The federal government doesn’t ‘give’ money to Harvard. The $2.2 billion in frozen payments isn’t for Harvard sophomores’ tuition or library books.
The US government is buying services from Harvard: scientific, medical research and development.
These aren’t ‘woke donations’.
They are contracts. Proposed, reviewed, awarded, with metrics and deadlines and standards of performance.
Harvard is a government contractor in that sense — lab by lab, scientist by scientist — just the way any other company is a contractor.
That’s true of Columbia’s $400 million in ‘frozen’ contracts — and all the rest.
R1 research universities do crucial research the federal government can’t do itself, but that we as a nation have decided we need done.