Bulwark Takes - Harvard Makes A Stand Against Trump’s Crackdown

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Bill Kristol and Jonathan Cohn break down the Trump administration's move to cut funding from Harvard, what it says about the broader attack on universities, free speech, and biomedical research.

Hi, Bill Kristol here with Jonathan Cohn. We're going to discuss Harvard University versus the Trump administration. Whose side are you on, Jonathan? I will say I am on Harvard's side here. You know, I think it was good to see a big university stand up to the administration, particularly after what we saw with Columbia. And I should say, I mean, I don't, I would not, I don't envy any of these administrators. I mean, this is a tough position. I mean, the amount of funding at stake for these universities, I mean, it gets to an existential level of, you know, when you think of the biomedical funding and the engineering funding. But to me, that's all the more reason why a school like Harvard has that big endowment, has the resources. I mean, if they're not going to stand up for it, you know, nobody is, but what about you?

Where, where, where are you on this? I don't know. Well, we're both Harvard grads. That's why we were, we were tabbed by our colleagues, I guess, to do this. You know, I don't know. We have some, I mean, I spent most of my life as it were defending, you know, sort of Republicans against Harvard. And I mean, I liked Harvard and I liked attending there and I taught there and I've taught on and off in recent decades as well. So I'm, I'm friendly to Harvard in a way, but I've been a friendly critic of Harvard, I think it's fair to say. And I didn't expect myself to end up defending Harvard against the Republican administration that was trying to, as you say, cut off its funds in an arbitrary way.

It wasn't as if there's some kind of evidentiary hearing and they're violating some part of the contract. Obviously, that stuff happens and that's legitimate. But because the Trump administration doesn't like certain policies and practices of Harvard, most of which, according to the Trump administration's own complaint, are not legal problems with Harvard. I mean, one or two could be, though they haven't proven that, but are simply they don't like the balance of, you know, views in the faculty or in certain departments. They list certain departments that they don't like because they don't think they're fair and balanced, I guess. And that is a level of intrusiveness and attempt to take over private universities or any universities, really, since the federal government doesn't run any to speak of. That's pretty astounding. So I am glad Harvard is standing up. And I thought actually Harvard's,

the statement by President Garber was strong and kind of a good statement for free speech. It is, I don't know, I guess I'm, two things I guess I'm astonished by. I don't fully understand legally, I guess how you can even claim you're cutting off $9 billion of, maybe you don't like the Middle East Studies Department department so i guess you could cut off whatever grants if you you could try

to cut off or have to pursue legal means to cut off grants to that particular department that aren't being administered according with in accordance with the conditions of the grant how do you cut off all the money for the harvard and all that? I guess there's something quirky about one of the laws. Do you understand that fully? You know, I don't. And I mean, there's sort of two, there's several overlapping laws here, right? So, I mean, there's what the law says about the grants, right? You know, when, you know, what, you know, and, you know, depending on is this money through the National Institutes of Health? Is it through the National Science Foundation? Is it some kind of humanities award?

You know, each one of those has its own authorizing languages. And my understanding, I have not, just to be clear, gotten that deep on this. But my understanding is if you get into the language, there's provisions here and there that, you know, a clever lawyer could do something with. But then there's also, obviously, you know, the general First Amendment prohibitions on the federal government, you know, subjecting, you know, money and things to a certain, you know, to a political litmus test in terms of speech. And, you know, there's very, and then there's the process part, which you remember, you know, mentioning that even if there is a, even if these grants, even if the federal government does have the right to pull back on the grants, there is a process they have to go through. But of course, this would not be the first time that the Trump administration has decided, we don't need process. We don't care about that. We're just going to do it and stop us,

you know, which is, I guess, what Harvard's going to try to do now. Yeah, they're going to sue. I mean, there's, I guess, Title VI. There's some kind of crazy provision that no one's ever enforced, I think, that you can cut off all federal funds if there's a violation of particular aspects of this one provision that has to do with Middle East studies and stuff. But I think it's a big reach and us to say no one's, I believe, ever really ever done this. I guess what strikes me also is it's not like the Trump administration woke up one day and is very concerned about Harvard University. I mean,

people choose to go to Harvard. They choose to teach at Harvard. They choose to, right? I mean, be administrators at Harvard, and people choose to give money to Harvard. If I was involved with some donors who stopped giving money after October 7th, they didn't like Harvard's response. I don't think anyone, you might have been wise, I might've been unwise. No one doubts that that's within their rights to do. And I didn't like Harvard's response after October 7th. I was a little involved with some alumni organizations that tried to get organized and so forth to push the administration. It's just worth saying, and I'm struck how few people are saying this, how different that is. Other people in the private sector sort of choosing to withhold

support or to ask to or to run for the harvard board of you know whatever overseers whatever it's called the alumni association head you know things you know to change policies to faculty to sort of raise issues so different from the administration the of the you know the federal government coming down like a ton of bricks. And they don't care about Harvard, right? I mean, what they want is to intimidate all the universities. And I guess that strikes me as pretty scary. I mean, it's sort of funny, Harvard and Harvard can take care of itself. And I've had a little bit of this attitude too at times, but the last few weeks. But this is part of trying to get all these major institutions

of America cowed and intimidated and not exactly acting in line with the Trump administration. They probably think that's, even they think that's a bridge too far, but certainly not in any way, but being intimidated and not standing up to the Trump administration. Don't you think, I think in that respect, it does fit, don't you think, with the law firms and the businesses and so forth? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I think this is clearly of a piece. And they sort of said this, right? I mean, in various statements and papers that were out before they took office. I mean, this is part of a broad campaign to put civil society, these sort of independent institutions of thought, you know, to hem them in, to discipline them. And, you know, they would say, right, well, they're biased against us. Looks to me like they

want bias in favor of them. And certainly they don't want criticism. And there's an irony here, because this is all being done. If you read their language, this is all being done. Some of it being done in the name of free speech and inclusion. And, you know, look, they're picking up on real strands of concern that a lot of us have about what free speech in the university environment has been. But rather than, as you say, sort of going at it in a way in a sort of careful, constructive way or, you know, you know, there's all kinds of means for influencing what universities do. They're taking this sledgehammer and and just really threatening, you know, their whole existence. And you mentioned, you know, the biomedical money. And that's sort of my talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is and we saw this at Columbia. I remember when they did this to Columbia and they canceled all of the grants to Columbia, which are still canceled, by the way. I mean, that money is not flowing. And, you know,

okay, let's, you know, let's put aside whether you think the universities are too woke, they're not woke enough, you know, whatever you think about all of that. You know, that is an argument for maybe going after grants, as you said, you know, to the Middle East or, you know, Studies Department or its equivalent at Columbia. What does that have to do with an NIH grant to study a new treatment for Alzheimer's? You know, what does that have to do with, you know, a study of, you know, air pollution and how it's causing asthma? And it's just this, I mean, it's almost this sort of intellectual equivalent of like a

neutron bomb, right? It just, you know, wipes out everything. And this is the part I continue to puzzle over. I mean, however much you hate the universities, right? I mean, however dim your view of them. I mean, surely that those kinds of studies have value. I mean, right. You have relatives who, you know, you know, people who get cancer, you know, why would

you want to wipe out that? Why would you want to do it? You know, if not for, you know, whether a concern for humanity or, you know, we're supposed to be making America great here again. And what are we great at in America? We're really good at biomedical research and just the sort of cavalier. We don't care. This is all worth it. I mean, that's what sort of, I continue to sort of find that fascinating. I mean, just the amount of destruction they are knowing that they know is going to come from this and they are willing to do it. I just, I, that's, as frankly it surprised me. I don't know. Has it surprised you? Am I naive to think that like they wouldn't want to do that sort of thing?

Yeah. I mean, you've written so well about Kennedy's HHS and all the different aspects of this assault. No, I am surprised. And I guess the grounds of my surprise would be that he didn't do that much of this in the first term. So of course, one could tell. I mean, he had, with COVID, it got different. He didn't, you know, he got in big fights with Fauci and all this because he wanted to pretend it was all being solved. We didn't need to wear, you know, to have any public health precautions and so forth. But before that, he was a pretty conventional, I mean, I can't remember, maybe there were some attempts to do

a little bit of cost saving and stuff, but not the kind of stuff he's tried to do with NIH and HHS and all that. And in that respect, he's fallen in with ideologues and radical government cutters, but also doing things that his donors can't. His donors give a lot of money to all these hospitals, right? I mean, Trump world, Trump himself is a cheapskate, so he doesn't give money to anyone. But Trump world is not against, of course, one can tell, biomedical research, or at least the elite level of Trump world isn't. And the popular level isn't either, incidentally.

I don't think this was a big MAGA issue for the last 10 years that I was aware of, that, you know, there was too much money being spent on cancer research. Was that like a big thing at Trump rallies? So it is a pretty bizarre, I guess it shows the culture stuff trumps everything, right? If it's got Harvard's name on it, if it's got universities on it, if it's a distant cousin of some woke Middle East studies program or a place where they didn't discipline. And I would agree they didn't discipline sometimes the some of the people in the encampments enough and the Jewish kids were sometimes harassed and there wasn't enough discipline on campus for those things. If it's if if you're in any way in that world, they're coming after you. But will they pay a price for the utter disregard of actual health and actual biomedical research? Yeah, you know, I don't know. I mean, I've actually thought for a while, like if I'm, you know, I'm not a strategist.

You're much more of a strategist than I am. So you know better than I would what would work. I have been sort of surprised, to be honest with you, that I have you haven't seen, whether it's Democrats or, you know, you know, leaders in higher education, standing in front of children's hospitals, right? You know, this is, you know, this is what we're cutting here, you really want to cut this? Because I mean, to me, these are, it's just such an obvious political point, everybody, you know, every, you know, and so I don't know, I mean, I would think these things would be unpopular as they start to sink in. And also, I mean, there is this interesting pattern, which is if you look at the schools that have been hit. And I know I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, so I'm here at a major, major research institution. I think we're like usually in the top five for NIH grants in the country, but also a state school in a swing state. And if you look at,

you know, the football team and sort of got that sort of woven into that part of the culture. And if you look at the schools that have been hit, they're almost all coastal schools or private schools in, you know, blue states. You know, the only exception, really, I think that I was trying to think of this that I could think of so far that's really gotten singled out. I mean, they've all everyone who's got NIH money is feeling the impact. But in terms of the schools that have been singled out, it's Columbia, it's Harvard, it's a bunch of the IVs, it's the California schools are the only public schools as far as I can tell. It's been interesting because, you know, Michigan was talked about as one of the ones that was going to get hit. Of course, it was featured

in that big DEI piece by Nick Confessori in the New York Times a couple months ago, and hasn't yet, may still. But I have wondered if maybe they're just a little bit hesitant that like if they start going after schools like University of Michigan or University of Iowa, right, which has that famous football routine, the college football where they wave to the children's hospital. I mean, you know, you start to get the, these are places that don't quite scan elite in the same way. And the economic impact of a lot of these places in their communities is much bigger. I mean, let's face it, Harvard, Boston. I mean, Boston is heavily dependent on Harvard, MIT, the whole university research complex, but it's got its own economic base.

I mean, Michigan, this part of Michigan, we're really dependent on the University of Michigan. Same for Penn State. You go down to sort of Midwest schools. So, you know, I am down to sort of Midwest schools. So, you know, I am curious to see how this goes forward. But again, you know, all the more reason for a Harvard that does have the independence, that does have the resources. And, you know, let's face it, the name to really kind of be out in front. And I think that hopefully, you know, to me, it's a little bit, I don't know what you feel. I think as I've sort of watched politics over the years, I've become to appreciate more the importance of political spectacle. Sometimes you need to see people standing up so that other people say, oh, I can do that and stand up.

And I kind of feel like if nothing else, this was important for kind of a Cory Booker moment, I guess. You know, it's interesting you say that. I had arguments with some friends over the last 48 hours very much along these lines. People were saying, well, Harvard shouldn't be the face of it. You know, it's bad. It should be Michigan or it should be, you know, Texas, which has massive science research, obviously, or other institutions, Florida. And therefore, they're falling for Trump's bait. All of middle America is going to see it's Trump against Harvard, and that's going to be bad.

And I've argued against that. But, of course, it's not a crazy argument. But I think it's one, it's like a self disabling, if that's the right way to say it, argument that's being made in too many areas. Now, everyone's telling themselves why you're playing into Trump's hands, if you fight him on A, B, or C, if you fight him on El Salvador, you know, deportations, you're playing into Trump's hands because some of those people probably are gang members and should be deported. Maybe not to that particular prison, but if it deported. And if you fight on behalf of universities, you're playing into Trump's hands. And, of course, the big tech companies aren't very popular. And I do think that's not liberals, but let's say all those who want to resist Trump's

authoritarian efforts are overthinking things to some degree. And as you say, you just need people, we do need people to stand up. And sometimes if it's the biggest, if it's a giant liberal, mostly liberal university, fine. You know, I mean, it's people are being too clever by half. I think it's sometimes not fighting. So yeah, I'm glad that Harvard is doing it. You could say it's easier for Harvard to do it maybe than some other schools. But I don't know. The Harvard Board of Trustees actually isn't exactly jammed with liberals. And as you say, they are I wonder how much of a moment this will be. I wonder, I get the feeling if I want to be optimistic for the 10% of the day that I allow myself to be optimistic, that between the El Salvador stuff, the reaction to that, the Harvard stuff, tariffs, which is more of a kind of straightforward economic issue, obviously, but a little more, some of the law firms, some of them standing up, some of them, many of them capitulating, but that there's a little more of a sense that maybe, you know, the beginning of a resistance to Trump's authoritarianism, we're seeing evidence of that across America, including with the Democratic Party. And people are understanding, I think, that autocracy is not just doge within the federal government. It's not just firing civil servants, replacing the political appointees. I think a lot of that's bad also. But it's also autocracy manifests itself by, how should I put it, ingesting authoritarianism into civic institutions and social institutions. And it tries to tame them,

cow them, influence and more than influence them, often kind of semi-control them. One of the things with Harvard, I think, was that they get to review every quarter what changes Harvard's made in its hiring policies and its admissions policies just to make sure that it's all OK with. So I suppose they're going to go look at the political views of every 18 year old Harvard admits and ask, how come you admitted people? I mean, I don't even know how Harvard's supposed to know sometimes. But so I wonder if there's a little bit more of a realization that in dealing with authoritarianism, one can't be quite as kind of politically calculating in the way one sometimes is and which fight to pick and let you know, in a normal legislative or appropriations process. I don't know, I'll give you the last word. But do you think there's any how much of a side do you think there is of that? And how much is that just wishful thinking on my part?

Well, I've been known to engage in wishful thinking, too. So with that caveat, I also feel like we've hit a little bit of a critical mass. You may have seen that poll on immigration where he was. There was one poll. It was Quinnipiac. I can't remember whose poll it was. But someone had a poll of Trump on, you know, approval on immigration. He was underwater, which, you know, would be a huge change. And I think, you know, I do think that story is penetrating to people and people are processing the fact that, wait, we did what? There was no due process. Like there are Americans who do get that. Like, I do think that is think kind of probably played a huge role in just sort of shaking things loose, you know, and it's one thing after another. And I do feel like there is this sort of sense of like people are kind of like, wait, we can push or we need to push back. And I do think also, I mean, I wouldn't underestimate the extent to which, you know, things like,

you know, people are not getting their calls back from the Social Security Bureau. I mean, we're starting to feel those effects. And the politicians are starting to seize on that. And it adds up. And so 10%, 15% of the day, maybe, I think, yeah, yeah, we're going somewhere with this. But yeah. Thank you, Jonathan Cohn. And thank you all for joining us at The Bulwark.

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