I am an alumnus. In my opinion, the solution is for Trump to squeeze and reduce Harvard as much as possible, or preferably to zero. It is irremediable.
Please look at Dr. William Dembski’s essay at discovery.org on how to make admissions at elite schools fairer. Conservatives should take up this cause. When I graduated long ago (1962) Harvard was very liberal, but still appreciated the Republicans on campus. But that form of liberalism—wanting a voice for both sides and enjoying debate—increasingly was sacrificed. Frankly, in recent years Harvard’s brand has been hurt.
As for admissions, those outstanding candidates rejected for open or hidden reasons of “wrong” race, sex or religion—or politics—are going to help build up competitive of less prestigious schools. They will benefit from the merit refugees’ future achievements in science, engineering, the arts and (yes) politics. Meanwhile, hats off to you, Mr. Weidman, The Salient and all those who hold high the old ideals of a university.
I would say their brand has been destroyed. I would probably not hire any recent graduate of this institution because they were not educated, but indoctrinated.
Sorry David --- but this 'persecution' has little to do with your values and your conduct -- you downright yell at ppl and pop off without provocation. In our congress class -- you legit did not meet the rules or pre-reqs to run for speaker (which had nothing to do with your views) and then yelled at the entire class and the professor in protest. This is a class with many conservatives (and more libertarian folks like myself tbh) Yes -- like 20% of your points are valid for sure --> we need more ideological diversity in faculty --> but your points of classroom persecution is because you literally yell at people -- that is absurd bro. What's that line from the social network? "You thinks girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but you're wrong. Girls don't like you because you're an asshole"
And gee, the libs protesting everything that is reasonable yell at everyone and yet you think his frustration at being marginalized is making him an a-hole. For sure you will struggle to ever talk to a moderate or conservative. Presume you are from one of the coasts.
I appreciate the great irony in this article that the author obviously misses—-the only group that restricts free speech more than leftists in practice is conservatives
Well, for one, I didn't specifically reference academia because I am not talking about just academia in making that statement, I'm talking about conservatism and its values as a whole. In reality, there are few conservative college campuses because 1) conservatives actively demean education and intellectualism, and 2) are also less intelligent than liberals/leftists on average, no surprise there (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289624000254?via%3Dihub). But there are a few, have you ever visited them? Liberty, Hillsdale, and even the relatively more liberal BYU are on the FIRE "warning" list--not even ranked because they don't even pretend to care about free speech on their campuses. These are incredibly tense, hostile environments to free speech. Harvard and Columbia both score a 0 on this ranking and hold the bottom spots for reference, so this isn't a "woke" ranking. (https://rankings.thefire.org/rank). Do you really think if conservatives controlled academia there'd be more intellectual freedom there? That's absurd. Trump is literally using unmarked agents to detain non-violent students legally here without due process and you guys don't even care! (https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/ice-agents-snatch-anti-israel-columbia-protester-mohsen-madawi-during-his-us-citizenship-appointment/) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/ice-agents-detain-tufts-university-graduate-student) It's especially telling when you look at conservative and liberal media--for all of their flaws, sites like Vox, NYT and NPR have well produced, unbiased videos about uncomfortable topics for liberals. In spite of their own view, Vox has like 20 articles and videos about the free speech issues on "woke" campuses! (https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid) You'd be hard pressed to find something similar on the conservative side of things talking about Trump's human rights violations or Elon's censoring of Turkish protestors and criticisms to himself on twitter (https://mises.org/power-market/betrayal-free-speech-elon-musk-buckles-government-censorship-again) (https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/elon-musk-bans-twitter-elonjet-account-1235461331/). Or unbiased articles about the free speech issues with BYU, or Hillsdale, or Liberty. National Review is the closest you get to a conservative Vox or NYT, with a few articles here and there being mildly critical of Liberty and Hillsdale, but never fully, and not even really for free speech, as they actually defend some of their restrictive practices! (https://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/defense-liberty-university-david-french/) (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-biden-admins-malign-interest-in-liberty-and-hillsdale/) On top of that, the proportion of conservatives engaging with NR is far smaller than the proportion of liberals engaging with Vox or NYT. Conservatives don't like hearing what liberals actually think--they like Fox News. I'm not seeing how that lends itself to support for free speech. Listen, I don't like "woke" liberals/leftists either, and to be clear, I'm not a liberal or leftist myself. They definitely do restrict free speech. But don't pretend your ideology is something it's not. Conservatives love free speech--for themselves. I suppose this serves as a reply for the other two commenters as well.
Glad to see I got you going. Also glad you know what my ideology is. FYI- you don’t. Ask Gemini about Harvard and Hillsdale free speech rating and indeed their is a “warning” given to Hillsdale and Harvard’s free speech climate is called abysmal. Yet the text of Gemini’s comments tells a much more interesting story- it is actually pretty good at Hillsdale and is truly abysmal at Harvard.
Since you tried to label me as a conservative( who you said only like free speech for themselves) I think you need to restate your comment about not being a leftist or a liberal.
Sorry if you’re not—I think it’s fair to assume anyone commenting on this page positively is a conservative. My apologies if not. My point still stands though! And I’m sorry, by Gemini, do you mean the chatbot??? Obviously less people would feel out of place at Hillsdale—why on earth would a non-conservative intentionally go there? It’s clearly not welcoming to those very few students. The reason Harvard even has more issues than Hillsdale is because they have conservative students in the first place. So, if you’re trying to tell me that Hillsdale College has a better intellectual enviornment than Harvard, I’m gonna need more than a reference to AI, no offense. By the way, I’m not a leftist or liberal so why would I call myself that?
See my reply above. I am aware! Just because a group isn’t in power somewhere doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely obvious what they would do with it. Isn’t that the same argument conservatives make about Hamas?
It's extremely obvious what Hamas would do because they're doing it. I guess we got the hint once they starting stuffing babies in ovens during their genocidal raid of the kibbutzim.
Yeah, they didn’t decpitate or put babies in ovens, but they sure killed them, I don’t care for them either. Just like Hamas acts similarly to the IDF, conservative universities already act like liberal ones when it comes to supressing free speech. You’re just reinforcing the point.
"conservatives actively demean education and intellectualism"
Even if true (no evidence given) demeaning is not censoring.
"also less intelligent than liberals/leftists on average"
The evidence you provided says leftists are more educated (longer indoctrinated into leftism so more likely leftist) - not that they are more intelligent.
Your misinterpretation of the facts, is even counter evidence to your claim.
"Harvard and Columbia both score a 0 on this ranking and hold the bottom spots for reference, so this isn't a "woke" ranking."
The specific evidence suggests this FIRE scale is an extremely good proxy for "woke".
I give up on dong the rest. You are religiously leftist and therefore actively intolerant and uninterested in reality. Not going to waste my time on you.
You must have stopped reading! I'm not even close to leftist economically. The first point wasn't about censoring. I was just explaining why there are few conservatives in academia in the first place. Do you want more sources on that second point? It's widely replicated in social science literature that people with high-end intelligence are way more often liberal or leftist than conservative. Again, not a point against you or conservatism--just explaining why academia always leaned left in the first place. I'm not sure what you mean on the third quote. FIRE is agnostic to the leaning of a college and it ranks right-wing schools as even worse than left--that means something. I'm only religiously leftist to you because I disagree with your worldview online. Sure, though, continue to live in your world where everyone who disagrees with your views is a leftist. There's a reason actually smart right-wingers tend to think their own side has severe internal logic issues as a group: (https://substack.com/home/post/p-140243215).
Academia, especially elite universities, have become so woke that they are stifling to free speech and openly hostile to conservatives, especially religious ones. This environment is sadly not conducive to the vigorous exchange of ideas. Universities are uncompelling because they have abandoned the pursuit of truth and in exchange have become indoctrination factories, which happen to double as a tax-free hedge funds. The Overton window is so small and so stifling that most of the universities have become uninteresting husks for their former selves.
Side note-I think that largely explains the drop in male college attendance. I mean, what ambitious, well-adjusted young man wants to pay to be lectured by not one, but two mandatory DEI classes? Gross.
Unfortunately this presents a conundrum to conservatives; do we avoid elite schools entirely or do we join them, and feed the beast with our tuition dollars? Unfortunately going to an elite university does matter. Going to Harvard provides enormous benefits and is a path to power, and we will need to wield power if we are going to change our country.
Despite becoming disillusioned with academia, I'm interested in joining the fight now. Conservatives can't afford to sit on our hands while the left continues its long march through our country's most important institutions. It's time to fight back. The Golden Age beckons.
what a read! I simply attend a public university so I'm not in the know of the all the intricacies that have caused so much back lash against Harvard from the current administration. The explicit irony and snake oil tactics to maintain college level TDS at America's top university hurts them more than they realize as you pointed out. Well Written!
"conservative", "progressive", "republican", "democrat": all very big words and it's hard for me to measure up an organisation with those yardsticks.
I do notice however that DEI, admissions and policy at Harvard, and similar organisations, are internally inconsitent.
They propagate equality but admit the rich.They propagate diversity but admit the well-connected to essay-ghost-writers and SAT-tutors. They propagate inclusion but have legacy admissions - an exclusive concept of a 400-year-old gentlemen's club in England that only admits based on nomination.
And the students themselves?
After spreading the DEI-gospel on campus to the already converted - as pointed out in the article, 50% of graduates go on to work in finance and consulting.
At McKinsey, they helped develop the scheme to sell as much Oxycontin to the demos. At Wallstreet they developed sub-prime-mortgage derivates. They didn't know what they were doing, but they scr....ed the demos & didn't care. Where are their ideals for an inclusive, equal and diverse society? And Harvard is happy with the success of their graduates.
I don't blame Harvard, or Harvard's graduates to be hungry for money and power, because most people are. Also, America is built by the 'self-made man' and the 'American Dream' which are both about one self, not about a contribution to society.
But, Harvard, stop your moral superiority complex and the bla-bla about DEI.
As far as admissions go, private institutions can do pretty much whatever they want. But 'noblesse oblige', so Harvard should be fair. I think admission based on merit is fair. I got into discussions about merit in what field or aspect, but I think this is simple: for an academic institution, how about 'academic merit'? Or is that a weird thought?
The article made me remember the quote "Where all think alike, no-one thinks much". And now I think about another quote, from The Economist: "communism is the opium of the intellectual".
Perhaps we can "cut to the chase" and say what we all know: Harvard is a federally funded advocacy organization for 1. critical theory praxis and 2. radical social justice insurgency.
Sadly, this seems to be true of the entire ivy system.
The secret is no longer a secret. It is not news. The question is "what happens now?" Enough talking. Harvard needs new board leadership immediately.
I see no reason to have any optimism for Harvard’s prospects. If “Ideology is merit” in their minds, then they have no incentive to change their practices. Cutting off government funding to force a change cannot work when they have a sovereign wealth fund that would make most nations jealous.
Compare this to what the NYT described about my Harvard Class ('76) on the occasion of John Roberts being nominated for SCOTUS. It is worth reading the whole article, but these quotes convey the essence:
""Conservatives were like the queers on campus," said Eric Rofes, a classmate of Judge Roberts who later became an organizer on gay issues. "People made fun of them. They mocked them and saw them as jokers or losers. I don't think in the moment many people realized this was the start of an ascending movement. People felt it was like the last cry of the 1950's."
In fact, a striking number among the small cluster of conservatives at Harvard in Mr. Roberts's era went on to become important figures in the conservative resurgence, which began gaining momentum around the time of the 1980 election. Some of them now say that being a part of that often ridiculed minority left them with skills that have been essential in their movement's subsequent success....
"There was a 'Boy Named Sue' quality to being a libertarian or conservative at Harvard," said [Grover] Norquist, referring to the Johnny Cash song and Shel Silverstein poem ("Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,/ My fist got hard and my wits got keen.") Conservatives at Harvard, he suggested, learned to be "tougher than anyone else." Unlike students on the left, he said, they were constantly being challenged."
"My guess is that if the demand letter had restricted itself to enforcing SFFA and closely related ideas (eg, not just in admissions but in scholarships, etc) you might have seen a very different response from Garber."
My impression is that Harvard was headed in the right direction before this crazy ultimatum letter asking for ideological tests of departments (this time from the other side, truly both sides are wrong, any side doing this!).
I agree with aiming to admit students based upon merit. (It is difficult to measure merit sometimes and so it will take work--how do you compare two students for admission, where they have had different opportunities to advance, for instance I recall one student had to work long hours at his family's shop and still did very well, but not as well as the other student who had more time--they both would likely succeed in a challenging and idea-rich environment). You are not describing a rich intellectual environment at all--
The inability to question.....terribly disappointing this is happening at Harvard, and hoping that will change, is changing now. I agree that the students are being deprived of a chance to learn from each other, both about different points of view and about the weak points in their arguments and views and the weak points in others....and the strong ones. Maybe some will even change their minds! They can't learn a whole lot from each other if they are all saying the same thing....can't refine ideas, can't weigh tradeoffs....wow.
My guess is that if the demand letter had restricted itself to enforcing SFFA and closely related ideas (eg, not just in admissions but in scholarships, etc) you might have seen a very different response from Garber.
But the demands went well beyond that. They included ensuring viewpoint diversity in every dept/unit, (which will be measured who knows how), within 3 years, while at the same time not using any ideological litmus tests in hiring. That's not neither required by civil rights law or any Supreme Court decision, nor is it remotely feasible. The trump admin had a great case to make that Harvard is violating various laws (see recent scoop about HLR), but they overplayed their hand in basically trying to reshape the whole university rather than just bring it into compliance with the law.
If Harvard was going to comply with the law they would have done so for the 2024 admissions year (class of 2028) and they did not.
Why would anybody do anything to Harvard but stomp on them with the full force of the Federal Government? That's what Democrats would do, and it is time that we played by the leftist rules.
Polite requests are not going to arrive at Harvard for about another 80 years. Maybe they should have thought things through slightly better.
I am an alumnus. In my opinion, the solution is for Trump to squeeze and reduce Harvard as much as possible, or preferably to zero. It is irremediable.
"During my second required racism course at the Harvard Kennedy School …”
One would be outrage enough. Two constitutes Multi-Stage Institutional Derangement.
Good post.
Please look at Dr. William Dembski’s essay at discovery.org on how to make admissions at elite schools fairer. Conservatives should take up this cause. When I graduated long ago (1962) Harvard was very liberal, but still appreciated the Republicans on campus. But that form of liberalism—wanting a voice for both sides and enjoying debate—increasingly was sacrificed. Frankly, in recent years Harvard’s brand has been hurt.
As for admissions, those outstanding candidates rejected for open or hidden reasons of “wrong” race, sex or religion—or politics—are going to help build up competitive of less prestigious schools. They will benefit from the merit refugees’ future achievements in science, engineering, the arts and (yes) politics. Meanwhile, hats off to you, Mr. Weidman, The Salient and all those who hold high the old ideals of a university.
I would say their brand has been destroyed. I would probably not hire any recent graduate of this institution because they were not educated, but indoctrinated.
I wouldn’t hire an Ivy. I wouldn’t hire any grievance study major. And if I were young and single I wouldn’t date anyone in those categories.
Sorry David --- but this 'persecution' has little to do with your values and your conduct -- you downright yell at ppl and pop off without provocation. In our congress class -- you legit did not meet the rules or pre-reqs to run for speaker (which had nothing to do with your views) and then yelled at the entire class and the professor in protest. This is a class with many conservatives (and more libertarian folks like myself tbh) Yes -- like 20% of your points are valid for sure --> we need more ideological diversity in faculty --> but your points of classroom persecution is because you literally yell at people -- that is absurd bro. What's that line from the social network? "You thinks girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but you're wrong. Girls don't like you because you're an asshole"
And gee, the libs protesting everything that is reasonable yell at everyone and yet you think his frustration at being marginalized is making him an a-hole. For sure you will struggle to ever talk to a moderate or conservative. Presume you are from one of the coasts.
I appreciate the great irony in this article that the author obviously misses—-the only group that restricts free speech more than leftists in practice is conservatives
Give me a couple of examples of such on a college campus. I am waiting
Well, for one, I didn't specifically reference academia because I am not talking about just academia in making that statement, I'm talking about conservatism and its values as a whole. In reality, there are few conservative college campuses because 1) conservatives actively demean education and intellectualism, and 2) are also less intelligent than liberals/leftists on average, no surprise there (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289624000254?via%3Dihub). But there are a few, have you ever visited them? Liberty, Hillsdale, and even the relatively more liberal BYU are on the FIRE "warning" list--not even ranked because they don't even pretend to care about free speech on their campuses. These are incredibly tense, hostile environments to free speech. Harvard and Columbia both score a 0 on this ranking and hold the bottom spots for reference, so this isn't a "woke" ranking. (https://rankings.thefire.org/rank). Do you really think if conservatives controlled academia there'd be more intellectual freedom there? That's absurd. Trump is literally using unmarked agents to detain non-violent students legally here without due process and you guys don't even care! (https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/ice-agents-snatch-anti-israel-columbia-protester-mohsen-madawi-during-his-us-citizenship-appointment/) (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/26/ice-agents-detain-tufts-university-graduate-student) It's especially telling when you look at conservative and liberal media--for all of their flaws, sites like Vox, NYT and NPR have well produced, unbiased videos about uncomfortable topics for liberals. In spite of their own view, Vox has like 20 articles and videos about the free speech issues on "woke" campuses! (https://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid) You'd be hard pressed to find something similar on the conservative side of things talking about Trump's human rights violations or Elon's censoring of Turkish protestors and criticisms to himself on twitter (https://mises.org/power-market/betrayal-free-speech-elon-musk-buckles-government-censorship-again) (https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/elon-musk-bans-twitter-elonjet-account-1235461331/). Or unbiased articles about the free speech issues with BYU, or Hillsdale, or Liberty. National Review is the closest you get to a conservative Vox or NYT, with a few articles here and there being mildly critical of Liberty and Hillsdale, but never fully, and not even really for free speech, as they actually defend some of their restrictive practices! (https://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/defense-liberty-university-david-french/) (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-biden-admins-malign-interest-in-liberty-and-hillsdale/) On top of that, the proportion of conservatives engaging with NR is far smaller than the proportion of liberals engaging with Vox or NYT. Conservatives don't like hearing what liberals actually think--they like Fox News. I'm not seeing how that lends itself to support for free speech. Listen, I don't like "woke" liberals/leftists either, and to be clear, I'm not a liberal or leftist myself. They definitely do restrict free speech. But don't pretend your ideology is something it's not. Conservatives love free speech--for themselves. I suppose this serves as a reply for the other two commenters as well.
Glad to see I got you going. Also glad you know what my ideology is. FYI- you don’t. Ask Gemini about Harvard and Hillsdale free speech rating and indeed their is a “warning” given to Hillsdale and Harvard’s free speech climate is called abysmal. Yet the text of Gemini’s comments tells a much more interesting story- it is actually pretty good at Hillsdale and is truly abysmal at Harvard.
Since you tried to label me as a conservative( who you said only like free speech for themselves) I think you need to restate your comment about not being a leftist or a liberal.
Sorry if you’re not—I think it’s fair to assume anyone commenting on this page positively is a conservative. My apologies if not. My point still stands though! And I’m sorry, by Gemini, do you mean the chatbot??? Obviously less people would feel out of place at Hillsdale—why on earth would a non-conservative intentionally go there? It’s clearly not welcoming to those very few students. The reason Harvard even has more issues than Hillsdale is because they have conservative students in the first place. So, if you’re trying to tell me that Hillsdale College has a better intellectual enviornment than Harvard, I’m gonna need more than a reference to AI, no offense. By the way, I’m not a leftist or liberal so why would I call myself that?
This is absurd on its face. You do realize that the left controls virtually all of academia, right?
See my reply above. I am aware! Just because a group isn’t in power somewhere doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely obvious what they would do with it. Isn’t that the same argument conservatives make about Hamas?
It's extremely obvious what Hamas would do because they're doing it. I guess we got the hint once they starting stuffing babies in ovens during their genocidal raid of the kibbutzim.
Yeah, they didn’t decpitate or put babies in ovens, but they sure killed them, I don’t care for them either. Just like Hamas acts similarly to the IDF, conservative universities already act like liberal ones when it comes to supressing free speech. You’re just reinforcing the point.
Edivence?
See above!
"conservatives actively demean education and intellectualism"
Even if true (no evidence given) demeaning is not censoring.
"also less intelligent than liberals/leftists on average"
The evidence you provided says leftists are more educated (longer indoctrinated into leftism so more likely leftist) - not that they are more intelligent.
Your misinterpretation of the facts, is even counter evidence to your claim.
"Harvard and Columbia both score a 0 on this ranking and hold the bottom spots for reference, so this isn't a "woke" ranking."
The specific evidence suggests this FIRE scale is an extremely good proxy for "woke".
I give up on dong the rest. You are religiously leftist and therefore actively intolerant and uninterested in reality. Not going to waste my time on you.
You must have stopped reading! I'm not even close to leftist economically. The first point wasn't about censoring. I was just explaining why there are few conservatives in academia in the first place. Do you want more sources on that second point? It's widely replicated in social science literature that people with high-end intelligence are way more often liberal or leftist than conservative. Again, not a point against you or conservatism--just explaining why academia always leaned left in the first place. I'm not sure what you mean on the third quote. FIRE is agnostic to the leaning of a college and it ranks right-wing schools as even worse than left--that means something. I'm only religiously leftist to you because I disagree with your worldview online. Sure, though, continue to live in your world where everyone who disagrees with your views is a leftist. There's a reason actually smart right-wingers tend to think their own side has severe internal logic issues as a group: (https://substack.com/home/post/p-140243215).
Academia, especially elite universities, have become so woke that they are stifling to free speech and openly hostile to conservatives, especially religious ones. This environment is sadly not conducive to the vigorous exchange of ideas. Universities are uncompelling because they have abandoned the pursuit of truth and in exchange have become indoctrination factories, which happen to double as a tax-free hedge funds. The Overton window is so small and so stifling that most of the universities have become uninteresting husks for their former selves.
Side note-I think that largely explains the drop in male college attendance. I mean, what ambitious, well-adjusted young man wants to pay to be lectured by not one, but two mandatory DEI classes? Gross.
Unfortunately this presents a conundrum to conservatives; do we avoid elite schools entirely or do we join them, and feed the beast with our tuition dollars? Unfortunately going to an elite university does matter. Going to Harvard provides enormous benefits and is a path to power, and we will need to wield power if we are going to change our country.
Despite becoming disillusioned with academia, I'm interested in joining the fight now. Conservatives can't afford to sit on our hands while the left continues its long march through our country's most important institutions. It's time to fight back. The Golden Age beckons.
what a read! I simply attend a public university so I'm not in the know of the all the intricacies that have caused so much back lash against Harvard from the current administration. The explicit irony and snake oil tactics to maintain college level TDS at America's top university hurts them more than they realize as you pointed out. Well Written!
"conservative", "progressive", "republican", "democrat": all very big words and it's hard for me to measure up an organisation with those yardsticks.
I do notice however that DEI, admissions and policy at Harvard, and similar organisations, are internally inconsitent.
They propagate equality but admit the rich.They propagate diversity but admit the well-connected to essay-ghost-writers and SAT-tutors. They propagate inclusion but have legacy admissions - an exclusive concept of a 400-year-old gentlemen's club in England that only admits based on nomination.
And the students themselves?
After spreading the DEI-gospel on campus to the already converted - as pointed out in the article, 50% of graduates go on to work in finance and consulting.
At McKinsey, they helped develop the scheme to sell as much Oxycontin to the demos. At Wallstreet they developed sub-prime-mortgage derivates. They didn't know what they were doing, but they scr....ed the demos & didn't care. Where are their ideals for an inclusive, equal and diverse society? And Harvard is happy with the success of their graduates.
I don't blame Harvard, or Harvard's graduates to be hungry for money and power, because most people are. Also, America is built by the 'self-made man' and the 'American Dream' which are both about one self, not about a contribution to society.
But, Harvard, stop your moral superiority complex and the bla-bla about DEI.
As far as admissions go, private institutions can do pretty much whatever they want. But 'noblesse oblige', so Harvard should be fair. I think admission based on merit is fair. I got into discussions about merit in what field or aspect, but I think this is simple: for an academic institution, how about 'academic merit'? Or is that a weird thought?
The article made me remember the quote "Where all think alike, no-one thinks much". And now I think about another quote, from The Economist: "communism is the opium of the intellectual".
Perhaps we can "cut to the chase" and say what we all know: Harvard is a federally funded advocacy organization for 1. critical theory praxis and 2. radical social justice insurgency.
Sadly, this seems to be true of the entire ivy system.
The secret is no longer a secret. It is not news. The question is "what happens now?" Enough talking. Harvard needs new board leadership immediately.
I used to brag about being a Kennedy School graduate -88' No longer. Great article.
I see no reason to have any optimism for Harvard’s prospects. If “Ideology is merit” in their minds, then they have no incentive to change their practices. Cutting off government funding to force a change cannot work when they have a sovereign wealth fund that would make most nations jealous.
We don't need to "force change" we just need to not pay for it.
Let them run the indoctrination camp on their own dime.
What was title of the “racism” courses?
During a CNBC interview this morning, Ackman just called for Penny Pritzker to be replaced.
Compare this to what the NYT described about my Harvard Class ('76) on the occasion of John Roberts being nominated for SCOTUS. It is worth reading the whole article, but these quotes convey the essence:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/politics/politicsspecial1/robertss-harvard-roots-a-movement-was-stirring.html
""Conservatives were like the queers on campus," said Eric Rofes, a classmate of Judge Roberts who later became an organizer on gay issues. "People made fun of them. They mocked them and saw them as jokers or losers. I don't think in the moment many people realized this was the start of an ascending movement. People felt it was like the last cry of the 1950's."
In fact, a striking number among the small cluster of conservatives at Harvard in Mr. Roberts's era went on to become important figures in the conservative resurgence, which began gaining momentum around the time of the 1980 election. Some of them now say that being a part of that often ridiculed minority left them with skills that have been essential in their movement's subsequent success....
"There was a 'Boy Named Sue' quality to being a libertarian or conservative at Harvard," said [Grover] Norquist, referring to the Johnny Cash song and Shel Silverstein poem ("Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,/ My fist got hard and my wits got keen.") Conservatives at Harvard, he suggested, learned to be "tougher than anyone else." Unlike students on the left, he said, they were constantly being challenged."
Seconding what is written below:
"My guess is that if the demand letter had restricted itself to enforcing SFFA and closely related ideas (eg, not just in admissions but in scholarships, etc) you might have seen a very different response from Garber."
My impression is that Harvard was headed in the right direction before this crazy ultimatum letter asking for ideological tests of departments (this time from the other side, truly both sides are wrong, any side doing this!).
I agree with aiming to admit students based upon merit. (It is difficult to measure merit sometimes and so it will take work--how do you compare two students for admission, where they have had different opportunities to advance, for instance I recall one student had to work long hours at his family's shop and still did very well, but not as well as the other student who had more time--they both would likely succeed in a challenging and idea-rich environment). You are not describing a rich intellectual environment at all--
The inability to question.....terribly disappointing this is happening at Harvard, and hoping that will change, is changing now. I agree that the students are being deprived of a chance to learn from each other, both about different points of view and about the weak points in their arguments and views and the weak points in others....and the strong ones. Maybe some will even change their minds! They can't learn a whole lot from each other if they are all saying the same thing....can't refine ideas, can't weigh tradeoffs....wow.
My guess is that if the demand letter had restricted itself to enforcing SFFA and closely related ideas (eg, not just in admissions but in scholarships, etc) you might have seen a very different response from Garber.
But the demands went well beyond that. They included ensuring viewpoint diversity in every dept/unit, (which will be measured who knows how), within 3 years, while at the same time not using any ideological litmus tests in hiring. That's not neither required by civil rights law or any Supreme Court decision, nor is it remotely feasible. The trump admin had a great case to make that Harvard is violating various laws (see recent scoop about HLR), but they overplayed their hand in basically trying to reshape the whole university rather than just bring it into compliance with the law.
If Harvard was going to comply with the law they would have done so for the 2024 admissions year (class of 2028) and they did not.
Why would anybody do anything to Harvard but stomp on them with the full force of the Federal Government? That's what Democrats would do, and it is time that we played by the leftist rules.
Polite requests are not going to arrive at Harvard for about another 80 years. Maybe they should have thought things through slightly better.