May 28, 2025
by Marybeth O’Mara
Eight US presidents. Four current Supreme Court justices. Thirty sitting Congressional Representatives. Twelve sitting US Senators. Countless diplomats, CEOs, Cabinet nominees, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, scientists. What do these all have in common? They all attended Harvard University for undergraduate and/or advanced degrees, which contributes to Harvard’s outsized influence in the world beyond education, including politics, government, science, diplomacy, journalism, and more.
Since the end of World War II, the federal government has heavily invested in research in environmental, health, and tech developments and innovations. Rather than create duplicate research arms, the federal model has long contracted with universities to conduct and publish research on a huge variety of topics. The US government gets to access and coordinate findings from different studies in order to craft policy solutions, based on high-level research conducted by professionals. This has been an effective—and efficient—model for several generations. The government (and its citizens) get to use research results from publicly-funded studies, while the government does not need to build its own research facilities and hire its own scientists and experts to conduct and interpret research on issues that affect large chunks of the US population. Universities bid for these research contracts, in a standardized competitive bid system in which they must verify that they have the facilities and personnel to conduct the research and adhere to government-dictated ethics and disclosure requirements. Much of this research is coordinated through the US National Science Foundation, itself under attack by DOGE and the White House. Harvard is just one cog in this system of cooperation, albeit a very large cog. If this system has worked well, why is Trump attacking Harvard now?
Well, like so much else in these past few months, attacks on higher education are part of a longstanding fascism “playbook” that goes back to Hitler in Germany. According to the Congressional report written during 2024 House hearings on campus anti-semitism,
After Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1933, the new Nazi government began an effort to completely reorder public and private life in Germany…The Nazi regime quickly targeted German universities—among the most elite in the world at the time—for restructuring according to Nazi principles… While the Nazi Ministry of Education initiated reforms, local Nazi organizations and student activists worked to bring Nazi ideals to German campuses. These forces, along with increasing antisemitism under Nazi rule, transformed everyday life at German universities. Throughout this period, students, faculty, and staff made individual decisions that both upheld and opposed Nazi ideology.
This led to an accelerating shift in campus culture, with a multi-modal attack on campus life, including legislation that banned nearly all Jewish faculty members later in 1933.
We are watching an attack on American higher ed in real time. Columbia University in NYC gave in to early demands from the Trump administration but still faces additional demands as well as additional threats of withdrawal of federal money. Harvard has resisted by filing lawsuits against the federal government and, so far, the courts have ruled in Harvard’s favor. However, these court cases are in their early days and the rulings have been to TEMPORARILY halt the federal actions as these cases wend their way through the (typically slow) path of justice. Meanwhile, the government keeps engaging more and more departments to attack Harvard (and other universities). Last week, the State Department cancelled all visas for foreign students to study at Harvard (held by court order), and just days later, they cancelled all student visa for ALL universities in the US for the upcoming school year (again, stopped by court order—for now.) Sure, Harvard has the wealth to resist by engaging highly regarded lawyers and filing lawsuits, but not all schools have those resources.
What can they all do? First of all, giving in does not provide protection. There is historical evidence in Germany, Italy, and the USSR, and there is current evidence in the cases of Viktor Orban’s Hungary and at Columbia today. The Big 10 negotiated a NATO-like pact for mutual defense against the administration. At the time of the Washington Post article, only Northwestern had been named, but other members of the Big 10 expect that they will soon have targets on their backs. Resisting the “divide and conquer” strategy of the Administration seems like the only thing that can work, but it is tricky to get competing institutions to work together for any length of time.
In addition, I was one of 800+ alumni who signed a letter addressed to my alma mater’s (Northwestern) President and Faculty Senate urging them to resist early capitulation to administration demands to eliminate DEI in all forms and to enforce more stringent restrictions on campus protests. Organizing that letter-writing campaign has inspired another alum to keep us connected through a daily news digest and commentary on this specific issue, the attack on higher education. Connections like these (and like this new community of Crones) are important! We don’t have to feel isolated and powerless.
The next big, nationwide, multi-sponsored, coordinated protests are June 14th. The No Kings protests are offering counter-programming to Trump’s obscene self-congratulatory military parade in Washington DC. I’ll be attending and hope to see you there!
