A university president makes a case against cowardice

Harvard's rolling over was particularly annoying, they have a 52 billion dollar endowment! If any university could afford to make a stand and lose funding over it it's Harvard. What's the point of this massive pile of money if you never dip into it in exceptional circumstances?

Harvard is a hedge fund that happens to do some education and research as a tax-advantaged side gig.

who gets to withdraw that money?

The university uses it for salaries, financial aid and other operations.

That surprised me. It set the pattern for lesser schools, too.

Universities typically only spend about 5% of their endowments per year, since it has to last forever. And much of it comes with restrictions on what it can be spent on, those come from the donors wishes. So money in the endowment that's for the theater department or to support an econ professorship can't be repurposed to support federal funds that supported cancer research.