How War, Money And The Quest For Discovery Entwined The Us Government And Universities

The showdown between the Trump administration and Harvard University is spotlighting bare-knuckled politics and big dollar figures. But in the battle of the moment, it's easy to lose sight of a decades-long alliance between the U.S. government and the nation's most prominent universities, forged to fight a world war.

For more than 80 years, that interdependence has been prized by academic leaders and politicians of both parties as a paragon for American discovery and innovation.

"In some ways I think it's a core part of the story of contemporary America," said Jason Owen-Smith, a University of Michigan professor who studies the scope of research on the nation's campuses. "Harvard's an exemplar, but it's not the only one."

That explains the more than 2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to Harvard frozen this week by administration officials after the school defied their demands to limit activism on campus.

A link that dates to World War II