The president of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics has declared that the lesson of the blowout 2024 election is not a need for greater inclusivity and balance at the school but, you guessed it, the express abandonment of nonpartisanship going forward. While many would argue that the school left neutrality behind years ago, Pratyush Mallick is calling in an op-ed for The Harvard Crimson for an official change. It would align the Institute with the building “resistance” and reject not just nonpartisanship but neutrality in its programs and grants.
After the election, I wrote that people hoping for a moment of introspection after the Trump victory will likely be disappointed, and “the rage in the media and academia will only likely increase.” That has unfortunately proven to be the case. The meltdown after the presidential election appears to be building rather than subsiding with attacks from the left on male, female, and minority voters as racists, misogynists, or despotic dupes.
The call for partisanship at Harvard is not unique. Before the election, I criticized Wesleyan University President Michael Roth for urging universities to abandon neutrality and work openly for the election of Kamala Harris. Immediately after the election, Roth doubled down and promised to join the “resistance” against Trump’s “authoritarian” regime.
A few weeks before the election, I participated in a debate at Harvard Law School over the lack of free speech protections and intellectual diversity at Harvard.
This year, Harvard found itself in a familiar spot on the annual ranking of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): dead last among 251 universities and colleges.
The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”
Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
According to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).
So Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than three percent identify as “conservative” rather than 35 percent nationally.
Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats.
While Professor Randall Kennedy, in the debate, dismissed the notion that Harvard should look more like America, the problem is that it does not even look like Massachusetts. Even as one of the most liberal states in the country, roughly one third of the voters still identify as Republican.
The student body shows the same bias of selection. Harvard Crimson previously found that only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative.
Yet, the Institute of Politics student executive committee president wants it to be more official.
”Today, Harvard’s Institute of Politics has a choice to make too. Nonpartisanship — a founding principle of the IOP — is no longer a tenable position in today’s political environment. Donald Trump’s imminent return to power underscores the importance of the IOP finally breaking from our long-standing commitment to it.”
So, rather than considering the implications of a majority of voters rejecting the narrative of the media and political establishment, the idea is to move even further toward orthodoxy and intolerance.
Mallick wrote that as the Trump administration moves forward, “we must resist platforming anti-democratic voices in the guise of nonpartisanship.” Those “anti-democratic voices” are likely to be found on one end of the political spectrum.
In a truly Orwellian twist, Mallick added, “In fact, we must strive to defend principles of democracy, due process, and justice precisely to ensure that we can continue carrying out our age-old mission of nonpartisanship.”
So, the Institute would become partisan in order to fulfill its mission of nonpartisanship.
As I discuss in my book, The Indispensable Right, we have seen the same abandonment of neutrality in the media with disastrous results.
Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.”
After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”
The result has been the increasing rejection of mainstream media in favor of new media. The falling revenue and readership have not produced any more introspection among leading figures in the media. After the election, various figures such as MSNBC host Mika Brezinski did not acknowledge how media bias has led to the decline but instead blamed the election in part on the availability of opposing views as “massive disinformation.” Others called for free speech to be curtailed to prevent such contrary information from affecting another election.
Ironically, the Harvard Institute has a number of advisory board members accused of such bias in the past, including CNN’s Abby Philip. While there are a couple of Republicans, it has a majority of current and former Democratic politicians and advisers, including Michael Nutter, David Axelrod, LaTosha Brown, William D. Delahunt, and Joseph Kennedy III.
In the end, the Institute’s formal commitment to partisanship is unlikely to matter. While Mallick insists that “nonpartisanship—a founding principle of the IOP—is no longer a tenable position in today’s political environment,” it has long been out of vogue at Harvard.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, 2024).
N.B.: After this column ran, the director of the Institute wrote a letter to the editor at the Harvard Crimson saying that the Institute would remain committed to a nonpartisan approach.
One word: Defund
* hard to do…the endowment is 50 billion and invested recieving donations from 65 nations worldwide , Middle East largest etc. They are financially in error on the otherhand for reporting violations.
Can anyone imagine Gigi, Sammy, pbinca et al gloatingly denying their apparent hordes of love and lust smitten suiters beating on their doors? To teach them a lesson because men supposedly elected Trump?
‘4B’: Trump hating women vow to boycott men as their abortion ‘rights’ stay exactly the same as they were before the election
Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline:
– No marriage
– No childbirth
– No dating men
– No sex with men
We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back
https://youtu.be/E0HLiBRgUY0?si=46ND43qswLCyjE3j&t=724
Given that the vast majority of men would consider these Birthing Persons to be in the Two Bagger class, this is a classic case of self-deception and a complete lack of self-awareness.
The joke and the last laugh is on these horrid harpies. You go show ’em, Whoopy Goldberg!
“Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline:”
The women’s version of the Incel movement.
Given their appeal, it isn’t going make the slightest difference in the abortion rate.
Whining harpies: “We’re going to be celibate!”
America: Sweetie, you’ve already been exercising your right to be celibate for years.
“Whining harpies: “We’re going to be celibate!”
America: Sweetie, you’ve already been exercising your right to be celibate for years.”
In addition, what a well thought out and destined for success strategy -sarc- allow the demographic groups that oppose your philosophy and POV to breed, while you decline to do so.
The irony is that Harvard was founded by those their descendants claim are the architects of freedom. They went nuts when they decided they had a higher calling than scripture and law.
abandonment of nonpartisanship
In other words, they’re going to cease pretending to be an institution of higher education acting in the best interests of our constitutional republic.
Got it.
Then they should not be surprised the next step is to eliminate government funding and the removal of any relationship to our public agencies.
Additionally, no entity receiving public funds should be allowed to engage in activities with these institutions.
If they continue to function in a way that threatens our national security, or the equal security of rights of individuals, then they should be removed from an existence in this country.
They should recognize this as the same actions they initiated against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Spot on! When can we beat the hell out of them…again.
The so called “Elite” are in denial and failed to understand what the real normal people want, Majority, have Said NO to the Globalist, Elite, Left Wing DEMS, Washington Swamp, Main Street Media Left Wing, etc. Not surprised by Havard, over priced elite school for only the Elite? The DEMS and the Elite will continue to lose elections, except the ones they steal ( trying to steal a few right now in the Senate and House but Republicans are watching). Perhaps the Center Dems and their associates will regain control of the DEM party but right now the Left Wing Dems, academics, etc are in total denial along with their financial backers who lost over a billion dollars on a complete failed election to Donald Trump who ran an excellent campaign at about a third of the $$$
…Calls for the End of Nonpartisanship After Trump Victory
That’s what’s known as a Lie Of Inference: unless people obey Democrat demands that they don’t believe their lying eyes, normal Americans have watched and known for years these self-appointed “elites” are Democrat party propagandists and party hacks.
Members of The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share class, wealthy beyond their worth as educators, thanks to American taxpayer university welfare support.
Communist Strategy 101: control the wording of the debate and the battle is more than halfway won. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Obama, Trudeau et al… same template used by all.
Let’s see if Prof. Mallick has integrity to match is opinion. I fully oppose his perspective but I appreciate Mallick making his opinion clear and public.
Harvard now has a clear choice to make. Stay with him and declare their support for his stance, or ask for his resignation so he can find a University or situation inline with his thinking and Harvard can signal what they believe by the next President they hire.
Then the students and donors can make their choice.
This is not news but merely a confirmation of the status quo. Thirty-eight years ago, I taught a course at Harvard’s Institute of Politics at the JFK School of Government. At the weekly Wednesday evening faculty dinner I was likely the only conservative at the table. I had to go undercover at times, such as when Susan Estrich was our guest and we each had to say what we were doing to help Mike Dukakis become president in 1988. If this recent election has taught us anything it’s that the left has lost touch with the American people. This position by the IOP head only confirms that. But there is life and hope after Harvard. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts and two Associate Justices, Kagan and Brown Jackson, are Harvard Law School grads. Associate Justices Alito, Kavanaugh, Sotomayor, and Thomas are Yale Law School grads. Barrett is the lone outsider having graduated from Notre Dame Law School. As this lineup at the SCOTUS shows us, what is taught in the classroom often stays in the classroom. And we are the better for it.
“As this lineup at the SCOTUS shows us, what is taught in the classroom often stays in the classroom. ”
Do you expect us to regard Kagan and Brown-Jackson as exemplifying that premise? Surely you can’t be serious? For that matter, Roberts gets a “meh” on that score.
When Harvard wraps propaganda in the conceit that Harvard grads are always the smartest people in the room, it makes the brainwashing impervious. They simply refuse to take others seriously about anything ever again. That’s why Ivy League brainwashing is so effective.
Therefore, these cultists simply have to be removed from political and legal authority. They can’t be deprogrammed.
The good news is that if someone goes through an Ivy League school and manages to keep their agency, he’s as true an intellectual as you’ll ever find.
Please, excuse my befuddled pronouns, but I hope you get what I’m saying.
As this lineup at the SCOTUS shows us, what is taught in the classroom often stays in the classroom. And we are the better for it.
I presume that was a typo, because I would say in the vast majority, the opposite is true. And that began long before Democrat Woke became a recognized cancer in those law schools. Look at what year Bader Ginsberg, Breyer, Roberts, etc graduated from law school.
Harvard, Yale et al have given America some very distinguished justices. But they have also given us some viciously political and activist legislate-from-the-bench justices.
Roberts as Chief Justice is a massive failure, typified by the legal writhing and squirming he went through to vote and write legal justifications to save Obama’s Obamacare, and again save Obama using his phone and pen to amend Obamacare legislation.
Roberts isn’t a servant and guardian of the Constitution: he’s a groupie of the Washington DC and New York cocktails and canapes party circuit. Nothing could be worse for Roberts than finding himself disinvited from those social circles.
I don’t think Mr Platypus would know democracy if it bit him on the ass.
I agree with abolishing the Dept of Education and in the process, removing any taxpayer funds from schools like Harvard. I also think that the creeps (which is the most accurate description that comes to mind) exhibiting this kind of disconnected, self-idolizing, behavior will strongly tend to marginalize themselves into oblivion. Without students to bully, and tax dollars to wield, what are they, exactly? Nothing worthy of any note. The entire so-called “higher education” system, and its ivory tower isolation from reality, in the form that it has existed in the US post-Civil War, may well be obsolete and defunct, and we may find that we are well rid of it. I suspect that idea has occurred to Professor Turley, and that he is deeply concerned about that. Understandable, in light of his lifelong commitment to that system, but nearly everything has a beginning, and an end. One hopes and trusts that whatever follows adopts most of the positive attributes of the fading system, while leaving much of the negative behind.
The “problem” (I hate using that phrase) is that such partisans have proven themselves to be blatantly dishonest in adjudication, divorced from all American precepts of democracy, due process, and justice. How does one then remain “preeminent” in America? How does an America survive as un-American?
How many of these college and university self-appointed “elites” are even going to be around to advance the Democrat University Elite 2025 project?
Won’t most of them be preoccupied with scrambling to immigrate, legally or otherwise, to Cuba or Venezuela or some other Trump-free country? Canada shouldn’t be on their potential list because their Marxist fascist leader and his minority government that has survived the last 10 years is poised for being potentially wiped from existence in their next election. The other thing: Canada’s immigration laws prohibit would be immigrants who have professed support for terrorists and terrorist violence. And Canada actually enforces it’s immigration laws, even under the current Marxist regime.
And will Dennis, Gigi, pbinca, Sammy, Wally, et al be storming the exit doors to join the rest of our betters fleeing Trump USA v2.0?
More than half of Harris voters want to relocate following Trump win: survey
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/more-than-half-harris-voters-want-relocate-following-trump-win-survey
Or maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up as much as we would like:
Despite Trump Win, Many Butt-Hurt Celebrities Still Haven’t Fulfilled Their Promises To Leave the U.S.A.
https://bleedingfool.com/news/despite-trump-win-many-butt-hurt-celebrities-still-havent-left-the-u-s-a/
I don’t see Canada as “Marxist fascist,” what I see is a traditionally British constitutional monarchy. Very similar to that which we foreswore some hundreds of years ago. You can see what their “rights” are worth when all must defer to the Crown.
I don’t see Canada as “Marxist fascist,
You haven’t been watching up north as Trudeau was first in lockstep with Obama’s actions, then again in lockstep with Biden’s actions. Whether gun control, Wuhan Flu mandates and lockdowns, treating protestors as though they were terrorists, etc. Or you’re in a state of complete denial.
“You can see what their “rights” are worth when all must defer to the Crown.”
The Crown is the government in power in Canada, just as it is here in the USA. The monarchy has been apolitical for over three centuries, now serving mostly in a ceremonial role and government representative.
The last time a British monarch attempted to force their will on the elected government and people of the UK, they chopped off his head in public to make their point and wrote and enacted the English Bill of Rights, their constitutional document that was the forefather of our constitution.
And as many Canadian rights are restricted and infringed on, so are many of ours.
We were firing soldiers who refused the jab before they followed our lead and started doing the same as just one example. Their government followed our government in inventing “hate speech”, defining what it was, and then taking government action against those who used it.
It’s a race to the bottom – and we aren’t watching from the sidelines.
This smacks of Hitler ordering nonexistent armies to attack the Russian while the Red Army was only blocks away from the Furher Bunker. Delusion on full display. Harvard is quickly becoming irrelevant.
Well, since it wants a partisan war; let it exist without any taxpayer funds/scholarships plans, guaranteed student loans etc. etc.. Let us witness a truly partisan institution.
whimsicalmama: Your point is well taken. Notwithstanding, I respect student Mallick’s transparent plea, -juxtaposed with the more subtle/subliminal messaging and indoctrination from many at the professorial level.
I m sorry, but their ever-increasing cries for “Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite, (DEI) bring to mind the end result of the French Revolution rather than the 2026 250th anniversary of our own civilized revolution. Having studied history all of my life I can see where the prog/left has been leading us and a bloody civil war, at this time, seems more than possible. Judging from the popular vote, I would wager that a majority of legal citizens would not care to waste their tax dollars of subsidizing ANY part of what sustains any institution that is in opposition to our traditional American culture and values.
Isn’t it curious? Some of our finest historians hail from places like Harvard and Yale—yet even Harvard seems to fumble the French Revolution! And in the meantime, they turn a blind eye to history’s most glaring lessons, allowing anti-Semitism to slip through the cracks, as if they’ve forgotten entirely. Across centuries, we’ve seen it: when Jewish communities were welcomed in empires, those empires thrived; when expelled, those same nations floundered. How is it that institutions with such historical knowledge can act with such stunning oblivion?
Perhaps it’s a broader academic ailment. As Thomas Sowell points out, when an academic stumbles disastrously, they’re promoted—while in business, they’d be out the door. Maybe this is why Trump’s brand of practical savvy resonates with many, while Biden’s results fall short. Strange times, indeed, when history’s lessons seem to gather dust in ivy-covered halls!
Ooops. just realized I said “student” Mallick. That was not sarcasm; it was an incomplete erasure of a different sentence I was going to write. Sorry.
(well, he is a student…)
we’ve all done this and I wish there were ways to edit typos etc. on this blog.
Indeed, ALL Federal funding, except for hard sciences…and even there reductions should be made…should be cut to $0. The ONLY way to get academia out of its tragically dysfunctional rut is to downsize it dramatically–i.e., stop using tax dollars to support people who clearly want a very different social system than what has made us prosperous and happy as a nation. If their ideology is to survive, it needs to do so on its own–not taxpayer–resources. Among the lines of Twitter /X would not be too much, IMHO. One might need to phase such a change in over 4-8 years, but then again maybe not….
As for primary and secondary education, which has the same rot, DEFUND those organizations by giving all families educational grants (equal to the per pupil taxes for education) to use at whatever schools they choose. Certification of such schools is the biggest rub, but we have systems for certifying doctors and lawyers and engineers that seem to work pretty well, and those have little direct government involvement.
And eliminating so many needless or duplicative agencies within the federal bureaucracy – especially the Dept of Ed which serves no purpose at all other than to be exceedingly intrusive. The rot in public schools starts at the university level where future teachers are indoctrinated by spiteful, ideologically fringed faculty.
As others have pointed out, if these institutions who have made a farce out of the expression “institutions of higher learning” make the choice to identify politically as Democrat and Marxist, they certainly have the right to do so.
And the party they have declared they are at war with has the right to cut off every single dime of federal taxpayer funding to them.
Putting an end to Obama and Biden issued student loans in the form of taxpayer funding would make that a double tap. Think of the court battles averted and attempts to buy student votes with promises of transferring unpaid loans to taxpayers!
It is impossible for people who live and die for “Virtue Signaling” to understand that they are the bad guys. Maybe if we treat them like they are the bad guys, they will begin to understand?
” Maybe if we treat them like they are the bad guys, they will begin to understand?”
Wishful thinking. That will just reinforce their conviction that their ill fortune is our fault, and outs alone. Mostly, we need to just ignore them until they die off.
Must be DEI of some sort. The people who lost on Nov 5 were not the people, but those who feed off the left.
When one considers the number of academic PhD’s who sat at the table for the Wannsee Conference on the ‘Judenfrage’, this call comes as no surprise.
End all government monies flowing to Harvard, including any tax benefits it receives.
I agree…time to END Federal Aid or loan backing to colleges, cities, states, non-profits
ban public unions
TAX any non-profit where anyone gets $100k…like a college…make them PAY TAXES!
Let democrats fund their OWN FAILURES
* General comment
I’m not researching this much…
Briefly using Harvard example, Harvard’s endowment is approx 50 billion making it the richest in the world.
FOREIGN INVESTMENT and philanthropist donors. The middle east is donating approx a billion, China in the millions, Quatar big donor the list includes approx 65 nations. Harvard is in error because there’s a limit at 250,000 dollars or….
The person making these comments is foreign born or remains a citizen of another nation? I’m not researching it. 25% of Harvard’s pupils are visa study?
A Mr Griffen is a big donor and is prepared to withdraw saying he won’t hire snowflakes from Harvard inferring they’re useless.
It bears research. These colleges should be repositories for the brightest to research and develop as the US needs, ready and willing to step up in crisis when our constitutional and economic systems are threatened.
There’s a problem.
If the caliber of instructors are all like Randall Kennedy There’s just no brain trust to draw from.
* Pratyush Mallick doesn’t have a Google bio. He is from Wylie, Texas, and computer science government major or interests.
Sounds like a typical Harvard pupil. Harvard accepts pupils with the most hard-luck stories and dreams of helping the hard luck endowed. Read 10 essays submitted. Just make it up. Had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow…
There are true hard luck stories from other generations and nations that are true. At 9 years old orphaned and sent to a monastery work camp eating bone soup is perfectly true.
Have a fruitful day..