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.
I’m sure Harvard won’t mind losing any taxpayer-funded government money after it adopts this policy…
Clearly, Harvard’s fashions are well behind the times. Maybe this genius will be able to salvage some value from Blackrock’s legacy media holdings when he gets his first job.
Jonathan: At the top of DJT’s agenda after Jan. 20 is to impose massive tariffs on imported goods from China and elsewhere. He was able to persuade his voters that the tariffs would be paid for by China–not US consumers–and the tariffs would spark widespread domestic production What is the reality?
US consumers will ultimately pay the tariffs. Philip Daniele, the CEO of AutoZone says: “If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer”. Daniele indicated that once they know what the markup will be “we generally raise prices ahead of time”. So if you need a part for your car you would be advised to buy it now! This view is being echoed by other importers.
Mark Cuban just put his finger on the problem: “Right now every company that imports from China is taking all the cash they can muster, and buying up as much as they can and stuffing it in a warehouse, in anticipation of the tariffs creating anticipated demand for imports…That money would have been used for expansion, raises, bonuses and other operational elements”.
Here is a real life example of what Cuban predicts. A woman from PA, that went for DJT, just posted this: “My husband works for a small manufacturing company here in southwestern PA–that means most employees are Trump voters. When the president of the company sat down today to tell them their annual Christmas bonus would not come this year because they now need to purchase at least a year’s worth of products prior to January 20th due to the proposed tariffs, they did not understand. My husband said that the president had to explain what a tariff is and how it directly hurt the company. They all thought the foreign company paid the tariff. This is the level of ignorance voting against their own interests here in PA,…”
So MAGA voters are in for a rude awakening. By voting against their own economic interests they are going to see the price of everything skyrocketing under DJT. That’s why my wife and I will be buying our new car before Jan. 20th. A word to the wise. And when the economy tanks under the weight of DJT’s tariffs that is something he won’t be able to blame on Joe Biden!
Don’t read the news much?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/politics/biden-tariffs-chinese-imports/index.html
I can do without Chinese slavery and products made in sweatshops. If a U.S. company wants to shut down a factory and ship our jobs overseas where a worker will toil for 70 hours per week for just enough money to buy rice and lentils, then they should be penalized for that. Conversely, manufacturers should be incentivized to keep production on our shores.
At least Apple in China is kind enough to put nets below stairs and windows to keep their “employees” from jumping to their death.
Why are 20 million people storming our borders? Because they are paid fair wages in their country
I would rather keep as much manufacturing in our hemisphere and our country and have fewer things but things that have quality and items that employ our citizens.
Hear hear and NO imported foods. Omg . USDA strict inspections. FOR THE FIRST TIME quaker oats got a recall for salmonella. It’s a freaking 3rd world.
Get to work repubs.
Serious question: can anyone point to an instance of discrimination in academic hiring for political reasons?
Chicago Booth Review
” Bosses, Check Your Political Bias When Hiring
–By Dylan Walsh, January 23, 2023
CBR – Politics
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/bosses-check-your-political-bias-when-hiring
Manhattan Institute
“Political Discrimination as Civil-Rights Struggle”
–National Review, June 24th, 2021
“Viewpoint neutrality should be legally mandated”
https://manhattan.institute/article/political-discrimination-as-civil-rights-struggle
If there is a better argument to not “cancel” college student loan debt (at least the student loans of Harvard students) than this call to end nonpartisanship because a clear majority of the American voting public elected Donald Trump president, I’d like to hear it. BTW, why are any federal tax dollars being granted to Harvard, an institution with a $53.2 BILLION endowment, that generated a 9.6% return in 2024?
When one party is continual denigrating education and educational institutions, is it any wonder that they’ll eventually fight back?
Partisanship employed for the sake of assuring non-partisanship is kinda like initiating war in order to assure peace (for the recently departed soldiers of a lost cause).
Initiate the draft for Ivy League schools only, let those budding young elitists go serve their war lords. A dose of reality will make them come around.
* Harvard pupils want to purchase militaries sort of a mercenary scheme. Of course the soldiers must be willing to die for income. Bet it’d be expensive.
If you want the death of the progressive left you will need a coherent battle plan that is waged on multiple fronts.
1-Tax Policy with minimal to no deductions-flattens the number of tax levels and vitually eliminates the IRS which has been used as a weapon too often. Let the people decide who they want to contribute to with no tax implications either way .
Elimination of all pacs
2-Elimination of any funding of NGO’s-it’s basically a means to support the progressive agenda with no oversight.
3-relook at campaign finance to minimize the astounding sums that have been spent and block buying elections especially like the brain dead Soros plan with DA’s that wreck cities or give governors (like in Florida) the power to remove them. States can have spending rules on elections. We need original thinking in federal campaign finance
4-All sums won by the federal government in court suits or settlements go to the general fund and not to “charities” and NGO’s.
5-Massive shrinkage of the federal government.
6-shift in government funding to state universities with stringent control to make sure there is no discrimination of any group, including political orientation. Fines and loss of funds if they are delinquent.
7-Return the CDC to its real expertise which is communicable disease. The NIH should be able to handle the rest. If the NIH awards funds to a study then there should be a complete report and/or paper within 5 years or they pay back the grant. This specifically applies to a $10 million dollar grant to study the efficacy of invasive therapy for transgender patients. The recipient of the grant is refusing to publish the data since the results give the lie to the much of the dogma about invasive treatment of transgenders.
8-Other cabinet offices should do the same.
And so much more.
Don’t just knock down the superficial edifice, you have to pull up the foundations and sow the land with salt (so to speak, as the Romans did with Carthage)
* taxes? Just an actual income without gross and net because taxes are in reality used to adjust interest rates. Private business has no need of taxes at all. Public employees exist on a separate econ system in reality. A ratio of public to private income earners is an interesting ratio. Supposedly private business is purchasing what public employees offer such as a mail service or a food service for the poor or a military service. Public employees can simply be on a circular income putting away next years income from the current year or cumulative past 5 years or self funded. There’s no need for taxes at all.
Banks are private aren’t they? People invest in banks receiving interest or paying interest.
* The American people are buying military equipment from private industry. Eisenhower military industrial… perhaps that can be pared back to missiles and nukes. No more ground wars. Those planes are nice. Those choppers etc left behind in Afghanistan? Slick move. Cost you a bundle while Joe sold the equipment via his son.
Let’s get the food system going domestic with inspection and upgrades in industry. What a disgusting mess. Threw up for 2 days after eating Vietnam imported shrimp.
Yes, children say all sorts of stupid things.
Actions speak louder than any words and based on history it would be intelligent to be skeptical…even on guard.
It was a Harvard man who was largely responsible for the Salem Witch Hunts.
In more than 300 years Harvard’s stripes may have faded without truly changing.
Beware.
Rejecting objectivity and neutrality is tantamount to rejecting truth. Any such institution does not belong at a university whose motto is Veritas.
* Well, old man, Harvard pupils are existentialists in philosophy. Atheists.
Harvard University like so many other Marxist infiltrated American institutions, is echoing the soulful cries of sour grapes as a wounded animal might moan forth it’s last gasp for it’s only and final pitiful defense.
Trump will fix this too. In as much as the search engines have all been rigged against publishing anything other than the leftist party line, there do remain some media which have published Trump’s plans regarding the rescue and reform of the Nation’s educational system from K12, to the Universities, even if somewhat dated.
“Donald Trump Vows to ‘Reclaim’ the ‘Once Great Educational Institutions’ in the U.S.”
–By Elizabeth Weibel, 23 Apr 2024
“Former President Donald Trump vowed to “reclaim” the educational system in the United States from the “radical left” that was responsible for “indoctrinating America’s youth.”
Trump said:
“These standards will include defending the American tradition and western civilization. Protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly. Removing all Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucrats. Offering options for accelerated and low-cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.”
“Trump added that he would “direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases” against colleges and universities that “continue to engage in racial discrimination and schools that persist in explicit, unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity.”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/04/23/donald-trump-vows-to-reclaim-the-once-great-educational-institutions-in-the-u-s/
Radical progressives who call for an end to nonpartisanship are dangerously close to welcoming civil war. They have let it be known that their intolerance is no longer to be disguised and that their minds are now officially closed. The good news for the rest of us will come about when objectivism returns to greater legacy media and no longer will assist them in confirming their biases.
That will never happen in the legacy media. As a consequence, and because of the rise of alternative media, legacy media is effectively dead.
James posted: It’s pretty clear: as with NPR, eliminate their funding.
Even if you tracked down every federal dime they receive directly or indirectly from subscriber stations, you wouldn’t eliminate the majority of their funding NPR gets from states, universities, corporations, Soros type NGO’s, etc. So NPR would still do NPR political partisanship for Democrats and attacking Republicans.
The bigger and more important point is that there is no justifiable argument to be made for the federal government to provide money to ANY partisan group or these universities. Especially when the nation and we as taxpayers funding our government are so deeply and dangerously in debt.
You will never see the federal government giving Planned Parenthood-type buckets of cash to the NRA to promote firearms safety and the exercise of the Second Amendment, as just one example.
Nor should they – but that underlines that government funding of these entities whether NPR or Planned Parenthood (as the other example) is pretty much one way:
Taxpayer dollars in = Democrat political support and political donations coming out the ass end of these entitities.
* ” The debt” is simply the cost of all those services you receive from all those public employees. Military grants to private industry is the lion’s share? Maybe you want a smaller military for defense only composed of approx 20 nukes of various sizes? No ground troops at all or perhaps just ground intercontinental missiles? Be cheaper. Of course there’s all that da#n money spent on that sh#tty border with the A-holes pouring in? How bout just blowing up drug cartels homes and strongholds with missiles instead and tell the gd pres of Mexico to guard their southern border?
Jonathan: It’s rich you would accuse Harvard and Pratyush Mallick of giving up on “nonpartisanship”. DJT has never practiced nonpartisanship. He has an “enemies” list–those of his political opponents who he pledges to prosecute and imprison now that he will be back in office. Here is a partial list of some of the “enemies within” DJT wants to try for treason and other alleged crimes:
Jack Smith
Liz Cheney
Mark Milley
Nancy Pelosi
Joe Biden
Letitia James
Kamala Harris
Adam Schiff
The TV networks–the “fake news”
In the true spirit of nonpartisanship Biden has pledged a peaceful transfer of power. Kamala Harris graciously conceded. She didn’t claim her loss on “massive voter fraud”. Nor is it likely she will engage in a violent insurrection to overturn the election results. That’s what politicians do who are committed to the democratic process. That’s the real definition of “nonpartisanship”.
On the other hand, DJT only practices partisan politics. He seeks vengeance and retribution against anyone he perceives as his “enemies”. There will be nothing DJT does in the next four years that could be deemed “nonpartisan”. Dictators never engage in “nonpartisanship”!
Dennis Drops His Daily Deuce:
Jonathan: It’s rich you would accuse Harvard and Pratyush Mallick of giving up on “nonpartisanship”. DJT has never practiced nonpartisanship.
What’s pathetic is Dennis claiming that these taxpayer funded universities are the same thing as Trump; no mention of his favorite party leaders whether Biden or Obama or Clinton or Harris.
Remember the last time Dennis had a Midol Moment and posted a similar lament that any of the above Soviet Democrats weren’t practicing non-partisanship?
Yup, nobody remembers the last time because it never happened. And that’s EXACTLY what Dennis wants from his employers who send him here to crap all over Professor Turley’s blog.
Back hiding in your Mom’s basement already, awaiting the moment to drop your next deuce here Dennis?
“Here is a partial list of some of the “enemies within” DJT wants to try for treason and other alleged crimes:”
Where can we go to read the transcript of President Trump actually saying that, you fvcking Democrat McInliar?
Trump has an “enemies” list–those of his political opponents who he pledges to prosecute and imprison now that he will be back in office.
PLEDGED????? Dennis, give us a link to where you read that pledge Trump made to American voters, so we can go read the pledge and the ‘enemies list’ for ourselves. Not saying you’re an amoral, unprincipled, hypocritical, corrupt, filthy liar of course… but that’s the reputation you’ve established here. Ditto for your faked friendship with Professor Turley, your host.
But right now, that “pledge” you’re claiming exists looks like it’s nothing other than one more of Harris and the Soviet Democrat-Marxist Media Propaganda Complex’s election campaign lies.
No link to support your claim of a “pledge”?
Of course you don’t have a link, and you’ve already slithered back into hiding in your Mom’s basement until you emerge to drop your next deuce here.
Reality bites, Dennis: you couldn’t lie hard enough, often enough, and convincingly enough before the election to succeed in getting Vice President DEI Hire elected.
And you can’t succeed now that American voters have delivered their verdict on your campaign of lies and denial.
The decision to prosecute wrong doing will come from the Justice Department. Since we know that the actions of the previous regime were law fare against a political opponent the need to re establish truly blind justice is going to be difficult…but if justice is coming for those on your list, it will be “justified” by evidence and only then will the Justice Department and system overall be set on the correct course that every American can believe in.
Dennis, I believe you are sorely misinformed. DJT has said he has no interest in going after his political enemies. He has said over and over he wants the political Lawfare to end. He wants to unite the country. He refused to go after Hillary Clinton when he won in 2016. Paraphrasing, he basically said can you imagine the damage to our coy,had he gone after the wife of a former POTUS? A former Secretary of State? It would have been horrible for the country. The country needs to heal and unite. Trump repeatedly says that success will be his retribution.
Just this morning Trump posted on “X” , paraphrasing, that he heard that the Harris campaign has some issues with paying their vendors. He offered to do anything he could to help them out in the interest of unity.
None of what you accuse squares with the realty of what Trump wants/is trying to do. It certainly does not sound like an “authoritarian”, a “dictator” or someone bent on retribution against his political enemies.
Peace.
Pratyush Mallick, a Harvard senior, actually serves as president of the Institute of Politics’ Student Advisory Committee. His comments are absurd, of course. But Mallick doesn’t run the IOP; he’s is merely expressing his opinion on how the IOP should respond to Donald Trump’s election. The headline in the Harvard Crimson was misleading, calling him the president of the IOP. It’s prompting some to call for federal funding of Harvard to cease. I don’t believe Mallick’s statements demonstrate any official policy change at the IOP in the works.
* The Middle East are big donors to Harvard’s portfolio.
A law that no domestic college nor univeriversity can accept foreign donations , gifts, money of any kind would be a good start and decrease foreign students from 25% to 10% for exceptional scholarship only.
Professor , it is true how few conservatives there are in the faculty of Harvard and that this doesn’t even represent the state of Massachusetts or the state of the country .
However, using the same logic , the US Supreme court is over represented by conservative justices over liberal justices and this most definitely doesn’t represent the country at large .
Remind me what your suggesstion was published on this blog ,maybe a couple of years ago , as to how to reform the SCOTUS . I believe it included adding to the number of justices and a rotation of sorts ( limited number of years to serve ) , and every president getting to pick 1 or 2 justices ?
Here is an interesting JT interview from 2017 on his court expansion proposal and related topics. https://buckleybeacon.com/2017/11/16/jonathan-turley-on-expanding-the-supreme-court/
It’s pretty clear: as with NPR, eliminate their funding. If they are so certain of their intrinsic superiority, that should suffice, let them do it on their own with their intrinsic superiority. Meanwhile, those receiving an actual education elsewhere will hand them their behinds professionally, as alternative media have the MSM.
It isn’t universities that underwent slow rot to sea change – it’s the entire modern left. The utter lack of self-reflection on their part is stunning, and bespeaks people who are simply not well. This is not a ‘right wing’ or ‘far right’ or ‘white nationalist’ (oh the irony of that last one! Have these people looked in the mirror?) opinion.