Wherefore Harvard?

Harvard University has taken serious offense at the federal government’s efforts to rid it of anti-Semitism. The university insists that the Trump administration is interfering in hiring and even in the curriculum. 

The Trump administration suggests that the university is infested with anti-Semitism, to the point where Jewish students have been harassed and prevented from going to the library or to classes.

Harvard used to be 25% to 30% Jewish. Now the number is 8%.

As for school life, you might not believe me, so why not believe the New York Times last fall:

In interviews, many Jewish members of the Harvard community described their growing estrangement from campus. Protesters have disrupted lectures, shouting through bullhorns that the war in Gaza was a genocide. Antisemitic messages have been posted on social media. Some students have decided to check their Zionist beliefs in the classroom and in the residence hall. A few have traded in their kippas, or skullcaps, for baseball hats.

The Trump administration has accused Harvard of countenancing anti-Semitism. It has proposed a series of changes that the university has rejected. USA Today offers this description:

Harvard has denied the administration's accusations that it's not doing enough to combat antisemitism and declined to comply with a list of demands, including changing its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting "students hostile to the American values," paying an external party to audit the university's student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for "viewpoint diversity" and shutter all DEI programming….

Since Harvard does not seem to want to work with the federal government, the Trump administration has cut off its funding:

The Trump administration has frozen more than $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University, called for the Internal Revenue Service to remove the university's tax-exempt status and threatened to revoke its ability to accept and host international students. Harvard sued the Trump administration on April 21 to block those measures. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that day that the administration is planning to slash an additional $1 billion in cuts to federal health research funding at the university….

Not only was Harvard severely offended by the accusation that it was not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism, but its president Alan Garber walked away from a negotiation with Education Secretary Linda McMahon. 

This side to the story has rarely been reported. It bespeaks a colossal arrogance.

The New York Post explains:

Harvard University refused to “come back to the table” after the president of the Ivy League school initially had a positive conversation with the Trump administration about cracking down on antisemitism on campus, Education Secretary Linda McMahon revealed Tuesday.

“I talked to Alan Garber, the president of Harvard … He wanted to make sure there were no antisemitism actions that were taking place on his campus,” McMahon told “Cats & Cosby Show” hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby on WABC radio.

“We also talked about other aspects of negotiations, relative to doing some vetting for teachers who are coming in and students who are coming into Harvard, because there are a lot of outside agitators that are coming in and causing a lot of the disruptions on campus,” McMahon claimed.

“We thought we were in a good place,” she added. “We were exchanging negotiations back-and-forth, and then Harvard didn’t come back to the table.”

“Their answer was they sued.”

Garber has accused the Trump administration of seeking “unprecedented and improper control” over campus affairs to keep the federal funds flowing.

Harvard opts for complete independence. We understand. And yet, what harm would have come from an effort to negotiate. 

Victor Davis Hanson accuses Harvard of wanting to have it both ways. He recommends that if they wish to assert imperial authority over whatever happens on their campus, they should simply reject federal funding:

Harvard has refused to accept the orders of a Trump administration commission concerning its chronic problems with anti-Semitism, campus violence, and racial tribalism, bias, and segregation.

Yet, unlike some conservative campuses that distrust an overbearing Washington, Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes….

So, if there are protracted standoffs, our elite campuses will be hard-pressed to defend the indefensible. This effort will be difficult because public confidence in higher education has already plummeted to historic lows in the most recent polls.

You might say that it’s about more than anti-Semitism. It’s about the decline of our greatest academic institutions.