The true value of these luxury goods is likely closer to that appraised by those undergrads than by the author - i.e trash. Literally billions of dollars of unsold inventory are burnt and destroyed by Luxury brands to avoid marking them down to their correct market value. Cartier's parent company alone destroyed "400 million GBP" of watches in 2 years[1]. Why would you destroy billions of dollars of merchandise if they were actually worth that. I went down the rabbit hole recently after the LVMH tiktok scandal, and given the nature of modern supply chains and mass manufacturing, i believe the bulk of luxury clothing and accessories are likely made in Asia ( China, Bangladesh ) and Eastern Europe. Then they use various techniques to obfuscate the country-of-origin. I cant shake off the impression that the luxury goods market is mostly smoke and mirrors of artificial scarcity, paid celebrity endorsements and potemkin factories.
The techbros aren't too worried. Elon, Peter Thiel and the Paypal mafia put Trump into the white house and have a direct line and special carvout exemptions. JD Vance was groomed by Thiel and is a heartbeat away from the presidency.
If you read the original list of demands[1],very few of the bullet points seems to be actually about the protests and anti-semitism, with the bulk of the demands involving DEI , reverse-DEI (i.e. more inclusion of white, conservative voices ) and greater federal control and oversight over Harvard's administration. If you read Harvards's response[2], you will see that the university is more than willing to co-operate on 'anti-semitism' and suppression of the protestors, but are pushing back against all the other items.
It seems that what is portrayed as a dispute over Palestine, antisemitism and qamas is actually a cover for a power-struggle between the liberals and conservatives ( such as the Heritage foundation, Project 2025, and Yarvinites)
edit : But when i think of it more, maybe it is about Israel and Zionism but over a longer time-scale than recent events. If you look at some of the early anti-'woke' and anti-left movements like the self-proclaimed 'Intellectual dark web', lot of them are zionists who viewed the growing liberal disenchantment with zionism in the college campus and left-wing activism (including pro-palestine activism like the BDS movement) as an existential threat to Israel.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/18/richemont-d...