contractual rights they have. We have a robust system for recovering from the government for breaches of contract.

> and the advice of experts in the administration of grants

The “expert” stuff is the legacy of a scientific racist who didn’t trust democracy. It’s antithetical to democracy to suggest that the public should be forced to give discretionary grants and contracts to particular entities based on what “experts” think. Those experts are often themselves closely intertwined with the entities receiving the funding! They’re alums of Harvard, they met their spouse during grad school at Columbia, etc. They’ve got deep conflicts of interest.