U.S. President Donald Trump is making an attempt to bully Harvard College into submission. Beneath the guise of selling “viewpoint range,” his administration has canceled the entire college’s federal grants and tried to bar it from internet hosting worldwide college students.
Trump’s model of “viewpoint range” is a name to erode range efforts and censor those that problem his insurance policies and beliefs. Harvard’s directors have proven commendable resolve in resisting his assaults, scoring tactical victories in courtroom which have stored a few of his authoritarian measures at bay. However current reporting by the New York Instances raises a troubling prospect: The college might at the least partially capitulate to president’s calls for.
If Harvard is to stay dedicated to its ideas, it can not yield to the Trump administration. The college have to be ready to face the prices that such braveness entails.
Now we have labored as professors in Hungary and Poland, two international locations that additionally face authoritarian populism. Our experiences present that when right-wing regimes goal prestigious universities, the colleges’ solely viable technique for long-term survival could also be to relocate at the least a part of their operations to extra hospitable jurisdictions. In Harvard’s case, a transfer overseas may strengthen the college’s international standing and assist protect its core values.
Trump’s populist playbook intently resembles that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has dominated the nation since 2010, and Poland’s Legislation and Justice (PiS) celebration, which held energy between 2015 and 2023. The fitting-wing regimes in each Hungary and Poland have relentlessly attacked unbiased establishments, together with courts, the media, and civil society.
Universities occupy a particular place on the authoritarian hit record. Establishments resembling Harvard undermine the far proper’s agenda by exposing its ethical chapter and mental incoherence. The “viewpoint range” that Trump calls for of Harvard is unachievable—not due to any inherent leftist bias on the college, however as a result of key tenets of the administration’s worldview can not maintain as much as critical tutorial scrutiny.
Local weather change denial and anti-vaccine rhetoric will not be legitimate scientific positions. No critical concept of justice would endorse insurance policies that fast-track white Afrikaner migrants from South Africa whereas turning away Black and brown refugees fleeing battle and local weather disaster. No credible authorized doctrine excuses Israel’s conduct in Gaza or Trump’s threats to annex territory by power. No trustworthy studying of U.S. historical past can ignore its deep entanglement with racism.
Trump should perceive that giant elements of his agenda are intellectually indefensible, however he additionally is aware of that universities might be co-opted. All through historical past, even establishments dedicated to scientific progress have served unjust regimes and social norms. In Nazi Germany, jurists extolled the powers of the führer whereas biologists lent legitimacy to pseudoscientific racial theories. In the US, ladies and minorities had been lengthy excluded from tutorial life—a legacy that’s nonetheless seen in analysis that neglects these teams.
Trump and his allies have drawn a strong lesson from historical past: Tutorial status cannot solely legitimize unjust energy, but in addition remodel dominant social norms. Universities’ twin potential—for political resistance or endorsement—makes them key targets for would-be authoritarians. Throughout Japanese Europe, such leaders have sought not solely to limit tutorial freedom, but in addition to seize tutorial authority.
In Poland, the populist PiS authorities launched sweeping increased schooling reforms. Cloaked within the language of accountability and productiveness, the measures elevated obscure, ideologically aligned Polish-language Catholic journals to prominence—typically rating them on par with respected publications resembling Nature. The federal government used the brand new journal rankings to distribute grants and decide tutorial promotions.
Funding was steered towards establishments that echoed the PiS agenda. Tutorial governance was centralized, shifting energy to school presidents as an alternative of extra unbiased college senates. Total establishments, such because the Nicolaus Copernicus Analysis Heart, had been established and staffed by loyal political appointees—a part of an overt technique to domesticate a conservative counter-elite.
This mannequin of educational seize labored effectively in Poland’s comparatively flat public college system. However in the US, academia is outlined by a handful of disproportionately highly effective non-public establishments—Harvard foremost amongst them. These elite colleges form nationwide tutorial tradition, partially as a result of their doctoral graduates go on to workers schools throughout the nation. Trump’s assaults on academia are thus extra instantly similar to what occurred in Hungary, the place in 2018, Orban pressured out the nation’s most influential tutorial establishment, Central European College (CEU).
In evaluating CEU and Harvard, the New York Instances wrote that CEU “is way smaller and has by no means had the clout of Harvard.” However that evaluation is misguided. Inside Hungary, CEU wielded equal or higher affect than Harvard does in the US. CEU is funded by Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros and attracts college students from greater than 100 international locations. Earlier than its expulsion, CEU was the one main non-public worldwide college in Hungary. Its students secured a disproportionately giant share of European analysis grants awarded to Hungarian establishments.
CEU’s pivotal position in Hungary’s mental panorama is exactly why Orban’s regime focused it so relentlessly. Although Orban additionally applied structural college adjustments akin to these in Poland—resembling a ban on accredited diploma packages in gender research—his assault on CEU turned the catalyst and focus of a broader assault on tutorial freedom.
Regardless of efforts by CEU’s management to barter with the Hungarian authorities, the college was finally pressured to relocate all of its diploma packages to Vienna. That transition required the college to safe new services, acquire accreditation from Austrian authorities, and supply help for college and households uprooted by the transfer.
Harvard may finally face an identical reckoning, particularly if Trump’s model of authoritarianism extends past his second time period to an ideological inheritor resembling Vice President J.D. Vance. The prominence that makes Harvard so influential can also be what makes it weak. For the “Make America Nice Once more” (MAGA) motion, Harvard is greater than only a liberal establishment: It embodies the cultural authority that populists detest. Gaining affect over Harvard’s governance and tutorial output could be a significant coup within the motion’s broader effort to reshape prevailing liberal mental and cultural norms.
Even when Harvard succeeds in its reported efforts to barter a cease-fire with Trump or wins additional authorized battles—because it has over worldwide scholar visas, at the least briefly—it should nonetheless face threats. Trump or his successor won’t enable the college to function usually whereas it defies the MAGA motion’s immoral and anti-scientific agenda. Bureaucratic harassment, authorized uncertainty, and abusive necessities—resembling forcing visa candidates to submit their social media historical past to the U.S. authorities—will deter high international expertise.
Federal funding freezes—or perhaps a quiet bias towards Harvard-affiliated federal grant proposals—will likewise hurt the college’s means to recruit high college students and college. Because the Polish instance demonstrates, adjustments in incentive constructions reshape tutorial habits: Not each scholar is ready to make skilled sacrifices for the sake of precept. Over time, high medical researchers, for example, might quietly migrate from Harvard to establishments that also provide entry to federally funded analysis.
Worse nonetheless, the case of CEU exhibits simply how far a marketing campaign of intimidation towards an educational establishment can go. One in all us, who has served on CEU’s college since earlier than its expulsion, recollects Budapest plastered with government-sponsored billboards vilifying Soros. At one level, a pro-government Hungarian newspaper revealed the names of some CEU college and branded them “Soros mercenaries.”
Given Trump’s instincts and rhetoric, it’s simple to think about comparable episodes occurring in the US. Even when the share of worldwide college students at Harvard dwindles, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on dorms or lecture rooms may ship a chilling message to potential candidates and college. It isn’t unthinkable that the federal government may declare a Harvard diploma to be a disqualifying issue for U.S. federal service, making the college much less engaging to home college students and additional growing its monetary reliance on the worldwide college students that it could not be capable to safely host.
Harvard is immensely rich, and its founding predates that of the US. However our expertise exhibits that no quantity of status or endowment can protect a college from decided state hostility. When governments are prepared to make use of all levers of energy to assault tutorial freedom, universities can not reliably perform their core mission of teaching college students and conducting significant analysis.
At CEU, exile has left deep scars. As a substitute of its state-of-the-art campus in central Budapest, the college now occupies a rented workplace constructing in a residential district of Vienna. Some college and workers uprooted their lives to make the transfer—however many left the establishment solely. Because the far proper good points energy throughout Europe, together with in Austria, there isn’t a assure that right now’s refuge gained’t turn into tomorrow’s battleground.
But exile has additionally introduced new alternatives. CEU now boasts maybe essentially the most various college in its historical past, partially as a result of Vienna is taken into account a lovely place for students to work and dwell. Harvard, with far higher sources and international title recognition than CEU, has much more choices to thrive overseas. If Harvard’s intent to maneuver turned public, international locations all over the world would compete to host it—and the prices of relocation might be shared with the brand new host authorities.
Although CEU has moved its degree-granting packages to Austria, it has maintained a presence in Budapest and continues to function analysis facilities there—thus far, exterior the attain of Hungary’s regulators. Likewise, Harvard can protect components of its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A partial relocation needn’t imply full departure.
Our expertise with the tutorial takeovers in Poland and Hungary gives a stark warning to Harvard and to liberals extra broadly. Given the radicalism and mass enchantment of the far proper, there can be no return to the liberal consolation zone. Each path ahead calls for disruption and sacrifice.
