Republicans are reveling in President Trump’s fight with Harvard University, fulfilling the years-long itch to take on leftists in the Ivy League and “woke” ideology, all while boosting the populist narrative of fighting elites.
Even as the escalating battle gets pushback from Democrats who warn about independence at Harvard and other educational institutions more broadly, Trump is far from crossing any lines for most conservatives.
Trump’s fight against Harvard and other Ivy League institutions is one that conservatives have been salivating at for years, especially since the on-campus protests against Israel following Hamas’s attack in October 2023.
But more than anything, Republicans believe this is a perfect situation to paint Democrats into a corner and force them to defend Harvard and similar universities.
“There is a bubble around Boston, New York, and D.C., maybe that thinks highly of Harvard. But these days, those who don’t think that Harvard is horribly woke and lost think they’re condescending and full of it,” said former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who heads the Young America’s Foundation, a top conservative organization aimed at activating young conservatives.
“So there’s really not a lot of downside to what Trump’s doing.”
“They’ve been able to get away with whatever they wanted before,” Walker said of Harvard.
“And now, even in circles you wouldn’t necessarily expect, people are like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.’”
Ire on the GOP side has been building for much of the past decade against Ivy League institutions, especially over what they maintain is a left-leaning bias that has stamped out the voices of conservatives on campus.
Harvard’s battle with Trump is serving as the culmination of those complaints. Republicans cheering on Trump’s efforts to cut off federal grants to the school and prevent it from enrolling international students see no political downside.
“The Democrats have become the party of the higher ed administrator — how they talk, their priorities,” said Matt Gorman, a GOP strategist. “Trump is drawing into this fight intentionally. … He is daring the Democratic Party — which needs to reach working class voters and men, Latinos … to defend the most elite and effete institution in the country against foreign students.”
“Democrats are Wile E. Coyote,” Gorman continued. “They’re running full speed off the cliff and they don’t realize until they’re five feet off that there’s nothing underneath them.”
The back-and-forth over foreign students erupted over the past week. The administration initially revoked the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification last Thursday, which was halted a day later by a federal judge in Massachusetts.
A hearing is set for Thursday over a possible extension of that temporary order.
Trump on Wednesday sounded a typically populist note on the issue, telling reporters that the percentage of international students at Harvard and other schools should be capped at roughly 15 percent — nearly half of the university’s current total.
“We have people who want to go to Harvard and other schools and they cannot get in because we have foreign students,” he said in the Oval Office. “I want to make sure that the foreign students are people who can love our country.”
“I am looking out for the country and for Harvard,” he said. “I want Harvard to do well. I want Harvard to be great again — probably.”
The moves have angered Democrats who believe that institutions such as Harvard should be able to operate independently of the administration’s wishes.
“Donald Trump is attacking Harvard for refusing to carry out his political agenda. Now, innocent students are caught in the crossfire,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) recently said.
She also sought to make the fight about something bigger than Harvard, which could be read as a sign that the institution isn’t seen as a sympathetic victim of Trump’s ire.
“Harvard is right to fight back. But this isn’t just about Harvard — anyone who crosses Trump could be punished. It’s a threat to all of us,” Warren said.
Even some Republicans are squeamish at the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics. Moderate swing-seat Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said that while “Harvard has done a terrible job protecting Jewish-American students,” he had concerns with the approach.
“I am sensitive though to the executive branch declaring war on domestic institutions. We are not an autocracy,” Bacon told The Hill. “[Former President] Biden did some similar attacks on educational institutions and Republicans didn’t like those actions. I counsel restraint and focus on putting a spotlight on Harvard’s behavior. When students vote with their feet and go somewhere else, that is the most effective.”
Some Democrats have signaled they aren’t in a mood to defend Harvard, particularly those who thought the Ivy League school and others like it should have more forcefully responded to what they saw as antisemitic protests on college campuses.
“There’s a direct line from the antisemitism that was allowed to flourish on Harvard and other elite campuses and the type of antisemitism [recently] in Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), a Harvard alum, told CNN, referring to the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in the nation’s capital last week.
“Antisemitic words do become antisemitic murders, and the inability of progressives to check and condemn that antisemitism on the left has allowed these tragedies to unfurl,” he said.
At the same time, Auchincloss signaled disfavor with Trump’s efforts to go after Harvard and other schools.
“But MAGA is not the organization or movement that’s going to address that. The hypocrisy on the hard right is just as galling,” he said. “Neither side is equipped to help build out a liberal, truth seeking culture on these campuses, which is what Harvard needs.”
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a Harvard alumnus — warned that Trump’s actions will hurt the nation, regardless of what one thinks of Harvard.
“Trump is telling the world that its best and brightest are no longer welcome here and that they should fear the vindictive irrationality of American politicians,” Raskin said.
Some say there are some risks for Trump in going after Harvard, including that he could trigger a backlash.
Christopher Rufo — an activist who has spearheaded much of the conservative backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion policies and critical race theory, an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — argues that the pushback on Harvard and other Ivy League schools should be centered on complying with federal antidiscrimination laws.
Rufo warned about getting too deep into the curriculum in an interview with The New York Times.
“Universities are ultimately going to have to decide what they put into the course catalog. I don’t think that the federal government should be micromanaging academic offerings to that extent. I think that’s counterproductive. I think it’s getting too far into the weeds,” he said.