"Trump Remedies to Harvard's Ills Should Respect Free Speech," by My Hoover Institution Colleague Peter Berkowitz

This excerpt from his piece today in Real Clear Politics should give you a flavor for the argument; the entire piece is worth reading:

In its multi-pronged efforts to pressure Harvard to live up to its self-proclaimed mission to seek and transmit knowledge and pursue the truth, the Trump administration seems to be of two minds on free speech. Along with demanding that Harvard meet its obligations under civil-rights law to combat antisemitism on campus and end race-based discrimination or lose federal funding, the Trump administration has conditioned billions in taxpayer dollars on the university's protecting the free speech on which excellence in scholarship and teaching depend. Yet the White House's remedies to Harvard's censoring and indoctrination clash with free-speech imperatives and risk turning Harvard, with its shameful record of stifling dissent from progressive orthodoxy, into a free-speech martyr.

Only weeks after inauguration, Vice President JD Vance delivered an unequivocal message to America's European friends: Free speech is central to our shared civilization and essential to our prosperity and security….  But the Trump administration's campaign against Harvard sends an equivocal message on free speech, affirming it and calling it into question….

Notwithstanding their many and serious faults, America's elite universities conduct extensive and costly scientific research that fuels America's global leadership in technology. A substantial portion of the billions in federal funds earmarked for Harvard frozen by the Trump administration supports such scientific research. Consequently, Trump's Harvard remedy erodes America's "technological edge." By operating against Harvard with a sledgehammer, the Trump administration not only breaks its promise to respect free speech but also impairs a core national-security interest….

Comments

[ReaderY]

Why would Trump have any interest in remedying Harvard’s ills? Harvard people tend to favor his political opponents. He has a clear interest in destroying them. Why would he want to remedy their ills when he has an opportunity to increase them?

[Supremacy Claus]

Reciprocity. Harvard has zero tolerance for conservative speech, with no hiring, no admitting as students, hounding, and firing of conservatives. It deserves to be severely punished, if it does not drastically and immediately change.

It promises to provide education. That teaches all sides of a subject. It is a leftist indoctrination camp, allowing only one view. It is committing tax fraud in its IRS 990 Form. De-exempt it. Defund it. De-accredit it for not educating but for indoctrinating. Shut it down and seize it assets in civil forfeiture for this tax fraud on Form 990. Its surveillance for improper speech is tighter than that of the Communist Party in China. Its snitch bitches are everywhere. The consequences for non-compliance are swifter and more severe than in Red China.

The resulting product, its grads, are highly toxic to our nation. They are the failed elite that may destroy the country, and must be fired by MAGA. The Harvard degree must be as disqualifying as membership in the Communist Party or in Hamas for any responsible government position. Instead this failed elite is overrunning our government positions. Going to Harvard makes you stupid yet fast talking and supremely confident in your views. Even the rare conservative grads in the media are fast talking, confident, but insufferable and utterly stupid, like Justice Roberts. When he talks, you want to bang your head on the wall to ease the pain inflicted by that glib weasel. They are all like that.

[Harry S]

Sure. That’s why Adrian Vermeule teaches there. Not every university aspires to be Liberty University, George Mason, Hillsdale or Regent thank goodness. But I think that’s what this Administration would like. We would be much poorer for it, if they succeeded.

I recall after the death of Franco and Salazar, when Spain and Portugal finally started opening up to the rest of the world, how much poorer and less developed they were in comparison to the rest of Western Europe for having been trapped in authoritarian right wing governments for decades. Heaven help us and the world if we continue similar mistakes here.

[Harry S]

The idea that it’s a bad idea to defund scientific research that has made this country the envy of the world, including research designed to treat and cure disease, shouldn’t be a novel one, even for conservatives. If your ideology blinds you to that, maybe the problem is your ideology.

[wvattorney13]

I'm sure Bob Jones University did some great things but if you discriminate based on race you lose your federal funding. And the days of being able to discriminate against only some races are over.

[Roger S]

Yes, if Bob Jones U can lose its tax-exempt status, then so can Harvard, as it is much worse.

[Malika the Maiz]

BJU had an explicit policy of not admitting any student who was in an interracial marriage or advocated interracial marriages or who engaged in interracial dating.

Harvard’s admission’s policies were found to be discriminatory by the Supreme Court, which overruled precedent to find so, recently, but recall the district court and court of appeals found them to be within the law under the precedent of the time.

So if Harvard were engaged in policies which violated the new understanding of the law in this area going forward then you could argue they were doing something equivalent or worse, but to my knowledge there’s been no finding of that.

[Roger S]

BJU admitted Blacks. BJU did not have a racially discriminatory admissions policy like Harvard. There were no laws requiring any particular opinion on interracial dating.

Harvard has been violating racial laws for decades. Somehow it has managed to bluff judges and bureaucrats with its fancy legal arguments and reputation, but the jig is up.

[Harry S]

BJU refused to rescind their policy against interracial dating. Harvard followed a policy that was legal under Bakke that the Supreme Court effectively reversed in SFA v. Harvard. The two things aren’t nearly the same. Also, that isn’t the basis for the Trump Administration’s ever shifting justifications for cutting vast swaths of funding to Harvard, including competitive grants for cutting edge scientific and biomedical research. And no, BJU doesn’t now and never will contribute to the scientific advancement of this country and the world in the way Harvard does and has.

Trump’s attitudes towards universities and law firms are the same—bow to me and do what I want or I’ll punish you. The playbook is obvious—Orban did the same thing in Hungary. I’m dismayed that fellow members of the legal profession want to defend this kind of thuggery. I’m glad to see that federal judges appointed by Democratic and Republican Presidents alike have stood up to this and would hope that lawyers would show the same integrity.

[Malika the Maiz]

“if you discriminate based on race you lose your federal funding”

Trump and his administration have offered a shifting number of justifications for their actions against Harvard, “DEI” policies, national security, anti-semitism, and just plain weird animus (Trump’s post about taking all funding and sending it to TRADE SCHOOLS comes to mind).

[David Nieporent]

1) Bob Jones University did not do any great things.
2) Bob Jones University did not 'lose federal funding.' It was a tax exemption.

[y81]

Yes, so often we see research papers and books cited that were written by professors from . . . Bob Jones University. So often people express confidence in their lawyer or doctor because he or she went to . . . Bob Jones University. So many of the leaders of private industry went to . . . Bob Jones University. It's just an amazing level of intellectual dominance.

[KevinP]

Perhaps the scientific researchers should have spoken up against Harvard’s suppression of free speech?

Or perhaps they are content to take federal funds, and just move to whatever institution has its act together.

[Harry S]

They are moving abroad and the world and this country are worse for it, because the Administration isn’t just targeting Harvard, it’s attacking science and scientific research with gusto at all sorts of institutions including NIH and NAS. How is that helping anyone or anything? Why would anyone be supportive of it? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/world/asia/us-science-cuts.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[Lee Moore]

Your view I take it is that making use of research that is done outside the USA is not possible ?

[y81]

Yes, they should have. But cutting off your nose to spite your face is foolish, though common among those who are poor and destined to stay that way, and private sins do not justify government in violating the Constitution.

[Sarcastr0]

scientific researchers should have spoken
Fuck yeah compelled speech.

[Social Justice is neither]

And if all you need to do is swear loyalty oaths to DEI and never step out of line with today's leftist orthodoxy, even retroactively, no big deal. Sorry commie, the money and talent can go elsewhere and you can continue with your racial grievance factory without reality intruding.

[ReaderY]

I think the sheer absurdity, the sheer cluelessness, of the premise of this post is just jaw-dropping. When he set up his concentration camps, Hitler used a Weimar Republic law that allowed people threatened by e.g. street violence or mafiosio to place themselves voluntarily into protective custody. The original intent was a kind of analog of a witness protection program. Throughout the 1930s, every person admitted to a Nazi concentration camp was eequired, often at gunpoint, to sign a form invoking the law and “voluntarily” requesting protective custody.

The excerpt reads a little but like some clueless idiot helpfully suggesting to Hitler that he could do a better job providing protection to people in need of it if they could receive visitors and conduct interviews in their hotel rooms. It completely and totally misses what’s going on.

Trump is invoking civil rights law as an excuse, a pretext, to provide legal cover for shutting his enemy Harvard down or at least reduce its ability to function in much the same way Hitler invoked protective custody law as a pretext to provide legal cover for shutting his enemies down.

Trump has no more interest in actually remedying Harvard’s ills than Hitler had in actually providing protection to concentration camp inmates. And he has no more interest in respecting Harvard’s civil liberties than Hitler had in his enemies’. Indeed, the whole point of the charade is to provide a legal excuse or cover for taking those civil liberties away. Not to get this is to be totally clueless.

[Roger S]

Harvard could just comply with the law.

[Malika the Maiz]

Has there been a finding that they have not?

I mean, the Mad King could also follow the law…

[Roger S]

Yes, the Trump administration found a number of violations, and sent a letter explaining what Harvard needs to do.

[Botaglove]

Does the Executive make the final determination if some institution has violated a law?

[Roger S]

That issue is being litigated.

[Sarcastr0]

Neato passive voice.

The admin didn’t make any findings at all, it just decided.

[Purple Martin]

The term for this, I think, is Apologia.

Peter Berkowitz seems to be filling the role of a Christian religious apologist announcing powerful church authorities will be treated with fear & favor, and thus permitted to ignore the Ten Commandants.

But why stop there? Given Trump's delight with the Trump-as-Pope meme he reposted, perhaps The One True MAGA Church could start with Pope Donald the First announcing several slight edits to the Ten Commandments, to include replacing The Lord with The Donald and your God with your God-Emperor-Pope, and then deleting everything after the following Three Commandments.

I. I am The Donald your God-Emperor-Pope. I am the one who freed you from the land of Deep State and Fake News, where you were slaves. You must not worship any other gods except me.

II. You must not use the name of The Donald your God-Emperor-Pope to make empty promises. If you do, The Donald will not let you go unpunished (paid licensing of The Donald’s name or other scams with a generous cut to The Donald excepted—then you’ll be fine).

III. Don’t worship or serve idols of any kind, because I, The Donald, am your God-Emperor-Pope. I hate my people worshiping other gods. People who sin against me become my enemies, and I will punish them. And I will punish their children, their grandchildren, and even their great-grandchildren. But I will be very kind to people who love me and obey my commands. I will be kind to their families for thousands of generations.

(For the full effect, read that in Trump’s voice.)

(btw, except for the cited Lord/God replacements, substituting the Deep State and Fake News for Egypt, and the added parenthetical ending of II, these Three Commandments are copied verbatim from the ERV, or Easy-to-Read Version of the Bible—likely the Bible edition most suited to MAGA.)

[wvattorney13]

So cutting federal funding for civil rights violations is equivalent to forcing Jews into concentration camps. Gotcha.

[Malika the Maiz]

You really struggle with analogies. He’s saying there are similar pretextual justifications.

[wvattorney13]

I struggle with analogies that are not analogous.

[Sarcastr0]

"The excerpt reads a little bit like" is an analogy flag.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't see who this is for.

I guess maybe the self-image of the Hoover Institute?

[MollyGodiva]

There is an established process for the government to use if they think a schools is violating anti-discrimination laws. The administration is not using that process. Why? Because they don't have the evidence to do it properly.

[Roger S]

The procedure is to cut off the money.

[MollyGodiva]

And they are not using the established and proper procedure to do that. They are trying to do it by fiat, and that will make them lose in court.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Please explain why Trump's attack on Harvard has not already lost in the Supreme Court. Given the severity of damage inflicted, what possible justification can there be for not taking judicial notice of Trump's concerted executive antics, rocketing a case straight to SCOTUS, and shutting it all down with one decision?

I think there is an answer to that question, a disheartening one. The Roberts Court does not want to become the agent of a Trump humiliation, whether or not rule of law requires one. The Roberts Court is looking to evade confrontation, by dividing decisions, some for Trump, some against, in the hope that the nation will muddle through without over-burdening the Court.

Alas, Trumpism is not a case-by-aberrant-case phenomenon. It is intended to be systematic destruction of American constitutionalism. The SCOTUS is one of the Constitutional institutions being destroyed.

[Harry S]

No—the procedure is not “to cut off money,” which is why judges keep enjoining these aid cutoffs. There are actual administrative procedures that are used before funds are withdrawn, with notice and an opportunity to be heard before that happens. We all learned about due process in law school, didn’t we?

[bye]

This common but utterly baseless self-defeating behavior THAT YOU RECOMMEND is called in Economics
THE SUNK COST FALLACY

"watching a movie you dislike to completion because you've already paid for it, or sticking with a failing business venture due to a large initial investment. "

[bernard11]

This common but utterly baseless self-defeating behavior THAT YOU RECOMMEND is called in Economics
THE SUNK COST FALLACY

No. It's not the sunk cost fallacy or any other kind. Harvard's defenders are trying, rightly, to preserve future benefits.

[Swede425]

Harvard is getting kicked in their lady balls.
Now let's see if the smart people can actually learn something.
So far, things don't look hopeful.

[Rossami]

re: "America's elite universities conduct extensive and costly scientific research that fuels America's global leadership in technology"

Some universities, maybe. But Harvard? "Technology" is not exactly their focus.

[Sarcastr0]

Research that fuels leadership in technology is talking about basic research.

And there, Harvard is a top player across the board, from math to biology to sociology.