President Donald Trump has decided to end federal funding for Harvard University. He’s also warning that all international students, including those now enrolled and working toward a degree, will have their visas suspended going forward. A federal judge has issued a stay to block this move, and the fight could wind up in front of the Supreme Court.
What’s the point of all this?
Trump considers Harvard a political adversary, and he will use the charge that the university has failed to protect Jewish students and faculty on campus from harassment by pro-Palestinian activists to punish it. Harvard has also refused to end race-based hiring practices, which the Supreme Court has ruled is illegal. Harvard says it’s already addressing both these issues, and courts will be busy in the coming weeks sorting out these claims and counterclaims.
Trump is very happy to have this fight, and the punishment is the point. He knows that, unlike, say, China, Harvard can’t effectively counterpunch. He also knows that when Democrats defend Harvard, Trump’s base voters, some of whom might be getting jumpy about inflation expectations, will rally to their president. After all, Harvard is an elite, rich, progressively minded institution – and therefore a big, beautiful target for populist attack.
We’ve seen this page of Trump’s playbook before. His immigration police arrest an illegal migrant, the government deports him to El Salvador without due process, and he watches as Democrats will jump to defend a man that Trump’s allies claim (without proof) is a member of a vicious criminal gang.
The message: Dems fight for illegal immigrant drug dealers while I fight for you.
In the Harvard case, Trump says he’ll strip the Ivy League School of $3 billion in federal funding and divert the money toward the trade schools and community colleges where his voters are more likely to send their kids. These are just a couple of the many reasons that Democrats remain even less popular than Trump.
That’s the politics. What about the reality?
First, the money Harvard stands to lose isn’t going toward the Comparative Literature department or printing up flyers for open air seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not going for the hiring of more faculty for the Queer Theory curriculum. It’s mostly invested in scientific research, particularly in the School of Public Health. It is money intended to advance our understanding of multiple sclerosis and to limit the spread of tuberculosis. The long-term damage to public health here should be obvious to anyone.
Second, if Harvard were the only university Trump was targeting, then other great schools could absorb the students, including international students, that Harvard will lose. They could fill the research vacuum that penalizing Harvard will create. But no one should be confident that Trump won’t attack many more of the schools with the prestige, brand value, and alumni networks that attract students, parents, faculty, administrators, and resources.
And for foreign students, Trump is doing much more than simply suspending visas. He’s telling them in plain language that they won’t have the same rights as the Americans they go to class with. They won’t have free speech protections. Their smartphones can be taken and searched for evidence of opinions the Trump administration doesn’t like. If they text the wrong message or stop to listen to the wrong rally, they can be deported without even a hearing.
That will have a chilling effect on the ability of American universities to attract the most talented and motivated students from around the world – with implications that last long after Donald Trump has left the stage.
When my grandparents came to this country, and my grandmother passed through Ellis Island, seeing the Statue of Liberty with their own eyes was deeply important. The message was clear: the world’s best and brightest can build a home in America, for themselves and their descendants. Those with the courage and determination to flee repression and deprivation in their homelands will be welcome in this country. That’s a source of our national pride, but also of our national strength.
Today, America welcomes Afrikaner farmers from South Africa fleeing a genocide against white South Africans that does not exist, despite the fake videos and doctored photos that suggest otherwise. We won’t accept refugees fleeing the oppression of a leftist regime in Venezuela or the chaos in Haiti. We won’t take Palestinian children in the line of fire in Gaza.
Trump says Harvard’s hiring policies should be blind to questions of race. But by welcoming white South African farmers to the front of the immigration line while kicking talented non-white foreign students out of the country, the rest of the world won’t conclude the current administration is color blind.
Most of the rest of the world isn’t white. Therefore, most of the smartest, most talented, most determined students – and the workers best able to build dynamic private-sector companies – around the world aren’t white. The only way the US can compete over time against countries like China and India, which have a lot more people, is to continue to use America’s immigration advantage.
Does the average American want a world of diminished US influence? An America far less connected to the rest of the world? I don’t believe that.
Our politics is deeply dysfunctional, but our people – in states red and blue – still want to live in a dynamic and generous country that creates the opportunities that other nations can’t, won’t, or both. A nation that has always benefited from its openness.
By telling international students and legal migrants they are less welcome, less worthy, will not be well treated, should not come to American universities, should not bring their ideas and energy to help fuel our economy, we will inflict profound and lasting damage on our own country.
For all these reasons, Trump’s war on Harvard is both shrewd short-term politics and deeply destructive for the United States of America over the years to come.
