Photo: Sophie Park/The New York Times/Redux
Of the ten bullet-pointed demands in the Trump administration’s imperious letter to Harvard University, this one rises to Vonnegutian heights: “The University shall commission an external party … to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.”
That’s real, by the way. The federal executive branch — in an administration that purports to be “conservative” — has demanded a private university hire a firm to audit all its students and teachers to make sure their overall thinking is acceptable to the government or else face a massive financial penalty. And, the letter continues, if Harvard doesn’t have the appropriate distribution of thought, the university must fix it; maybe expel some heretics and bring in others who think in a manner more pleasing to the government. Imagine for a moment if the Biden administration had made similar demands of BYU or the Citadel. Heck, pick any president in history and any college you’d like; the point holds.
The New York Times reported last week that the letter was authentic — it actually did come from the Trump administration — but was sent out mistakenly, before it had been fully vetted and approved. In a sense, it’s reassuring to know this madcap missive had not been green-lit at the highest levels; incompetence swamps intent, it turns out. Yet the White House dug in and defended itself by claiming, “It was malpractice on the side of Harvard’s lawyers not to pick up the phone and call the members of the antisemitism task force who they had been talking to for weeks.” Makes total sense: It’s actually Harvard’s fault, because the letter is so outrageous they should have assumed it was sent in error. (Again: This is real.)
The letter lays out a series of demands beyond the comprehensive institutional audit for ideological purity. Harvard must change its admissions process, revamp its hiring practices, get rid of DEI programs, and overhaul its student disciplinary procedures. If the University fails to comply, the government warns, it will lose billions of dollars in federal funding — much of which ordinarily goes to cutting-edge medical, scientific, and technological research.
I’ll offer two stipulations. First, Harvard leans left — hard left, even — as do most elite American universities. So what? Any university may decide on its own that it wants to tack more to the center or even more to the left. I’d love to see Harvard moderate some of its dogmatic liberal tendencies and broaden its acceptance of centrist and conservative thinking (the real kind), but that’s entirely up to the school, not the U.S. government.
Second, Harvard is ungodly rich. Once again: So what? Maybe that $53 billion endowment makes the school an unsympathetic victim, but that has nothing to do with its constitutional rights and academic freedoms. (I went to Harvard Law School; as widely reputed, one never passes on a chance to mention that fact, even when couched as a journalistic disclosure.)
Harvard has now sued, and it will win. (There will be a hearing on Monday.) One of the lead attorneys for Harvard is Robert Hur, the former Trump-nominated U.S. Attorney and special counsel on the Joe Biden classified-documents case. He evoked the screeching ire of Democrats who accused him of pro-Trump bias in his final report, which referenced Biden’s age and diminished memory.
Harvard argues in its complaint, first, that the government threatens to punish the school and its people based on the content of their collective speech and thought, in violation of the First Amendment. It’ll be tough for the defendants to refute the university’s core claim about policing private speech when that’s exactly what the Trump administration states it intends to do in its shakedown letter. And Harvard raises a technical (also strong) claim that the federal government can’t withdraw federal funding unless it first complies with certain procedural requirements; the Trump administration has done no such thing.
A White House spokesperson responded to the lawsuit: “The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end.” Once again, it’s that endowment. They’re rich! Who cares what they say? Why should they have rights? Let’s get ’em!
While Harvard holds strong, Columbia has buckled. The esteemed alma mater of Alexander Hamilton, Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama agreed in an effort to preserve its federal funding to overhaul aspects of its curriculum and governance policy to the liking of the Trump administration. “This is a shameful day in the history of Columbia,” as one former Columbia professor put it, noting the deal would “endanger academic freedom, faculty governance, and the excellence of the American university system.” And on a practical level, who’s to say the administration will play fair and accept whatever reforms Columbia adopts? That’s the problem with any shakedown; you never appease the extortionist by paying him off.
The slippery slope here is plain. The Trump administration has already targeted a roster of influential universities, and there’s no reason to think they’ll let up. What’s the downside to the administration? They have no concern with public perception of the attempted university takeovers — it’s good politics for Trump by some measures. And if the government loses the court cases, so what? They’re right back to the status quo. Eventually, every major university will have to decide to go the Harvard route and fight or to bail out like Columbia.
Perhaps most insidiously, the administration marches its demands onto campus largely under the banner of combating antisemitism. I have studied and reported on antisemitism a bit; I’ve even experienced it. (Check out my public mentions on social media pretty much any time I’m on air.)
So I’ll speak for myself here: No thanks. I’m deeply grateful to those who fight meaningfully against antisemitism, especially to non-Jews. Plenty of conservatives, including members of this administration, have done just that, and Harvard has historically failed to adequately address the problems brewing in its very own yard.
But the Trump administration’s demand letter to Harvard has little to do with the fight against antisemitism. Demanding ideological audits and proposing a protest mask ban under the guise of deterrence is a Trojan horse, an artifice designed to slip inside the gates and let the government run amok. How exactly does the administration protect Jews by micromanaging the ideological composition of the student body? How exactly does it help Jews to cut off funding for cancer research?
Harvard is right to fight back, and the government is wrong — legally and beyond — for its attempted takeover of our universities. For the Trump administration to cloak its incursion in the righteousness of fighting antisemitism isn’t just nonsensical. It trivializes the real struggle.
This article will also appear in the free CAFE Brief newsletter. You can find more analysis of law and politics from Elie Honig, Preet Bharara, Joyce Vance, and other CAFE contributors at cafe.com.
