Hard Times At Harvard

Harvard University is the oldest university in the United States having been founded in 1636.

It also has long been considered to be the most prestigious center of learning in the United States.

However, Harvard's brand and reputation is being threatened by a number of self-inflicted wounds that raise questions about its leadership's blind devotion to progressivism rather than education.

Recall that it was early last year that Harvard's President, Claudine Gay, was forced to resign over charges of plagiarism in her academic work including on her doctoral dissertation.

Gay had caused a stir to begin with a month earlier in Congressional testimony when she refused to agree that calls for the genocide of Jews on campus violated Harvard's harassment policy. She stated it depended on the context. 

Gay was the first Black President of the university and the second woman. She served only six months.

Was Gay chosen as Harvard's President based on merit or the fact that she was a Black woman?

In 2023, Harvard lost a major discrimination suit at the U.S. Supreme Court where it ruled that the university was using race as a factor in admission decisions to discriminate in particular against Asian American applicants.

In that case it was found that Asians needed an SAT score of around 1550 (out of 1600) to compete with a White applicant scoring 1410 and a Black applicant scoring 1100 to be admitted as an undergraduate.

Harvard has still not released final data for the Class of 2028 which would be the first year in which new race blind admission standards were supposed to be in place so it is difficult to determine the extent in which the university is complying with the law.

However, the Trump administration has made a series of demands to Harvard to see to it that it is complying with civil rights laws and is also combating antisemitism on campus.

These demands include eliminating  all DEI  programs, implementing merit-based hiring and admission processes, monitoring and reporting conduct violations of international students, banning masks at campus protests, ensuring diversity of views on campus and implementing plagiarism reviews for all faculty members.

Harvard has been resisting making any reforms arguing that it infringes on its academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

In response, the Trump administration has stated it will withdraw $2.2 billion in government grants to Harvard, it is cancelling $60 million in government contracts with the university, it is threatening to revoke the school's tax-exempt status and it is also stating it will not provide visas to its international students to attend classes there next year. International students make up 27% of Harvard's enrollment.

The federal government has a surprising amount of leverage over Harvard.

Almost all of which comes down to dollars and cents.

I guess we will see whether money in more important to Harvard than ideology.

A New York Times reporter stated that the Trump administration holds all the cards in the showdown and Harvard privately admits that they have few, if any good off-ramps, to deal with the government pressure.

The fact is that Harvard does have a very obvious off-ramp.

It just needs to obey the law. 

Do not discriminate on race. 

Get rid of the antisemitism and DEI on campus. 

And make sure their students do the same. 

It is really pretty simple.

It is only difficult if you are intent on pursuing an ideological mission rather than an academic one.

If Harvard does not have enough problems, I couldn't help but chuckle at this story that I came across today.

 

Source: https://nypost.com/2025/05/27/us-news/harvard-professor-of-honesty-stripped-of-tenure-fired-for-manipulating-data-in-studies/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

The kicker in this story is that the professor, Francesca Gino, who was a celebrated behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, specializing in the subjects of dishonesty, ethics and integrity.

A professor who was an expert on dishonesty manipulated data in studies on dishonesty?

You literally cannot make this stuff up!

Gino is the first faculty member with tenure to have been terminated by Harvard since the 1940's.

Perhaps this is a sign that Harvard is embarking on a new path.

We can only hope.

However, the leadership of the university has a long way to go to repair the damage they have done to the Harvard brand.