{"id":120509,"date":"2025-04-16T17:05:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T15:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=120509"},"modified":"2025-04-16T10:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T08:42:14","slug":"16-05-107","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=120509","title":{"rendered":"Harvard\u2019s \u2018resistance\u2019 to Trump isn\u2019t about science or academic freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Harvard\u2019s \u2018resistance\u2019 to Trump isn\u2019t about science or academic freedom<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The school would rather lose $9 billion in federal funding than offend the left and give up woke indoctrination policies that enable and encourage antisemitism.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Harvard University sweatshirts are displayed for sale in a school store window on its campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 15, 2025. Photo by Joseph Prezioso\/AFP via Getty Images.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice to know that the school that is widely considered to be the most prestigious institution of higher education in the United States is willing to stand up for its principles. Unfortunately, the main principle for which Harvard University is standing up\u2014and earning deafening applause from liberal elites in politics and the media\u2014is the right to go on enabling and encouraging the hatred of Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s not the way the political left is spinning the announcement that Harvard would\u00a0defy<\/a>\u00a0the demands of the Trump administration to cease its tacit support of the surge of antisemitism since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Trump\u2019s \u201cprogressive\u201d opponents who have acquired near-total control of higher education in the United States, the demands are unacceptable. They would rather lose federal funding, which is crucial to their survival, than end discrimination in admissions and hiring rooted in the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that creates viewpoint uniformity that excludes conservatives and supporters of Israel. They also refuse to adopt disciplinary policies against those who advocate for Jewish genocide and harass Jewish students, or prevent the pro-Hamas mobs on their campuses from wearing masks while they commit their acts of intimidation and violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the far left, their refusal to treat antisemites the way they would bigots who threatened African-Americans or Hispanics is a heroic act of \u201cresistance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0sent to the government by the school\u2019s attorneys in response to the\u00a0ultimatum<\/a>\u00a0sent by President Donald Trump\u2019s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, Harvard\u2019s president, Alan M. Garber, said: \u201cNeither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Cheers from Obama and Israel-bashers<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The task force has targeted Harvard and several other elite institutions, such as Columbia University, Brown University, Cornell University, Northwestern University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, for scrutiny and threatened to end all federal funding to these schools if they don\u2019t enact fundamental reforms. So far, Harvard, which is the richest of American universities with an endowment of $53.2 billion, and which gets $9 billion a year in aid from Washington, is the only one to say it will not comply.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to former President Barack Obama, \u201cHarvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions\u2014rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom.\u201d He was echoed by NeverTrump former jurist J. Michael Luttig, who\u00a0told\u00a0<\/a>The New York Times<\/em>: \u201cThis is of momentous, momentous significance. This should be the turning point in the president\u2019s rampage against American institutions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Times<\/em>\u00a0opinion columnist M. Gessen\u00a0endorsed<\/a>\u00a0Harvard\u2019s stand, saying, \u201cNo other response should have been possible by the logic of the law\u2014or the logic of academic freedom or the logic of democracy.\u201d Gessen, who has falsely\u00a0compared<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s efforts to defend itself against Hamas terrorism to the Nazi\u2019s tactics in the Holocaust, was just sorry because Harvard\u2019s act of \u201cself-respect\u201d was so rare in a country where so many were prepared to treat Trump\u2019s victory as giving him the right to govern and roll back the left\u2019s excesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama and Luttig may be correct on one point: The hosannas for Harvard being sung by liberal pundits and academics across the nation are likely influencing some of the other institutions targeted by Trump\u2019s task force. Columbia University, which had agreed to the administration\u2019s demands, is already\u00a0backtracking<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Its president, Katrina Armstrong, told a Zoom call with faculty that the school planned on reneging on its pledges but then resigned. Her replacement, Claire Shipman, has doubled down on this. Less than a day after Harvard\u2019s announcement, Shipman\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0that the academic institution would not allow the federal government to \u201crequire us to relinquish our independence and autonomy.\u201d She went on to say that she would \u201creject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms\u201d and that any agreement in which federal officials dictated \u201cwhat we teach, research or who we hire\u201d would be unacceptable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Decades of federal \u2018interference\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The notion that Trump\u2019s demands are an unpardonable interference in academia may sound reasonable. Or at least they might have prior to the passage of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. And lest there be any confusion on this point, the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations all agreed that Jews were covere by the Title VI protections of the Civil Rights Act.<\/span><\/p>\n

From that point forward, the federal government was given free rein to interfere in the life of schools like Harvard. That interference took the form of rules that, among other things, made any discrimination against minorities like blacks and Hispanics illegal, and the adoption of \u201caffirmative action\u201d diktats that had an enormous impact on their hiring and admissions policies. Those schools that didn\u2019t like it were informed that they could forget about receiving federal money. And that is what some conservative institutions like Hillsdale College or a number of fundamentalist Christian schools did to protect their independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor is it about defending science, as so many of those who have rationalized opposition to Trump have asserted.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that the bulk of Harvard\u2019s funding goes to its medical institutions. That raises the possibility that the fallout from this conflict might hurt important research and health care. It has persuaded some to say that Trump is going too far in threatening funding to these universities, all of whom depend on Washington to maintain their scientific establishments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet would anyone currently decrying Trump\u2019s moves defend the funding of any medical school, hospital or research facility if it involved giving a seal of federal approval to an institution that discriminated against racial minorities protected by the Civil Rights Act? To the contrary, the same voice raised in defense of the \u201cresistance\u201d to Trump would demand the defunding of any entity\u2014no matter how vital its scientific or medical research\u2014that targeted blacks or allowed a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to operate with impunity on their grounds or in their school buildings? Yet that is exactly what Harvard, Columbia and many other schools did by allowing pro-Hamas groups that support Jewish genocide to operate freely.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, as author Heather Mac Donald has\u00a0pointed out<\/a>, the impact of the DEI policies being defended by Harvard has led to discrimination and the lowering of standards throughout the sciences and math. That poses a far greater threat to American medicine and scientific research than Trump\u2019s request that these schools give up their woke policies and stop antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s be clear about what\u2019s actually at stake in this controversy. It\u2019s not science or academic freedom. It\u2019s about elite schools wishing to remain in thrall to progressive orthodoxies on race and Western civilization that have fueled the surge in Jew-hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of this can also be explained by politics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The success of the left\u2019s long march through American educational institutions over the past decades has created a situation in which conservatives and Zionists are rarities on college and university faculties. A career in academia for anyone who dissents from DEI and woke orthodoxy, as well as the notion that Israel and Jews are \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors who must be suppressed, can only do so by keeping their opinions to themselves. To openly dissent against the left\u2019s toxic myths about critical race theory, intersectionality or settler-colonialism theory is to effectively guarantee that you won\u2019t be hired for any post in the humanities and social sciences and to never obtain tenure even if you do get that far. Republicans or anyone who openly supports Trump are virtually an extinct species among those who work in higher education.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why faculties like the ones at Harvard and Columbia have been so vocal in their support for the pro-Hamas mobs that target Jews and in defense of Middle East studies programs, often funded by Islamist sources like the Emirate of Qatar that have become hotbeds of antisemitism.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it also creates a dynamic on campus that makes any accommodation with a Trump administration that left-wing Democrats view as beyond the pale, even on anything as clearly legitimate as a response to the rampant antisemitism that has been on display since Oct. 7, as a betrayal. Indeed, so strong is the pull of partisanship that many leading liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and even Hillel have put themselves\u00a0on record<\/a>\u00a0as having reservations about Trump\u2019s all-out effort to fight antisemitism or even to oppose it. In a country where politics now assumes the role that religion used to play in most people\u2019s lives, opposing Trump is clearly a higher priority for many of those who identify as liberals or Democrats than combating Jew-hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Harvard is really fighting for<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This debate isn\u2019t about Trump\u2019s alleged authoritarian tendencies. It is being triggered by the stubborn refusal of the most prestigious and venerable of American institutions, such as Harvard and Columbia, to ensure the safety of Jews and to give up practices in admissions, discipline and hiring that ensure their continued adherence to leftist ideologies that are at war with the Western canon and Jewish survival.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cheers for Harvard\u2019s stand are a reflection of the emotional needs of a portion of the American electorate that is overrepresented in the credentialed elites that venerate schools like Harvard. Their anger at the 2024 election results, hatred for Trump and affinity for woke racialism are so deep that they are willing to figuratively die on a hill that involves their support for or acquiescence to the legitimacy of a genocidal war waged against the only Jewish state on the planet. That is a telling indication of, as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)\u00a0put it<\/a>, how \u201cHarvard University has rightfully earned its place as the epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s response to such defiance must be resolute. If Harvard won\u2019t give up its toleration and support for antisemitism, then it must lose every penny of federal funding. And the same should go for any other school that follows its example. The pious platitudes about democracy, science or academic freedom that we are hearing from Trump\u2019s opponents notwithstanding, the only thing they are really fighting for is the right to empower those who seek to harm Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS \u201cThink Twice\u201d podcast, both the weekly video program and the \u201cJonathan Tobin Daily\u201d program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Harvard\u2019s \u2018resistance\u2019 to Trump isn\u2019t about science or academic freedom Jonathan S. Tobin The school would rather lose $9 billion in federal funding than offend the left and give up woke indoctrination policies that enable and encourage antisemitism. Harvard University sweatshirts are displayed for sale in a school store window on its campus in Cambridge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120509"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120525,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120509\/revisions\/120525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}