Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on the Harvard Salient on October 3, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. In its unending quest to prove that it remains the unrivaled beacon of Western civilization, Harvard University has announced the appointment of Dr. Kareem Khubchandani […]
Read More
Higher education, legacy media, and the broader left have long wielded “anti-discrimination” as both philosophy and policy—not to foster debate, but to silence critics, distort established terms, and advance an anti-Western agenda. Since October 7, anti-Semitism suddenly could no longer be discussed without bringing up “Islamophobia” in the same venue. Leave it to the Ivy […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
Harvard College has a grade inflation problem. But beneath it lies a deeper scandal: the faculty who have allowed, and even encouraged, the decay. The Atlantic recently reported that the average GPA at Harvard now hovers around 3.8—a number so inflated it renders distinctions meaningless. Students today can largely count on being graded as excellent, […]
Read More
The latest Harvard Crimson Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey should be read not as a snapshot of opinion, but as a damning portrait of moral failure. For the second year in a row, most respondents to the survey said they did not observe “systemic antisemitism” at Harvard. In the wake of a year of […]
Read More
I was surprised by Emily Chamlee-Wright’s paean to Harvard, “Harvard’s Fight Is a Defense of Democracy and Civic Virtue,” as the university stands up to its federal benefactors. I should mention at the outset that I’ve known Dr. Chamlee-Wright for almost 20 years. She has provided the best practical articulation of Austrian economics that I have […]
Read More
Harvard does not trust the Trump administration. The Trump administration does not trust Harvard. Yet, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. The best way forward is for Harvard—and other elite schools—to make a deal on one important aspect of their dispute: Provide admissions transparency in exchange for student visa forbearance. If that […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on RealClear Education on July 02, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Harvard Government Department professors Ryan Enos and Steven Levitsky recently warned in the Harvard Crimson that if Harvard negotiates with the Trump administration to restore frozen federal research funding, […]
Read More
The Harvard Crimson has a grammar-challenged headline asking, “Who Does Harvard Owe?” The editors rebuff all those who believe that Harvard owes something to America. Or for that matter, to “Congress,” the media, its alumni, and others on the question of how the university should be governed. The Crimson’s answer boils down to ‘shove off, […]
Read More
In Boston’s Beacon Hill, there are gas lamps that appear to be quaint vestiges of the city’s Victorian past. Harvard, located three miles away, is giving the district a run for its money when it comes to gas lighting. Look no further than Harvard’s honorary degree recipient, Elaine Kim from the University of California, Berkeley, […]
Read More
Harvard’s student newspaper recently reported that the university revoked the tenure of Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Francesca Gino. Gino was accused of tampering with data. But Harvard previously excused the plagiarism of its former president, Claudine Gay. On March 12, 2024, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun ordered that Exhibit 5 be unsealed in the case Gino […]
Read More
The concept of “lawfare” is in the news constantly. The term describes a program, run mostly by political parties, that uses the courts to attack and tie up opponents—or to use the judicial system as its own government. It seems like a new practice in present-day politics, but its design goes back decades to one […]
Read More
In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “some animals are more equal than others.” Orwell’s dystopian novel about the dangers and hypocrisy of Marxism was meant to serve as a warning. But Harvard University seems to be using it as a guide. As higher education has come under pressure from the Trump administration and increased skepticism from […]
Read More
The Trump administration’s efforts to reform higher education have been met with increasing resistance from the higher education establishment. Indeed, arguably the most prestigious university of all—Harvard—sued the Trump administration in late-April for freezing over $2 billion in federal research funding because Harvard refused to comply with a list of conditions for the continued receipt […]
Read More
Harvard, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university, has long set the standard in higher education. For Jewish families, gaining admission has historically been both a symbol of merit and a source of communal pride. But Harvard has also long resisted their inclusion—first through admissions quotas in the early 20th century, and now, once again, […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from an article originally published by the City Journal on May 20, 2025. It is crossposted here with permission. Omar Sultan Haque has spent 23 years at Harvard University. He is furious about what has happened within the school. While the media have framed the recent fight between Harvard […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Harvard Salient on May 22, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s styleguidles, it is crossposted here with permission. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) moved to suspend international students’ current and future enrollment at Harvard University, citing serious concerns about national security, institutional noncompliance, and a […]
Read More
There is a nomocratic and teleocratic view of the Constitution. The nomocratic view, which accorded with the original understanding of almost everyone involved, is that the Constitution was designed to bring government under the rule of law, as opposed to achieving any specific purposes. The intention is evident to anyone who will take the trouble […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following is an article originally published on The Harvard Salient on May 05, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The most important moment in my life occurred on November 21st, 2022, during my freshman year at Harvard, when I became a Christian. […]
Read More
Harvard University is perhaps the most successful institution of the last 400 years, outside of some nation states and a handful of religions. Yet, that very success may have set Harvard up for failure in its current confrontation with the Trump administration. An April 22nd New York Times article, “As Harvard Is Hailed a Hero, […]
Read More
The New York Times article, “Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard: An official on the administration’s antisemitism task force told the university that a letter of demands had been sent without authorization,” tells a very different story than its title and subhead, one which suggests that Harvard’s arrogance might be leading […]
Read More
Harvard University and the Trump Administration have collided. The Crimson reports that: Harvard will not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a message to affiliates Monday afternoon. The sequence of events suggests […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: The following excerpt was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on April 15, 2025. It has been edited to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines and is cross-posted here with permission. The news this morning is, as one headline puts it, “Federal Government Freezes $2.26 Billion Funding to Harvard after It Refuses to Comply.” […]
Read More
The federal government wants some changes at Harvard. The most dangerous request is: Merit-based admissions reform. Harvard must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies; cease all preferences based on race, color, or national origin in admissions throughout its undergraduate, graduate, and other programs; and demonstrate through structural and personnel action that these changes are durable. […]
Read More
Harvard University has taken heavy criticism in the last year for not responding adequately to disruptive protests, encampments, and acts of anti-Semitism on its campus. Under the leadership of new president Alan Garber, it set out to ensure this year would be better. New and clearer rules pertaining to free expression, particularly protest and its […]
Read More
Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo set off a firestorm last week when he published an article suggesting faculty should be punished for publicly criticizing the university. His position, if implemented, would severely weaken the already fragile state of academic freedom at Harvard. As dean, his significant power over the careers of many faculty […]
Read More
Harvard Dean Lawrence Bobo writes in the Harvard Crimson that faculty speech should have limits. There are, he says, responsibilities as well as rights associated with academic freedom: As Harvard has moved to limit its opining on salient public issues, we must use our voices as faculty responsibly. Do we allow individual faculty with large […]
Read More
Harvard’s year has been one for the history books. It ranked last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s annual college free speech survey, earning its own category of “abysmal.” It had quite possibly the worst response to Hamas’s October 7th terrorist attack on Israel in all American higher education. Its former president, Claudine […]
Read More
My friend, John Fund, a distinguished journalist and political commentator, has brought to my attention a fine study done by the Washington Monthly, showing that virulent anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests have occurred disproportionately at elite colleges where most students come from relatively rich families. You heard a lot about pro-Palestinian demonstrations, building occupation, and tent […]
Read More
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Law & Liberty on June 3, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. Harvard has had a very bad year. It began last summer with the Supreme Court’s verdict in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which declared that the university’s admissions policies were unconstitutionally discriminatory—or in plain terms, […]
Read More