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“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” America’s philosopher laureate Yogi Berra once said. Wise counsel, but it’s difficult to see how Harvard wins its war of wills with President Donald Trump.
The oldest and most hallowed university in the country decided to fight Trump after he made a series of demands in April, most of which were reasonable. The reasons why they are fighting aren’t crystal clear, but they are discernable.
One could be sheer hubris. Harvard is Harvard; it thinks Trump a rube and cannot give in to him. In that case, its fate is sealed. Hubris comes before fall.
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It could also be that Harvard’s dons, and especially its president, Alan Garber, had had just about enough of being a punching bag for students. They knew that fighting a president who is disdained by students and its very leftist professoriate alike would win it accolades from both.
It did at this year’s graduation on May 29. The New York Times gleefully reported that “The mood at Harvard’s graduation ceremony is vastly different from the scene at last year’s, where the university’s leadership was frequently booed and hundreds walked out in protest over the university’s handling of Gaza protests. This year, Alan Garber, the school president, has received multiple standing ovations.”
But that also could be very short-sighted. Argentine military dictator General Leopoldo Galtieri also received the almost unanimous adulation of his countrymen when he invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982. Then when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took the islands back in a very short war, the national mood turned very ugly, and Galtieri was overthrown.
Trump’s and Harvard’s war of words started with a letter the administration sent the university back on April 11, outlining 10 demands.
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The administration, for example, asked that Harvard make “meaningful governance reform.” It also requested that it institute merit-based hiring, giving it an August deadline to “cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.”
In other words, the administration asked Harvard to abide by the law.
It also said the university had to reform international admissions so as to exclude “students hostile to the American values and institutions.” Again, common sense. Why would a university admit foreign students who hate Americans and their values?
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Some civil libertarians may have more trouble with the demand for Harvard to audit “the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity.” But Harvard is precisely in its current pickle because for years it has hired only liberal professors, producing the ideological imbalance we have now in the faculty lounge.
And nobody could argue with such administration demands as auditing programs and departments “that most fuel antisemitic harassment,” or discontinuing diversity, equity and inclusion “programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives.”
But Harvard did argue. On April 14, Garber fired back by writing a message to Harvard’s stakeholders refusing all the demands. “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote.
That very evening, Trump responded by freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year grants. And he hasn’t stopped.
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Since then, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security moved on May 22 to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students. Harvard Professor Kirsten Weld called it “an extinction-level event,” and it is easy to see why.
Foreign students account for almost 7,000 of Harvard’s students or 27% of the student body in 2024-2025. But the cost of tuition would be even higher. Foreign students, unlike American ones, tend to pay full freight. The hit to tuition could be as high as 40%.
Again, Harvard has a tough case to make. DHS says Harvard has allowed “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to make campus unsafe for Jews on campus.
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But Trump has kept punching. He has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and threatened to cancel all federal contracts with Harvard — around $100 million. Obviously, Trump has many arrows in his quiver, and even Harvard’s gargantuan $50 billion endowment could be threatened.
In an interview with the BBC recently, a reporter asked me why Trump was pursuing his crusade with Harvard. Doesn’t he have bigger things to do, like the economy and foreign policy?
It also said the university had to reform international admissions so as to exclude “students hostile to the American values and institutions.” Again, common sense. Why would a university admit foreign students who hate Americans and their values?
I answered her that Trump may not have read much cultural Marxism, but he understands that this woke mind virus started at our universities, and at the highest level. American taxpayers kept sending money to universities because they thought they were centers where culture would be transmitted to future generations. Instead, cultural Marxists used them as venues to kill the culture.
His fight with Harvard is a crusade, all right. And like all crusades, this one is about narrative.
Or, in Yogi’s immortal words, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
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