Below is my column in The Hill on Harvard faculty organizing in opposition to the Trump Administration’s measures targeting the university for failure to protect Jewish students and its lack of diversity of viewpoints on campus. Despite being a vocal critic of Harvard’s culture of orthodoxy, I have encouraged the Administration to moderate some of these measures and oppose the denial of tax-exempt status of the university. However, the Harvard faculty members may want to sit this one out. They are not helping their cause.
Here is the column:
Harvard faculty members are finally upset about free speech and viewpoint intolerance. Hundreds of professors signed a letter of outrage over what they called an attack on the “rights of free expression, association, and inquiry” in higher education.
The cause for this outcry is the threat to end the university’s tax exempt status, freezing federal grants, and other punitive measures. Some of those measures raise serious concerns over academic freedom and free speech.
The problem is that Harvard faculty members have spent decades denying those rights to teachers and students alike.
There is an almost comical lack of self-awareness among Harvard faculty members who express concern about protecting viewpoint diversity and academic integrity. The letter gives off that same queasy feeling as when CBS morning host Gayle King insisted she is an astronaut, just like Alan Shepard, due to her 10-minute jaunt in space on the Blue Origin. One is just left speechless, looking awkwardly at one’s shoes.
Many of these signatories have been entirely silent for years as departments purged their ranks of conservatives to create one of the most perfectly sealed-off echo chambers in all of higher education. Harvard ranks dead last for free speech, awarded a 0 out of 100 score last year by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. There has been no outcry about this from most of these professors.
There has long been a culture of intolerance at Harvard. Just last month, Harvard Professor Timothy McCarthy called upon the university to fire any faculty who do not support the use of “gender-affirming care” on children.
Just last year, the president of the Student Advisory Committee of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics called for the express abandonment of nonpartisanship as a touchstone of the institute after President Trump’s second election.
Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo recently rejected the notion of free speech as a “blank check” and said that criticizing university leaders like himself or school policies is now viewed as “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct.”
The Trump Administration is right to focus on Harvard as an example of all that is wrong with higher education today. Like most universities, Harvard’s faculty runs from the left to the far left. For years, the university has been criticized for extreme ideological bias in hiring and admissions. The faculty merely harrumphed. After all, this is Harvard.
Consider the numbers. In a country with a plurality of conservative voters in the last election, less than 9 percent of the Harvard student body is conservative. Less than 3 percent of the faculty identified as conservative.
That is more than an academic echo chamber. It is an academic sensory deprivation tank.
Harvard faculty have purged conservative faculty for years and created one of the most hostile environments for free speech in all of higher education. Even with the virtual absence of conservative faculty and an overwhelmingly liberal class, only 33 percent of graduating students feel comfortable speaking their minds freely at Harvard.
In a recent debate at Harvard Law School, I debated the respected Professor Randall Kennedy on the lack of ideological diversity at Harvard. I do not consider Kennedy anti-free speech or intolerant. Yet during the debate, I noted the statistics on the vanishing number of conservative students and faculty at Harvard in a country divided quite evenly politically. Kennedy responded that Harvard “is an elite university” and does not have to “look like America.”
The problem is that Harvard does not even look like Massachusetts, which is nearly 30 percent Republican. At the law school, only a tiny number of faculty members agree with the views of the majority of the Supreme Court and roughly half of the federal judiciary.
For the record, I have criticized the threat of removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status and other measures that threaten free speech. However, as I discuss in my book “The Indispensable Right,” there are ways to force greater diversity without curtailing academic freedom. That includes federal and state governments withholding government funding from these schools until there is greater diversity and tolerance on campuses.
For years, these administrators and professors have shown an abundance of arrogance and a paucity of concern over free speech. They showed little concern for how they were damaging this historic institution. In just one generation, higher education is in a free fall across the country as professors pursued ideological over institutional interests. If universities were conventional corporations, virtually every university president and board in the country would be removed for violation of their fiduciary duties.
But there is no such fiduciary obligation in education. Liberal presidents, boards, and faculty have eliminated most dissenting voices to their agendas. Indeed, many Harvard faculty would sooner bulldoze every building to the ground than restore true ideological diversity to their departments or abandon biased hiring and admissions.
Harvard spent millions fighting to defend their use of race in admissions — including discrimination against Asians in a shockingly demeaning and dehumanizing manner — until it lost before the Supreme Court in 2023. In the meantime, the university has been forced to introduce remedial, high-school-level math courses for its students due to falling scholastic standards.
Of course, none of that history is mentioned in the letter. Instead, one signatory to the Harvard letter, Kennedy School professor Archon Fung, explained that “It is a very predictable pattern that authoritarian governments go after two institutions first, which is the media and universities.” It was a telling argument. Much like academia, journalism schools abandoned objectivity and neutrality in favor of advocacy journalism. As a result, revenue and readers are plunging as citizens turn away from the mainstream echo chamber in favor of new and independent media.
Fung further argued, “We’re one of the two or three pillars that are really, really important for free discussion and inquiry in a democratic society, which is the beating heart of a democracy.”
It is precisely the free discussion and inquiry that Harvard, in maintaining its orthodox culture, has denied to conservatives and libertarians.
When it comes to the unjustifiable cancellation of its tax-exempt status, many of us will continue to argue for moderation in dealing with Harvard. The last thing we need in this debate is the help of the Harvard faculty.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Harvard is a perfect example of the mind virus. If the people at Harvard, who should know better, never get better, what hope is there for the 49% of lunatics in the general electorate who would vote for an abrasive and incompetent DEI candidate over a sane border policy. It puzzles me how we can live with this much violent political incompetence indefinitely without being ruined by it. Europe is already ruined.
I’m beginning to wonder if we might be deporting the wrong people.
If Trump wants to do something positive for all students, he can reduce the amount students may borrow annual against their education. This will seriously affect the wealth of the champagne universities.
Assuming that Harvard still has a classics department, perhaps those instructors should take a look at Aesop:
“Self-conceit may lead to self destruction.”
Paradoxically, President Trump may be Harvard’s best friend by forcing them to be less discriminatory. The alternative would be a growing and soon permanent reputation for being pro-Hamas, anti-Israel institution. They will slowly and then more rapidly lose American enrollment. Even now, by dints of remedial courses, they must admit less competent students. Parents will be reluctant to spend $100K annually to support a minimal education. Even distinguished faculty will tire of the continuing unrest and leave for more peaceful pastures. All this adds up to a slow, but certain decline in academic status.
Harvard is a dichotomy. Prior to my retirement from medicine I spent the last 15 years going to Harvard Medical School for continuing medical education. Almost exclusively. They were, in my opinion, the best option out there. They were the best organized, comprehensive, and often had hugest faculty from other institutions. They supported the courses with excellent books of notes, then graduated to CD’s , the usb drives and were always accepting of having people bring their computers to courses to add notes to their information and quite progressive, in a good way, to presenting the information.
You had many international visitors and foreign service physicians and the informal talks were excellent.
The problem, even then, was they drew almost no one from outside of the Northeastern US and I was one of the very rare people from the South, Midwest, or Far West (strange). Yet they were welcoming and fun. But that was some time ago. It’s hard to compare that to what they do now but even I would have no problem with them loosing federal funds and tax exempt status. They have been warned repeatedly over the years that this was coming and yet they persisted in this self destructive behavior and ignored the warnings. Their free speech will not be impaired and they can scream all they want and they can go straight to the public for donations and funds. They will remain petulant and out of touch and condescending but not with my tax dollars.
Actually the professors column today was one of the best arguments to cut off federal dollars that I have seen.
The trouble with being elite and condescending is eventually the non elite, the deplorables, the flyover people, the great unwashed and so on can achieve power and then they may just get tired of listening to you. If you failed to change your ways and ignore the feds and the funds being cutoff, then the undesirables may pull out the guillotine and cut off more important things. I would strongly suggest that Harvard listen to the feds and the non elite, quickly.
GEB: Excellent analysis, Doc, I agree 100%. It would serve mankind little to do unto Harvard what Harvard profs would have done to we conservatives. On balance, Harvard has given the U.S. and the world much more than it has ever received from either. It presently is run by zealots and tyrants but public pressure seems to be having an effect in exposing Harvard’s blemishes. Let us hope that what results from all this will be an improvement or, at least, a return to normalcy.
JJC,
Neither sanity nor normalcy are traits of the leftists. As long as they continue their absurd claim that tax dollar grants and funding are their 1stA right, fight to discriminate, support terrorism, they will never return to normalcy.
Anon: I understand your point but we must guard against becoming those we dislike for bing what they are. We are winning this argument by the time tested method of peaceful and rational debate. We do not need to get trapped by the left’s invitation to act like they act. The have no constituency but themselves. Reason eventually will surface. It always does, Have faith.
The proposal is not to create a Reich University where leftist thinking is verboten. It’s simply to stop using the public’s money to subsidize institutions which gate the public. This is hardly “becoming what we hate.” Harvard et al will be perfectly free to continue pumping out disdain for Americans and their historical values.
“I share your aspirations, JJC, but did reason truly prevail in Nazi Germany—a nation that, at the time, was among the most intellectually and culturally advanced in the world?”
Why must everything we dislike be compared to Nazi Germany? Most who speak of Nazi Germany have little more than a TV history of it. The problems of today that we are discussing are unique to today and stem from the issues of today and those in charge of various institutions today. Let’s deal with what we have and stop the demagoguery. It adds nothing to the discussion. Wecan learn from history, but we do not need to repeat it or model today’s behavior by it.
Two comments:
1. Professor Turley writes: “That is more than an academic echo chamber. It is an academic sensory deprivation tank.” Brilliant, funny and right to the point. Still smiling an hour after reading that passage.
2. Let’s not forget Dani Rodrik, who wanted to blacklist Trump supporters, in the list of Harvard hypocrites that are constantly hectoring the rest of us about free speech: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/harvard-scholar-calls-for-blacklisting-trump-officials/
We are all aware of the egregious hypocrisy within academia at this time.
We are to blame our own cowardice for not, rightfully, what this academic segregation and self-superior attitude for are – plain and obvious fascism that would put the Nazis of WWII to shame.
Academia, today, is just the resurrection of the KKK, without the sheets but with the same sense of moral superiority.
The fact that we give one penny to them via tax dollars is incomprehensible. The argument about research is bogus and we know it. Research can be done elsewhere without needing to be associated with intellectual things and fanatics,
Again, I will continue to equate progressive ideology to the same closed-minded radicalism found in Islamic jihadism and they are proving themselves far more dangerous to American culture than planes flown into towers.
While the Administration is at it, they should support making colleges and universities the guarantors of college student loan debt.
In the 1980s, I taught a course at one of Harvard’s schools. At our Wednesday evening communal faculty dinners, I was obviously the only conservative in the room. Despite our differences, I always felt welcomed, and whatever political differences we might have had were discussed politely and respectfully. This is what I think is missing with the current crew that seeks to “cancel” anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe. It’s the Spanish Inquisition without the doctrinal codex and the rack.
It’s somewhat understandable that businesses, including those in the education field, tend to hire people who agree with them and their policies. What HR person is going to say, “Oh, wonderful; we disagree; you’re hired!”? This behavior carries over to the business world, where HR people tend to solidify the company ethos by ensuring the hiring of loyal subjects.
None of this should be a surprise. Likewise, we should not be insouciant when it comes to recognizing it. We should be willing to openly call it what it is: bigotry and anti-diversity. Bigots dislike being called what they call others. I also think we, the taxpayers, should not have to pay for this “elite” bigotry and hatred. The Beatles were correct, that money can’t buy you love. But it can and should buy some respect if nothing else.
This is exactly like an Inquisition, JJC, and they do have a codex: usually it’s the Rules for Radicals, or whatever other Marxist grift they want. The issue with it is, because of their push to homogenize all their grifts into one pull, that codex is about as fluid as I am after Taco Tuesday. No one can keep up with it’s changes, so that’s why you see many of them fall silent when questioned; They don’t want to be seen as “other” for any reason. Which, thinking about it, is the final hypocrisy of The Left: a party once known for individualism, now forced into radical sameness for fear of the radical turning inward on themselves.
-Rabble
There’s no difference in the effect of not funding Harvard and taking away their tax-exempt status. One way doesn’t give them more money and the other way doesn’t let them keep more money. But both end up with Harvard having less money. It’s a racist, religious discriminating college which should have to follow the same rules as everyone else.
Liberals/Left Wing Radicals/Elite’s gone WILD. It was pointed out that Harvard is actual seeking to compromise with the Trump Admin., simply look at the Lawyers they have hired, ALL Close to Trump and work on Trump Admin cases as outside lawyers. The problem with the compromise solution is the University professors, who are Left Wing Radicals, etc will not accept it. If Trump Admin does take Harvard’s tax exemption away, its in huge financial trouble, donations are tax exempt? Even though have has a huge Endowment, they seem to have money issues, they are issuing debt, now over a Billion dollars? Why are they borrowing when they have a huge endowment? Lots of issues for Harvard.
Lack of self awareness, you got that right professor. Oh, no! Taking away our entitlements to taxpayer money is an assault on our free speech! This is an elite university. We dont to to look like the rest of the nation! If by that you mean a bunch of arrogrant, obnoxious, lacking self awareness, bigots, antisemites, wannabe fascists, then yes you should lose your access to all federal funds and tax exempt status. Stay inside of your elietist bubble and become more and more irrevelant everyday. Continue to do so and the Harvard name will but a joke, more so than it already is.
#. It’s abundantly obvious the KGB has destroyed your university system by infiltrating. It’s collapsed as has the dept immigration, judiciary, congress, economic, transportation, elections, federal reserve, borders, agriculture, …….
Shoe banging on table—> we shall bury you….
How about a review of all federal aid to the 100 largest universities in the US? What is the financial status of each institution (assets, liabilities). What amount is used for: students; actual teachers (professors) salaries; administrators; faculty benefits, overhead; etc. Down in the weeds. Guaranteed to be some surprises in there. It could be called “The Harvard Review” in honor of the institution that got the ball rolling.
The administration’s actions are an attack on the “’rights of free expression, association, and inquiry'” of the Harvard faculty. “There is an almost comical lack of self-awareness among Harvard faculty members . . .” (JT)
What’s “comical” is their bizarre arguments — which in fact are rationalizations for: Give us your money. And shut up.
For government to violate an individual’s 1A rights means: If you express X opinion, the government will use its police powers to prosecute you. Like the Soviets did, and like communist China does today.
Harvard’s view of 1A is: Somewhere, 1A includes the “right” to compel others to pay for our research. And for those who pay to be quiet about how we spend their money.
Harvard’s detached-from-reality view of free speech is a ruse, hiding in plain sight an evil premise: We are this culture’s Philosopher Kings. You, the unwashed masses. We know best how to spend your money. You blindly obey.
Since Harvard is a Leftist Indoctrination Entity (aka “LIE”) and is a Marxist Factory of future Marxist leaders with a mission to destroy America and Civilization and replace it with an Oligarchy-Gloablist Contral Control Center, it seems only reasonable that Harvard should go full-Marxist and start paying its fair share of taxes on its $54 billion endowment and it’s current annual receipts run rate.
What’s that, Harvard? You say that you only promote Marxism for others but not for yourselves?
You mean, Communism-Poverty for the masses, but wealth and luxury for the Harvard-Controlling-Elite? Oh, I get it. Thanks for explaining.
Delenda est Harvard.
And sown with salt and the faculty sold into slavery. These idiot savants at Harvard can’t be fixed.
I disagree.
We just shouldn’t give it any funding or grant it tax exempt status.
Just expressing frustration through hyperbole. I don’t key cars or disrupt universities, but they already are.
Institutions and organizations apply for tax exempt status and are approved for it. I agree with stopping the funding based on discrimination laws. The tax exempt status issue could end up being a real tit-for-tat everywhere.
Never understood what the American taxpayers got for the billions of dollars of grants to Harvard and others.
What do you mean you don’t understand what taxpayers got from Harvard for its billions of dollars of taxpayers money? Are you not happy with the Harvard promoted race riots over the the death of St. George Floyd, who died for our sins? What about the rally for trans, obsese, lovers of Hamas? These things would not be possible without Harvard’s support and its esteemed leadership.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EZOvW–T8o4
Tax exemption criteria is what? If they cross the line by a millimeter then they are toast. It is a sharp line in any other case but we appear spineless when it comes to academia because we have, traditionally seen academia as the font of wisdom.
ACADEMIA. IS NO LONGER A FONT OF WISDOM anymore than any madrassa is a font of open-minded wisdom.
Why are we afraid to call these ideologically driven thugs what they are?
To witness the antisemitism there is to see just the tip of an iceberg of radical and egregious segregation based on adherence to the same notion of self-superiority that we found repugnant in the old South.
Why are we reluctant to gut this pig and expose its putrid guts?
Why should colleges get taxpayers money? I mean other than you get money from them….while student families pay up to $100k?
End tax exempt and federal & student aid and loan backing
Lack of Self Awareness is a core value of the rabid Left…..all one has to do is look at Van Hollen (that Senator from Maryland) and his tripe about demanding the Perp’s Criminal activity not be discussed all the while he is in El Salvador meeting with an El Salvadoran and claiming it is not about the person but about principle. Oh hell no it ain’t…..it is about principle all right but not the kind he espouses.
The guy is an illegal Alien who violated US Immigration law and continued his criminal ways as part of a designated Criminal/Terrorist Organization doing great harm to the United States and the American People.
Exactly why is it the rabid Left has to latch onto such outrages (millions of illegals enticed to enter the United States by the Biden Administration for example) and not the kinds of issues that improve life for the American Citizen and Legal Aliens living peacefully in the Country? Why do they always seem to deprive Citizens and Legal Aliens of their Rights and promote imaginary Rights of those who are here illegally and who are preying upon innocent victims?
Face it folks….you Democrats that remain silent over this are the damn problem just as much as those in the media and politics that are out in the open about it.
In a previous article the Good Professor raised the issue of when would the “killing” begin…..he misses the point it already has and it is continuing as violent gang members enter the country, remain in the country, and remain free to perpetrate their violent crimes upon American Citizens and Legal Aliens.
At some point the government must deal with the problem or the People shall.
The Democrats got a hint of what that can involve if they continue as always….ignoring the Will of the People….and refuse to give the rabid Left the boot out of their Party….and keep losing elections. Our best hope is not that they do….but rather that they do not and Conservatives continue to win political office, receive appointments to positions of authority, and to the Benches of Courts at every level.
I am counting on the Democrat Party to do exactly that but also pray that those caught in the middle add their votes for commonsense and traditional American Values so foreign to the rabid Left of today.
I believe, based on Matt Taibbi’s reporting, with citations, that the tax code requires a tax exempt institution to conduct itself without racial bias in hiring and admissions. Harvard, with its maintenance of racially biased policies in those areas, and many other colleges and universities, has forfeited its right to tax exempt status.
Why does Professor Turley think they, unlike the rest of us, should be permitted to flout the tax code with impunity?
“Why does Professor Turley think they, ..” Because he is one of them. In education, its all about the Benjamins.
I don’t buy into Turleys benevolent professor game. He like all so-called “academics” are addicted to tax dollars.
Yes, Professor Turley believes in the sancity of hypocrisy. Turley believes that hypocrisy gets a bad rap and that hypocrisy is actually a holy, sacred, and devine aspiration.
We know from Turley’s body of work beyond this specific essay that he does not believe Harvard’s hiring and admissions are free of ideological, partisan, and racial bias.
Yet he makes no argument for WHY they should continue to enjoy its tax exempt status. Like you, I don’t get it.
It’s almost like he considers it axiomatic, a divine right, that universities MUST be given tax exempt status.
I, personally, am fed up with all the taxes. The society that’s been created taxes you for the work you do (income tax), it taxes you when you buy something (sales tax), it taxes you if you own property (property tax), it taxes you if you invest (capital gains tax), it taxes you if you inherit property (estate tax). It taxes you if you drive a car with an internal combustion engine (gasoline and diesel tax), drink whiskey, smoke tobacco, or weed. It taxes you when you access the internet. And yes, they even indirectly tax the air you breath with all of the environmental regulations. And yet, the government is STILL $35 TRILLION in debt because the politicians keep perpetually expanding government and promising more “free” stuff to get themselves elected.
So why, exactly, is Harvard’s hedge fund exempt from having to pay a modest 21% tax on its capital gains tax especially considering it has a clearly established record of engaging in racial, ethnic, ideological, and partisan discrimination? Turley does not say other than to falsely and absurdly assert in a prior essay that removing their tax exempt status would “destroy” universities.