The Poisoned Ivies: Why Fixing Harvard Matters
Editor's Note
Many Americans understand that our elite universities are a problem, but far fewer seem to understand why. Peachy Keenan reflects on the Trump administration’s efforts to bring Harvard to heel, which are not just about the waste of taxpayer dollars, but the use of those dollars (and the long-established credibility of America’s once-great universities) in service of an ideology committed to destroying the American way of life.
The “federal funding of education” is an institutional pillar as old as time, something uncontroversial, unexamined, a stalwart presence that we accepted many ages ago as good, noble, and worthwhile…though we were never actually asked.
But if you had asked me, I would have said yes, it’s very good the country spends money to educate its children! We can’t have a bunch of people running around illiterate and poorly educated! They might believe everything they hear on CNN. They may not know how many genders there are. Imagine what could happen if we stopped funding public education with our income taxes. We might see literacy rates of under 20% in cities like Baltimore and Detroit, and we can’t have that. No one would stand for it!
Oops. There are many problems with the federal funding of K-12 education which can be summed up as wildly overspending for terrible outcomes. But still: it should be fixed, reformed, run by parents and people with stakes in the schools, the unions dismantled and defunded, and the bureaucracy excised so school choice and new school options can blossom.
The K-12 stuff gets all the press. But recently, the real behemoth of government education funding has been roaring: the universities and their “government aid.” It turns out that the federal government sends billions to universities; $60 billion goes to federally funded research, some of which is probably worthwhile.
The War on Harvard
And then there’s good old Harvard University. Harvard is a favorite punching bag of the Right, present company included, because its modern form is almost comically at odds with its storied reputation. It is, still, America’s most prestigious academic institution. It wields cultural power like few other schools. A seal from Harvard on your diploma carries enormous heft; it lands with the thunk of a gold bar on the desk of any hiring manager. This reputation is fading now — not because of anything Trump or the Right did, but because of modern Harvard’s determination to tear down the things that made it great. Namely, the commitment to excellence and merit. Harvard’s woke turn has delivered such wonders as a plagiarizing Hamas apologist as president and the university’s first-ever remedial math class.
But Harvard still matters: it remains a key power center and legitimizing institution for the regime that seeks to destroy America. The good news is that we finally have a President willing to do something about it. Donald Trump has noticed that Harvard happens to receive $9 billion a year of our tax money while it preens on its $53 billion endowment. Tuition is $60,000 a year. Meanwhile, they allowed the Hamas-loving undergrads to take over their campus while suppressing free speech for anyone to the right of Ibram Kendi, and famously use extreme DEI in their admissions office. Harvard University has become, like all the rest of the Ivy League colleges and elite universities, a seething hotbed of antisemitism, leftism, plagiarism, America-hatred, and anti-white racism.
I say this as an Ivy League graduate, from a long line of family members who attended the same school. My conservative Catholic children didn’t even bother applying.
Your kids can’t get into these schools, especially if they are conservatives, especially if they’re straight white males. But you can’t afford it anyway, because Harvard-trained economists helped wreck the economy under Joe Biden. But get this — the joke’s on you, because you’re still paying Harvard! Suckers like me are sending Harvard students $160 million in federal student aid. My family is paying the tuition of students who are being groomed to hate us.
$350 million in federal student aid goes to pay the tuition for students at Ivy League universities. A drop in the bucket, you say? Fine — then make these Commie campuses pay it themselves. After all, the Ivies have a total endowment of $183 BILLION. That’s an average of two to three million dollars per student.
Why do they need my measly money? Here’s an idea: how about lowering the tuition! Just fire the dozens of DEI staffers. As of 2023, Harvard had “10 full-time DEI officials, including a: chief diversity and inclusion officer; senior outreach and digital strategy officer; associate director for DEI research and assessment; director of affirmative action and diversity analytics; affirmative action program analyst; senior manager of DEI community engagement; senior director of administration and operations; and an associate chief diversity and inclusion officer.”
Last month, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard telling them that they needed to add “viewpoint diversity” to the array of diversities they cherish.
Incredible stuff here: “Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests. Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.”
Imagine if Harvard actually did that. We wouldn’t even need to send in tanks! But liberals hear “viewpoint diversity” and they think “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” and “hate.” They think it means they will be forced to associate with people who believe there are just two genders, which is utterly intolerable to them.
So of course Harvard refused. And Trump froze $2 billion in aid, and now Harvard is suing.
Tax the Rich (Universities)!
The real soft underbelly of Harvard and the other elite universities is their privileged “nonprofit” status. These are massive corporations that somehow don’t have to pay taxes on any of the money they make: taxes are for the little people, people like you, who have to try and save money to pay for college AND pay taxes.
President Trump has threatened to strip Harvard of its priceless tax-free status. Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote her own blistering letter to Harvard laying out why this was appropriate. It’s awesome:
Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these ‘students’ come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country – and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public? You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.
If we cannot persuade Harvard and the rest of our elite universities to get with the program, then we must make them bend. And if they refuse to bend, then we must break them, once and for all.