Less than a week before
Harvard’s graduation ceremony in May, 2025, and about a month after Trump had frozen
$2.2 billion in federal funding that would have gone to Harvard and then
threatened to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, an Obama-appointed
U.S. district judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump
administration’s order that foreign students at Harvard must either transfer to
other universities or leave the United States, effective immediately. In
its complaint filed with the district court, Harvard argues that DHS Secretary
Kristi Noem violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law. It requires
that a rational basis be given by the federal government, which must take administrative-law
steps before such an order can be definitively executed against a university.
Even then, a university can appeal the last administrative-law decision to federal
district court. At the very least, a university must be provided with the
alleged violation of visa law and given the chance to make corrections or defend
itself rather than be caught off-guard by a fait accompli by fiat. Less noticeable
in the midst of the brawl, it is no small matter that a director of the federal
security agency so brazenly and obviously violated administrative-procedure law.
At the very least, it is duplicitous and hypocritical for a government official
tasked with enforcing law against criminals to knowingly violate law to which
she herself is subject in her official capacity. At the very least, Noem’s
conduct should raise concerns regarding the need for greater oversight over DHS
by Congress and whether it should be easier for Congress to remove a Cabinet-level
political appointee. Perhaps it should be within the purview of a federal judge
to suspend and even dismiss a Cabinet secretary judged to have violated federal
law in an official capacity. In the context of an increasingly imperial
presidency, more checks are arguably necessary. This is not, however, the topic
at hand; instead, my thesis here is that even though Harvard should indeed
pursue its case in federal court against the Trump Administration, and the
university’s values are superior to the way in which Yale has capitulated to that
government, Harvard’s administration could improve the university by exercising
the sort of maturity that recognizes the kernels of truth in the otherwise spurious
claims. Such maturity would be two degrees of separation from the mentality of
Yale’s administration with respect to spying on student with the help of the
FBI.
As the wealthiest university
in the U.S., if Harvard could not push back against such a breach of administrative
law, then other universities in the U.S. could be in real trouble should they
allow their students and faculty to exercise the constitutional right of
free-speech in a way that the Trump Administration does not appreciate. Within
the Ivy League, is notable that Harvard’s response to pressure from the Administration
stands in stark contrast to those of Yale and Columbia, the latter two taking
the route of capitulation albeit by different means. When I was a student at
Yale, some fellow Yalies used to tease Princeton students at home hockey and
basketball games by saying, “It’s Yale and Harvard, not Harvard-Yale, and Princeton
doesn’t matter.” For my analysis here, Columbia doesn’t matter, and Harvard
deserves to come before my alma mater, Yale.
Whereas the Yale
administration had internalized Trump’s authoritarianism by turning that
university into a police-state of two police departments (one being
local) and a department of security, quasi-police, employees, Harvard’s administration
was pushing against tyranny. Although the students at both universities were
paying the price, they were doing so in different ways. Whereas at Yale the
security apparatus had gone into overdrive at the expense of the comfort of
students on the campus from being perpetually spied on, Harvard’s foreign
students feared that they might be kicked out of the U.S., though claims by
some Harvard undergraduate foreign students that they were in “pure panic” and
being disrespected by the Trump Administration may be hyperbolic. Trump’s argument
has been with Harvard’s administration; just because people are affected by a conflict
does not necessarily mean that they are direct parties. Let’s reserve pure
panic to students facing immediate deportation or arrest without any restraining
order on the government by a judge.
In any public dispute,
moreover, it is wise and prudent for one of the combatants or even a third party
who could be adversely affected not to exaggerate or vilify one of the two sides.
There could even be a kernel of truth behind the irrational and excessively hostile
behavior of one of the two main combatants. Although the charge of antisemitism
at Harvard is utterly false, as if protests against Israel committing crimes
against humanity and war crimes were synonymous with attacking Jews as an ethnic
group that extends beyond Israel, a kernel of truth may be in Trump’s view that
Harvard has been too accommodating both to 1) the “woke” racist and anti-man
ideology, whose believers can easily blow things out of proportion cognitively
and emotively out of sheer, prejudicial spite, and 2) the Chinese Communist
Party. In the heat of battle, kernels can be easily overlooked as mud is being
thrown.
A month or two prior to its
demand that Harvard’s foreign students either transfer or leave the U.S.
immediately, the Trump administration had demanded information from Harvard University
on the political activities of foreigners there, including whether they had taken
part in protests for human-rights in Gaza, as if valuing human rights were a sordid
enterprise and thus to be discouraged rather than applauded. To Trump, taking a
stand for human rights in Gaza was tantamount to being antisemitic. Harvard
claimed to have provided the requested information, but the Trump
administration demurred without explanation, and widened its accusation to Harvard
being supportive of China’s Communist Party. Harvard’s school of government may
have accepted money from China’s communist government. Also, Prof. Fairbanks of
Harvard’s Chinese studies supported that government, whereas scholars on China
at Yale such as Prof. Spence, under whom I was a teaching assistant, tended to
favor the Republic of China. To the extent that Trump was right about Harvard’s
connection with China’s autocratic regime, the charge of antisemitism against
Harvard made by both Summers and Trump may thus be a red herring unintentionally
diverting attention away from real lapses at Harvard.
Furthermore, the Trump
Administration claimed that Harvard’s affirmative-action and related diversity
programs were racist because Caucasian people were not included and may even
have been subject even just to “soft” discrimination in admissions’ decision-making
that looks for clues of ethnic or racial identity in application essays, as if a
person’s background were synonymous with having different ideas.
Speaking of ideas, President Trump
was also against a university receiving so much money from the federal
government encouraging (or looking the other way) as the closed-minded, excessively
sensitive and yet intolerant “woke” ideology dominated at Harvard to such an
intensity that students having ideas running afoul of that ideology felt
pressure not to share such ideas even in class. Trump’s argument was that the
hegemony of that ideology at Harvard made students and faculty holding opposing
ideologies or simply matching the physical description of past societal
oppressors rendered that university unfit to receive taxpayer-funded research
funds from the federal government. Aside from ideological politics, to the
extent that Harvard’s administration stood by for years, knowing that a
one-sided and virulently intolerant ideology was increasingly gripping the
campus, academic freedom in terms of the exchange of a breadth of ideas
was knowingly compromised rather than promoted by admitted more on the basis of
ideas than group-identification and ideology.
Yale too could take a lesson
here. Visiting a Christian ethics course at Yale’s divinity school in early
2024, I was stunned when the instructor declared that monogamy violates Christian
ethics because fidelity because sexual fidelity to another person, whether of
the same or opposite sex, “violates other legitimate gay lifestyles.” After class,
I asked a young student whether the instructor’s statement wasn’t biased and
even incorrect. I also asked whether the contrary position, which can be found
in Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, as well as Calvin and Luther, should have been
covered in class. The firm answer was a NO to both questions. “It would be traumatic to hear the other
side,” she said. This is precisely how the “woke” ideology suffocates ideas,
and thus learning even at an elite university. It is not difficult to grasp why
many American taxpayers would not want their taxes going to universities in
which ideology is preached as knowledge to the exclusion of ideas that the
ideology deems “traumatic.” Just to set the record straight, monogamy does not
violate Christian ethics even if certain gay couples want to vilify it in order
to feel better about having open-relationships or even cheating. This is not an
anti-gay statement, as plenty of monogamous gay couples would agree that monogamy
is not squalid. I had a fiancée once who thought that monogamy is not natural; I
didn’t marry her. The antagonists of monogamy are obviously not necessarily gay,
and yet the “woke” ideology could find my position offensive and thus inadmissible
even in discussing Christian ethics at a university. My point is that both
Harvard and Yale could benefit with more ideological diversity, and thus
with a broader exchange of ideas, even if a bully in the Oval Office is
making the complaint against the hegemony of one very narrow and intolerant
ideology at elite American universities.
That Harvard could indeed
benefit both ideationally and in terms of academic-freedom from achieving ideological
diversity as a secondary desideratum below that of ideas is more
accurate than the claim that Harvard should be less antisemitic, for standing
up for human rights in Gaza is not antisemitic. In fact, universities, and even
the U.S. Government, should encourage college students (and faculty),
whether American citizens or foreigners, to value human rights, given the
impunity that governments enjoyed in 2024 and well into 2025 in decimating
populations, whether in Ukraine or Gaza. Put another way, given the
institutional impotence of the United Nations, human rights could use some help
at the grass-roots level. Stating that the Israeli government had a lot to
answer for by May, 2025, both ethically and in terms of international law, is
not antisemitic in nature. Overreactive zealotry in judging and executing “collective
justice” against an entire people can easily be on the other side of human
rights and yet be oblivious to the duplicity and hypocrisy.
During a protest for human
rights in Gaza that went through Yale’s campus in late 2023, Jewish students
from a local community college walked to New Haven’s central park, or Green,
with ease. When one of the students said, “Just so you know, we’re Jewish.” I replied
with a shrug, “We are all human beings, so of course we are all standing up for
human rights; where we come from doesn’t matter.” I wish Larry Summers of Harvard
had been with us. One of my mother’s cousins, a Quaker, and thus a man strongly
for religious toleration, had been Larry’s first economics teacher. Although Summers,
a past president of Harvard and a Jewish man, stated publicly in May, 2025 that
Harvard was too tolerant of antisemitism, he nonetheless firmly
supported Harvard’s decision to sue the U.S. Government in order to be able to
retain foreign students and post-doctoral researchers. Moreover, his claims
that Harvard should stand up to the willful tyranny of government and that such
a position of opposition has broader implications for the standing of the rule
of law in the U.S. going forward are indeed important points. Even in holding,
wrongly I believe, that Harvard was too antisemitic, the former president of
the university publicly affirmed his strong support for the current president
of the university. Even finding kernels of truth come from the university’s true
antagonist is not disloyal, and in fact may improve the university. That’s the
point.
Already at Yale, its head of
that private school’s own police force had wasted no time in accepting the offer
of the FBI to train Yale police in counter-terrorism tactics that would be used
on students. Moreover, that campus had become a virtual police-state of surveillance
on students and faculty. Yale police had already arrested 48 students for exercising
the right to protest, though living in tents on campus for that purpose was
admittedly over the top. Even so, Yale’s heavy-handed, authoritarian approach
to pro-human-rights protesters, whether students or faculty, evinces
capitulation to Trump to keep the federal dollars coming and Trump off the
university’s back. The federal president would be unlikely to threaten Yale as
he had been threatening Harvard. In fact, the capitulation of not only Yale,
but also Columbia, means that Harvard’s decision to act on principle would be
all the more important, and laudable, to the entire system of higher education
in America.
For in Harvard’s written
request to the district judge for a temporary restraining order, Harvard states
that the Trump Administration, in a letter dated April 11, 2025 to Harvard’s
President, had “demanded (among other things) that Harvard hire a third-party
to ‘audit’ the viewpoints of its students, faculty, and staff; depending on the
results of the audit, hire and admit a ‘critical mass’ of people to achieve the
governments’ preferred level of ‘viewpoint diversity’ in ‘each department,
field, or teaching unit; refuse admission to international students ‘hostile to
[] American values’; ‘exclusively’ ‘empower’ faculty supportive of the
government’s action and ‘reduce [] the power’ of those opposed; allow the
government to review its faculty hires; expel or suspend specific sets of
students; disband disfavored student clubs; and establish mechanisms for
Harvard community members to report on one another and send these reports to
the government.”[1] This
last part is particularly revealing, as it is ironically similar to the tactics
used by the secret police in the U.S.S.R. and within the Warsaw Pact (e.g.,
East Germany) in the twentieth century. Also, the infusion of pro-government professors
was done by the Nazi Party in Germany. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, for
instance, was a member of the Nazi Party and thus was able to be elected as
rector at the University of Freiburg.
Although Larry Summers tarnished
his credibility by making the unfortunate and errant imputation of antisemitism
at Harvard, the former U.S. Treasury secretary and past president of Harvard hit
the proverbial nail on its head, though not with Heidegger’s hammer of Dasein
in Being and Time, in telling Bloomberg TV, “Harvard must start by
resisting; this is he stuff of tyranny.” It was indeed. Trump had already
succeeded in getting the Yale administration to internalize it such that that
academic campus had become a grounds (Latin: campus) of constant and
multiple surveillance of Yalies by three jurisdictions consisting of security
and police, none of whom are members of the Yale community. Even teenage
students, freshmen and sophomores, had to walk by manned police cars and
security cars sporting red, blue, and bright yellow lights even during the day because
the cars were stationed on campus sidewalks and streets on a daily basis, even
as security guards were standing throughout as if an imminent attack were
perpetually thought to occur. Such an atmosphere
is antipodal to that of academia and yet Yale’s “academic” administration was
in the mix.
A Yale security employee spying on students. To evesdrop, another employee was sneaking up behind people walking on a nearby walkway.
Yale students trying to relax on a lawn before finals week were being watched by Yale police and Yale security. Notice that the overhead lights of the police car were on even though there was no incident (or protest).
Yale security employees are suspicious of alumni (hint: age-profiling isn't good for fundraising).
Imagine being a student who is still a teenager having to navigate close to guards and manned police cars that are so needlessly close-up in order to intimidate. Yale hires (and gives power to) too many townies who resent Yalies. Power-trip 101 (Yale would never let me teach that course!)
When a Palestinian flag was
draped on a Jewish monument at New Haven’s Green, Yale’s head of police
presumptuously decided that his department would investigate the matter even
though it was not at Yale and thus was properly under the purview of New Haven’s
police department. A Jewish associate dean at Yale defended the decision by
stating that Yale had an obligation to embrace and even impose its truth locally,
even at the expense of the democratic legitimacy of police powers under the
U.S. Constitution. This presumably included Yale police employees arresting
local residents far beyond campus without any direct or even indirect relation
to Yale. A Connecticut government official, who, as of 2025, advised prosecutors
and police departments, including Yale’s, told me in a coffee shop near Yale
during my final visit there as an alumnus, “Yale students feel intimidated by [constant
New Haven and Yale police and Yale security presence on campus] because those
students are at a liberal university.” The official obviously did not feel the
need to separate his ideological antipathy from his state job. It is no wonder
that the head of Yale’s police unit referred to student protesters as “losers
and criminals” when he accepted the offer of the FBI to train Yale police employees
on how to use counter-terrorism tactics on students, and presumably on researchers
and faculty too. Even though the Yale student body may indeed have been overwhelmingly
liberal at the time, which shows bias in the admissions process there, the university’s
top administrators, who preferred totalitarianism to maintaining an academic
atmosphere on campus, were anything but liberal; in point of fact, they had the
mentality that Trump relished, and thus would not likely face his ire. Therefore, I contend that Yale capitulated
while Harvard stood on principle against totalitarianism by standing up to the
Trump administration. Yale may have won “The Game” in 2024 at Harvard’s
football stadium, but Harvard was winning a game that dwarfs sports in importance.
As Harvard’s Larry Summers stated in May, 2025, much more was riding on Harvard’s
case than American higher education.
Literally sticking out at Harvard so to intimidate: a sordid, anti-academic mentality.
Harvard policemen standing outside their car, which could have been parked outside Harvard Yard: Willfully trampling on academic atmosphere on a daily basis in order to intimidate students and faculty.
Rather than internalize totalitarianism
(though admittedly the 2024-2025 school-year witnessed an increasing presence
of Harvard police cars prominently manned in Harvard Yard rather than parked
just outside the grassy area, as if employees needed the stark presence of
intimidation in order to feel safe), Harvard’s president pushed back on Trump,
writing in a letter just after having been threatened by the Trump Administration
with the expulsion of the university’s foreign students, “We condemn this
unlawful and unwarranted action. The revocation continues a series of government
actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic
independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of
control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.”[2]
He also cited the free-speech rights of students, which at Yale had already
been so subject to police and security hostility on campus that the right could
be considered as de facto extirpated there. At Harvard, Trump himself was going
after the right in the incorrect assumption that standing up for starving
Palestinians were somehow being in favor of killing and bombing when obviously
the opposite is so.
Universities, especially those
that are so very devoted to academic study in the progress of our species in
knowledge, must have ideational freedom, which is admittedly difficult to
separate from ideologies. It is difficult indeed to perform chemical
qualitative analysis on ideology to get pure knowledge as the precipitate. Even
so, universities should strive such that ideology does not overcome or even direct
the pursuit of knowledge. Having a variety of ideological standpoints in a sort
of balance rather than being dominated by one is thus important. This is not to
say that government is able or proficient in correcting for an imbalance, for
the salience of an ideology in a government administration likely means that one
ideology would come to dominate. Nor does spy or police-surveillance belong on
a campus if it is to maintain an academic atmosphere conducive to the free
expression of ideas.
To be sure, universities are
not public squares on which political activity should be centered, but
governmental or university-police strong-arming and especially arrests of
students can quickly eviscerate the academic atmosphere that a campus should
have, given the educational mission of a university. Freedom of ideas, as
well as the mission itself, can also be thwarted by the non-academic attention
that political encampments on a campus can attract. This is not to say that
student or faculty protests of a university administrative policy are exogenous
and thus without educational legitimacy.
Moreover, universities
compromise their academic raison d’être by looking the other way as
exogenous forces interlard campus atmosphere. Had America’s elite universities
done a better job at protecting and thus valuing a distinctly academic
environment on campus rather than pushing or tolerating the onslaught of a particular,
dominating ideology or allowing political protests writ large with even local
residents attending as if a university were a town’s square for political
debate and restlessness, then perhaps the Trump Administration would have had
less motivation to go after the most elite American universities. I suspect
that European universities have done a much better job of sticking to the
academic knitting, and thus of admitting students on academic merit rather than
race or indications of “woke” ideology. Governmental indifference naturally
follows when university administrations focus on and protect the
distinctiveness of academe.
As Peters and Waterman wrote
in the 1980s popular business text, In Search of Excellence, organizational
practitioners do well to “stick to the knitting.” In academia, the knitting
does not include turning a campus into a police-state, politicalizing campus,
or promoting a particular ideology that could come to choke off unacceptable
perspectives and even language. Ironically, President Trump gave Harvard an
opportunity to honestly self-assess and reaffirm its distinctively academic mission
by counter-balancing the prevalence of the angry “woke” ideology on campus, the
temptation to make the university a situs for political protest on issues not
including educational policies of the university, and easy trajectory
towards a police-state on campus. Rather than on politically charged criteria
such as race and a preferred ideology, admissions decisions are best (and
safest) made on the basis of academic merit, complemented by indications of
student leadership potential. It takes a high level of maturity to see the kernel
of truth in an adversary’s accusations while pushing back nonetheless against governmental
tyranny. Having such maturity, which has been wanting in Yale’s administration as
evinced by the arrest of 48 Yale students for supporting human rights in Gaza, can
be a sustainable competitive advantage for Harvard. It is possible, in other
words, to make sweet lemonade out of tart lemons.
