06-06-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Is Harvard Worth Saving—and How?
President Trump has cut Harvard's federal funding, threatened to withdraw its tax exemption, and taken steps to ban it from enrolling foreign students. He says he seeks compliance with civil-rights laws, respect for viewpoint diversity, and other reforms. Journal writers weigh in on the conflict.
Mr. Trump's aim isn't to destroy Harvard but to make an example of it—to scare other universities into reforming, lest they suffer the same fate. If Harvard is broken up or destroyed in the process, America can live with that.
Harvard is a well-chosen target—not only for its prestige and wealth but also because it has a lot to answer for. Its failure to control antisemitism on campus is only the most recent example. Harvard is the wellspring of DEI madness: Justice Lewis Powell's controlling opinion in University of California v. Bakke (1978), which established 'diversity' as an excuse for racial discrimination for the next 45 years, was based on what he called 'the Harvard College program.'
Harvard's defenders say that much of what the university does is worthwhile, and that is no doubt true. But what is the public interest in propping up the conglomerate known as Harvard Corp., which refuses to shut down or reform departments and subsidiaries that are a public menace?
