A different question about then at are case, unrelated to issues of race. Are colleges the equivalent of soft-drink sellers? Harvard tried hard to keep its admission process secret, and apparently drew analogies to the trade secrets of for profit corporations, which get legal protection ( as an example, the formula for the soft drink Coke). While trade secret laws protect the sellers of fizzy drinks from being copied by the sellers of other fizzy drinks, I was surprised to hear such an argument put forth by a nonprofit corporation receiving enormous government aid, such as Harvard. Do nonprofits supposedly operating for the public good have a right to such secrecy, or should we expect transparency as,a condition of the nonprofit status?
Sorry about the auto correct in the first line, the reference is the current Harvard case
Does the Metropolitan museum have an obligation to tell other museums ahead of time which works of art, and how much they are prepared to pay, when it is bidding on a painting at auction? Does a non-profit hospital have an obligation to tell the public that it is courting a new head of surgery from another hospital? Should we compel the Leukemia Society to share its donor mailing list with the Cancer society?
I am not sure why being a non-profit means you don’t get to maintain some level of proprietary information. Non-profits disclose relevant financial information on their 990’s. Must EVERYTHING be public?
Don’t understand your position at all.
“Do nonprofits supposedly operating for the public good have a right to such secrecy”
Yes, they have the same interests that for-profit institutions do. They are expected to be competitive in their own space, protect their trademarks, etc. They’d sue me if I tried to call my counseling practice “Hanna’s Harvard Path,” and rightly so.
There’s no reason to think it would serve their public interest mission for non-profits to lack those rights.
If you take away the rights of non-profits to own assets then they will all switch to for profit status.