The headline on this epistle is from a great satiric song written in the middle of the last century by the late humorist and Harvard grad Tom Lehrer. Harvard has indeed been fighting the federal government fiercely this year, scoring a major victory last Wednesday when an Obama-appointed federal district judge, Allison Burroughs, declared that the Trump Administration’s freezing of research grants to Harvard was illegal.
It’s worth noting that Judge Burroughs was the same judge who initially ruled in Harvard’s favor six years ago in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA)—a decision ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that using race as a factor in admissions is unlawful. As a result, the legality of the administration’s actions in this latest controversy has likely not been definitively settled. Stay tuned for updates.
Like many other collegiate enclaves, Harvard has done many reprehensible things in recent years, such as tolerating violent anti-Semitic behavior, abandoning a true commitment to vigorous, intellectual diversity in favor of a woke-dominated environment that confers a dull intellectual conformity to campus discourse more reminiscent of Nazi Germany or the old Soviet Union than a vibrantly but civilly quarrelsome academic community. Along with sister elite universities, Harvard needed a serious wake-up call, and Trump and his acolytes have provided it.
As demonstrated in the seminal SFFA case, judicial fatwas issued by leftist hometown jurists are seldom the last word. But the Trump Administration in this and other matters has pushed its legal authority to the limit, and probably beyond. Governmental bullying can be dangerous and worrisome, as anyone who spent time behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, as I did, knows.
Most serious observers have long proclaimed that the United States has the best system of higher education in the world. Certainly, the various world university rankings all confirm this. But why are American universities historically considered superior? Unusually high-quality teaching? Decidedly no. I suspect that undergraduate students at a goodly number of fine liberal arts colleges receive a better education than those at Harvard, as do the best students in a fine honors program at my own mid-quality state university. America’s higher education primacy exists because the research conducted at our schools has historically been the best on the planet. And that is in large part because of federal grants, which, to be sure, are often inefficiently administered and increasingly tainted by academic fraud. The loss of this global academic research leadership would be a devastating blow to our nation and would hasten an already worrisome decline in America’s role as primus inter pares in the world community.
Moreover, using Harvard as an example, some progress has already been made as a consequence of the Trump Administration’s displeasure. Current president Alan Garber is a scholar, a seasoned and able administrator, and certainly no disaster like Claudine Gay. Harvard is a huge diverse academic community, more like a confederation of academic villages than one unified institution. The final story on the Trump Administration’s war on Harvard has not been heard.
The Administration, however, can probably still do some things to improve the academic environment in our elite universities. Let me give one example. Schools in the bottom 10 universities in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Free Speech rankings, perhaps, should be put on a sort of federal academic probation that will ultimately result in loss of federal funds unless corrective measures are promptly taken. That list, based on the 2024 rankings, would include, in addition to Harvard, Penn, Georgetown, Northwestern, Dartmouth, and a couple of flagship state universities such as the University of Texas at Austin and the University of South Carolina. (The 2025 rankings are available here; for the second consecutive year, Harvard University ranks at the bottom for free speech.)
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Another proposal: schools that persist in using non-merit qualifications, such as race, ethnicity, religion, etc., in selecting or rewarding students, faculty, or administrative staff should face serious financial consequences, with their leaders placed on a federal, widely circulated Black List of Academic Deplorables. Another, although arguably more dubious punishment: disallow charitable tax deductions to schools that do not meet minimal standards for maintaining a vibrant learning community.
One major problem with all the Trump initiatives: we are in a highly divided political environment, so federal actions now might be reversed in a few years by ruling Democratic politicians beholden to woke universities. Disruptive federal policy is probably in the interest of neither higher education nor the nation.
Image: “Harvard University flag” by Manu Ros in Unsplash
Here’s an excerpt from an article today “We Are WatchingaScientific
Superpower Destroy Itself” in the NYT by Harvard humanities scholar Stephen Greenblatt:
“According to the latest annual Nature Index, which tracks research institutions by their contributions to leading science journals, the single remaining U.S. institution among the top 10 is Harvard, in second place, far behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences.”
It is not necessary to believe all of this to be alarmed.
Meanwhile, our loony Trump administration is doing its best to destroy American universities.
In China, it is 1929…
“America’s higher education primacy exists because the research conducted at our schools has historically been the best on the planet. And that is in large part because of federal grants…”
I say this again: The American Research University was a product of the 50 years war (1941-1991) when the resources of the entire country were employed to defeat first the National Socialists and then the Communists. It was a unique time, not likely to be repeated.
But the war ended 34 years ago, arguably 40 years ago, and that’s when higher ed really started going to hell.