‘Are We Past Peak Harvard?': 3 Writers Mull Higher Education's Woes

New York Times

22-06-2025

Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Times columnist Ross Douthat and Larry Summers, a contributing Opinion writer and a former president of Harvard University, to discuss the state of higher education in Trump 2.0 and beyond.
Frank Bruni: Ross, Larry, I'm excited to get into some of the fine points of the intensely heated, bitterly partisan war over what, whom and how America's colleges and universities should teach, but for starters, I have a big picture question. When President Trump and his allies started going after Harvard and its kin, it hit me more forcefully than ever before: These institutions have amassed a truly extraordinary degree of cultural sway well beyond what most people probably intended or planned. That's a big part of why they drew Trump's gaze, a big part of why his supporters scorn them. Regardless of how this battle turns out, are we past peak Harvard — past peak Ivy — forevermore?
Larry Summers: Maybe, but there are countervailing forces. Harvard's relative prestige rises with the square of the distance from Cambridge, and so a global talent competition helps it. The greatest universities are drivers of progress. The 21st century will be a center of the life sciences, and because of Harvard, M.I.T. and their affiliates, Boston and Cambridge are ground zero, creating a flywheel effect with Stanford and digital technology. If anything, the trend is toward a higher fraction of government, business, artistic elites coming from elite schools as they get better at drawing talent.
Bruni: That's definitely the trend to this point. But how much will that be affected by what the Trump administration is doing substantively, in terms of funding cutbacks, and symbolically and culturally, in terms of casting a cloud over these institutions and characterizing them — or maybe I should say caricaturing them — as Maoist or Marxist indoctrination camps? I mean, I know because I've heard from them: There are definitely parents rethinking the Ivy League.
Summers: The trend could break if Trump stays super-destructive, courts are super-tolerant and the universities don't adapt and settle. That is a real worry. My best guess, though, is that the need for universities as economic engines, the enforcement of law and the fact that there is low-hanging fruit for cultural correction in the universities will carry the day. I don't think there is yet evidence of leading universities losing their appeal. Yes, there is a need to walk back from crazy, as there was after the 1960s. My guess is this will happen. You will see versions of Stanford's Hoover Institution on many campuses, more emphasis on nonideological science and a big walk back on identity politics.
Ross Douthat: One way to look at it is that Harvard, for reasons Larry suggests, is permanently well-suited to endure as a hub for global talent, but it needs to figure out its relationship to the United States of America. The whole post-Cold War idea that you could be a 'global university' and form students for a 'global elite' tended to wave away the reality that Harvard is still deeply bound to the government and people of the United States.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.