If top universities want to be trusted now is the time to earn it
The president of Harvard stands up to Trump saying, “We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity — and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.”
However any “fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth” would immediately recognize that our current system is dangerously broken and Harvard is part of the problem. It’s great that Harvard is refusing to be bullied by a fascist president, but it’s also not nearly enough to meet the moment.
Harvard’s William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy explained why in this 2006 speech. Professor Benjamin Friedman postulated that a society experiencing improving material living standard becomes less racist, more open to immigration, and less religiously intolerant.
So Friedman’s book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth conversely implies that stagnating material living standards will result in more racism, resentment of immigrants, and religious intolerance. That’s a hell of a prediction coming from almost twenty years ago and explaining the rise of christian nationalism and Trump.
So for at least twenty years Harvard and the ivy league(ish) are aware of the dangers of oligarchy and, not only did nothing about it, but also continue to produce (whether they graduate or not) many of the oligarchs and corporate managers that got us here. Mark Zuckerberg is wholly a product of Harvard. Jeff Bezos is Princeton. The Google founders Stanford, Bill Gates Harvard, Elon Musk Wharton. Steve Jobs is the exception.
Top American universities are essentially factories for economic inequality and billionaires lacking a moral compass. Harvard standing up to Trump is Frankenstein confronting his own monster while at the same time creating more of them. (Trump is University of Pennsylvania — the undergraduate college where Wharton is the business school.)
According to Harvard’s Report of the Presidential Committee on Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, trying to have moral high ground and also profit from economic evil is something of a Harvard tradition.
During the first half of the 19th century, more than a third of the money donated or promised to Harvard by private individuals came from just five men who made their fortunes from slavery and slave-produced commodities.
Now to stand up to Trump Harvard wants help
The school’s president, Alan Garber, is also tapping the school’s biggest donors, which include businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, hedge fund manager John Paulson, and lawyer and businessman David Rubenstein, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Bloomberg who said in 2015, “I, for example, am not in favor, have never been in favor of raising the minimum wage.” John Paulson who contributed over a million dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign. David Rubenstein, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, who had Bobblehead Day with his head bobbing.
What top universities can do to meet the moment is also explained by a professor who taught at Harvard, John Rawls. Professor Rawls has a famous thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance, which challenges us to imagine a lottery determining who we would be born as in America. If we imagine risking being born into poverty, then we would insist on reducing inequality and its horrible effects.
What Harvard and other universities like it sell is the ability for children of wealthy parents to avoid such a lottery. Harvard’s legacy system makes it particularly anti-veil:
Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff
The number drops dramatically for black, Latino and Asian American students with less than 16 percent each coming from those categories, the study said.
In other words Harvard is running a reverse DEI — less diversity, less equity, less inclusion, and being paid handsomely by the modern equivalent of slave owners to keep it that way.
Of course if Harvard gives in to Trump, the president will find a way to make the situation much, much worse — believe it. The so called “conservatives” who are actually just injustice radicals would like to silence professors like John Rawls and Benjamin Friedman.