Streetwise Professor

Trump’s ongoing war against Harvard is fascinating. As is typical, I largely agree with his choice of target (the “objective” in military parlance), and find his tactics over the top. But these tactics are typical of him. As with tariffs, immigration, and pretty much everything else, he is making maximalist demands, for a variety of reasons.

One reason is that the process is the punishment. Forcing Harvard to fight on many fronts is draining, financially and psychologically, and inevitably creates intense tensions within the university. This sets up a battle of wills that Harvard is not well positioned to win.

Another is that like almost all legal confrontations, this one is a framework for negotiations. And Trump’s negotiation style is to make myriad maximalist demands not in the expectation that all will be met, but that enough concessions will be extracted that he will be satisfied, even though his apparent concessions will lead to idiotic TACO taunts.

As for the substance of the demands that have been made and sanctions that have been imposed, there are deep ironies. One irony is that like the rest of the elite, Harvard harrumphs about Trump trampling the rule of law, but the justification for Trump’s assault is that Harvard flouts the law. In particular, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard nakedly engaged in Constitutionally barred discrimination on the basis of race in admissions, but continues to engage in discrimination in other policies. Another legal issue is whether Harvard is in compliance with laws and regulations regarding disclosures about foreign funding and foreign students.

Substantively Harvard is on weak grounds on these issues. Whether the sanctions levied by Trump will survive legal challenge is doubtful, but again the mere litigation of these issues is very problematic for Harvard.

Another irony, which has received little attention, is that the richest educational institution in the world, with the richest endowment and richest group of alumni, and which is institutionally a big proponent of redistributive policies, as is the vast bulk of its almost uniformly leftist faculty, somehow thinks that it deserves billions of funding wrested from the US taxpayers. That is, Harvard and its acolytes are outraged that Trump is trying to stop taking from the poor to give the rich. How dare he!

And Trump very cleverly has cast a bright light on this hypocrisy by threatening to provide the funds taken from Harvard to trade schools.

Harvard of course frames this contest as one over academic freedom. But this argument only betrays Harvard’s sense of entitlement. It is entitled to government money, and how dare the piper call the tune!

Harvard and its defenders also decry the great advances in knowledge that will be sacrificed if it is denied these funds. I for one am skeptical about the return on many of these grants, especially given the large overhead allocations that go to funding administrative bloat, and to subsidizing the leftist indoctrination that pervades the university.

So rather than being served up a dog’s breakfast of anecdotes, we would be better served by a rigorous, scholarly evaluation of the knowledge bang we’ve gotten for the taxpayer buck.

Amusingly, Harvard’s pose as a bastion of the pursuit of truth is rather seriously undermined by a recent anecdote, namely, the defenestration of star researcher Francesca Gino, whose research was proved to be fraudulent. (NB: Gino’s salary was a cool $1 million).

Harvard revokes tenure of Francesca Gino, once a star faculty member—a severe and rare penalty in academia https://t.co/6Vg3JnNq1R

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 28, 2025

The treatment of another star–this one legitimate, in contrast to the fraud Gino–Roland Fryer, also gives the lie to Harvard’s pose as being the defender of the pursuit of truth regardless of where it leads.

Targeting grants that may well support beneficial research serves a tactical purpose, related to the internal tensions mentioned earlier. The rigorous faculties and researchers have a tremendous incentive to rise up against an administration dominated by non-rigorous ideologues.

The battle over funding points to a larger issue, specifically, the problematic nature of the codependence between science and the government, an issue that Eisenhower pointed out before I was born.

The most recent Trump fusillade relates to foreign students. But this matter demonstrates that Trump’s war on Harvard isn’t just on Harvard. It is on American academia.

Hard on the heels of the restrictions on Harvard specifically, Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio announced a pause on the granting of all student visas, to prepare for a far more inquisitive (not to say inquisitorial) vetting process. Moreover, he announced that Chinese applicants would be subject to special scrutiny, and that those connected to the CCP, and those planning to study sensitive subjects (i.e., scientific disciplines, rather than fluffy ones) would not receive visas.

To which the CCP lost its shit, claiming that this targeting was discriminatory.

Well, yes, yes it is! And justifiably so. Discriminating between friends and enemies is essential to survival. China is (by its own declaration) an enemy of the US, and uses students as soldiers in its asymmetric war against America. Specifically, the CCP uses students as a major component of its expansive espionage and IP theft efforts in the US. (This article in the Stanford Review about Chinese espionage there is quite interesting, but not necessarily that revealing–such espionage is an open secret).

So cry more, CCP. The more you cry the more you reveal that this hits you where it hurts.

Trump’s attack on foreign admits at Harvard is therefore not a one-off. It is part of a broader agenda. And as I’ve written before, with Trump it’s all about China.

And in fact the entire assault on Harvard is not about Harvard per se. It is pour encourager les autres. Making an example of Oberlin would hardly make a ripple outside Ohio. Making an example out of Harvard gets everybody’s attention. Meaning that this is a highly, highly leveraged battle.

It is a battle in a wider war. American academia is an isolated, elitist enclave largely out of step with the country as a whole. Indeed, it is not hyperbole to say that American academia–especially in the social sciences and humanities–is at root anti-American. And Harvard is the prime example of isolated, elitist, anti-Americanism in academia. By fighting Harvard Trump is trying to wrench academia into the mainstream, or at least closer to it.

So like pretty much everything Trump does, the purpose and ramifications go far, far beyond the policy specifics that attract virtually all the attention. Those are just tactical elements in a far broader, and in fact socially revolutionary, strategy.