Harvard Should Stand Up for Itself More Often
If the school really wants freedom from political meddling, it needs to stop rolling over for the left.
By Roland Fryer
Illustration: Robert Neubecker The Trump administration has made many demands of universities, backed by serious threats—including cuts to federal funding, loss of tax-exempt status, investigations and lawsuits.
Some schools have scurried to comply or work out deals to avoid the pain of a fight.
Harvard stands out for its defiance.
Part of me is proud.
A university should defend itself against meddling in its internal affairs.
I remember, however, how quickly Harvard folded to political pressure in the past—just not from the right.
So the real question isn’t whether Harvard is standing on principle.
It’s whether those principles change depending on who’s in power.
The administration wants the university to comply with civil-rights law in its hiring and admissions processes and to address antisemitism on campus.
No problem.
But the demands go further.
The administration wants Harvard to make changes to its governance and leadership structure; to empower some factions on campus while disempowering others deemed “more committed to activism than scholarship,” to implement new screening processes for international students “hostile to American values and institutions,” to commission an independent audit of the university’s “viewpoint diversity,” to admit a “critical mass” of students with diverse ideologies, to abolish any ideological litmus tests in admissions and hiring, and to audit programs and departments whose teachings “most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”
Many of these reforms may be welcome and reflect genuine concerns I’ve heard faculty express.
But they aren’t reforms the federal government can or should impose on private universities.
Washington shouldn’t use tax exemptions, funding streams and law enforcement to police private institutions’ ideologies.
In a statement, Harvard President Alan Garber refused to surrender the university’s independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.
Two cheers to Harvard for fighting.
I would offer a third if I could be confident the university is truly standing on principle. In recent years, however, Harvard has squandered several important opportunities to live out its core values when pressures came from the left.
In 2011, the Obama administration pressured colleges to minimize due-process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.
Harvard rolled over (although, to its credit, the law school pushed back).
In 2019, Prof. Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. faced outcry for serving on Harvey Weinstein’s defense team.
It could have been an opportunity for the school to discuss why every accused criminal has a right to a defense—even those convicted by the media.
Instead Mr. Sullivan and his wife were removed as the faculty deans of Winthrop House.
Harvard also failed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
The school could have encouraged debate that confronted racism and recognized the importance of collecting detailed data to understand context in police interactions.
There is an important difference between racial disparity and racial bias that Harvard failed to acknowledge.
Instead, the university genuflected to prevailing narratives.
Perhaps most notoriously, Harvard failed in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel.
Faced with an opportunity to affirm a basic moral truth—that calling for the genocide of Jews, or any group, is a blatant violation of school policy and fundamental decency—the school’s leadership equivocated.
Asked repeatedly in a congressional hearing whether such rhetoric violates university rules, Harvard’s then-president opted for legalistic ambiguity: “It can be, depending on the context.”
My hope is that Harvard has realized its past wrongs and will resist these pressures going forward—allowing the university to determine and uphold its own core values.
But two other theories would explain Harvard’s recent behavior just as well.
One is political bias.
Harvard’s leadership leans decidedly to the left and will likely be far friendlier to pressure from that direction.
Its spine could thus weaken again once the presidency changes hands.
The other explanation is simple economics.
Like any institution, Harvard seeks to maximize its utility—prestige, endowment growth, influence.
That might mean resisting federal policy that threatens core funding, but yielding quietly on symbolic or lower-stakes issues.
Behavior under this explanation is determined not by veritas—truth, Harvard’s motto—but by coldly calculated costs and benefits.
This explanation is consistent with recent events.
Even while suing the Trump administration, Harvard quietly renamed its diversity, equity and inclusion office and discontinued race-based “affinity” graduation ceremonies.
Principles or pragmatism?
You tell me.
Mobs aren’t known for nuance.
Institutions that rely on donors, research grants and public financial-aid subsidies must navigate strong political winds.
But as a leading university with a $53 billion endowment, Harvard can afford to live its core values even when they are unpopular.
I hope that Harvard’s current defiance is a burning-bush moment: a real commitment to institutional independence and to the search for truth that will last beyond a single presidency.
The economist in me worries that it’s only another move in a political chess match—one in which the board tilts depending on who’s in power and which way the wind blows.
This is a showdown not only between Harvard and Donald Trump.
It’s also between economic interests and principle.
Mr. Fryer, a Journal contributor, is a professor of economics at Harvard, a founder of Equal Opportunity Ventures and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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