Reject All Subsidies

[The following represents a dissenting opinion on the issue of Federal funding for Harvard.]

THE GRAVY TRAIN is ending, and Harvard, the farm lobby, and the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) are demanding a return to the old levels of government subsidy.

The demands play upon a disingenuous theme. The threatened institutions ostensibly serve so crucial a function that citizens must endure IRS fishing expeditions into their pockets to finance them. Harvard has a holy mission to churn out graduate students, the better to enlighten dark corners of the nation; farmers must preserve the virginity of their soil, and the SACB must root out subversives who jeopardize national security--all paid for, to greater or lesser degree, with tax money.

It is time to recognize this swelling chorus as the refrain of a fat and experience racket. When a group in any society makes coercive claims to subsidy upon others, it implicitly assumes an entitlement to the lives and property of other individuals. The claim does not differ in essence from the one slave-holders imposed on slaves in the Old South: the group demands that others live for its sake. Profession of special worth does not justify coercive intervention on behalf of any interest group, no matter how skillfully the group may portray its aims as in the "common interest."

In recent weeks, President Nixon has begun to pull government away from a selfrighteous paternalism, suggesting that individuals "ask not what government can do for you: ask what you can do for yourself." The approach deserves to be heeded by groups and institutions that have made careers of living off subsidies. Harvard, which has bloated itself at the Federal trough for a number of decades, should lead the way by foregoing any further meals at public expense.