Trump Wants to Make Harvard Great Again

Debra Saunders on May 28, 2025

WASHINGTON -- The status quo came tumbling down at Harvard after Hamas massacred 1,200 innocents on Oct. 7, 2023. As much of the world was revolted at the gratuitous slaughter, the swells at Harvard were working on a suitable statement. They deleted the word "violent" to describe the attack.

President Donald Trump will never forget how academia tried to airbrush over the left's antisemitic tendencies.

Now he's using eggheads' politics as a pretext for taking $3 billion in research grants for Harvard and transferring the money to trade schools.

"Harvard's ongoing inaction in the face of repeated and severe harassment and targeting of its students has at times grounded day-to-day campus operations to a halt, deprived Jewish students of learning and research opportunities to which they are entitled, and profoundly alarmed the general public," wrote Josh Gruenbaum of the General Services Administration as he instructed federal agencies to seek different vendors.

Trump's right about this: Violent crimes and property crimes on campus that would have put the average American behind bars somehow end with wrist-slapping. The Harvard Law Review even bestowed a $65,000 fellowship on a student who faced criminal charges for assaulting a Jewish student on campus. As the president told reporters Wednesday, "They're totally antisemitic at Harvard."

And: "I want Harvard to be great again."

Alas, they're slow learners around the Cambridge quad. On NPR, Harvard President Alan Garber argued against Trump's moves to withhold federal funds saying, "We shouldn't be in an echo chamber."

Has no one told Garber that Harvard is an echo chamber?

Of course Garber's heard that. The Harvard Crimson reported in 2023 that 77% of faculty identified as liberal or very liberal, while fewer than 3% of faculty identified as conservative.

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is a man in the middle. ACTA has been working to deliver true ideological diversity -- not the false diversity that rewards like-minded liberals -- by exposing students to the rough-and-tumble of spirited debate.

"For years, ACTA has said all of academia needs a course correction," Poliakoff offered.

Still, as Trump rightly challenges the ivory tower, Poliakoff doesn't want to see the administration adapt the same heavy-handed tactics to impose its values on others.

Poliakoff would like to see the president use his leverage to prompt universities to enforce their codes of conduct and prosecute those who destroy college buildings, obstruct student learning and hurt public safety officials. Which colleges and universities ought to have been doing all along.

"Public funding is not an entitlement," Poliakoff also noted, but he can't support eliminating research funding that had made America the world leader in innovation, to the benefit of all.

That's the thing about Trump. His instincts are right about how big government and big education have gone too far. But his suggested remedies can also be too much.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.

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