Report: Harvard President Signals Post-Election Messaging Shift in Response to Republican Wins

Report: Harvard President Signals Post-Election Messaging Shift in Response to Republican Wins

Understandably, higher education institutions have been under the microscope in recent years thanks to an increased emphasis on DEI-like policies and canceling conservatives in academia, and, more recently, a slavish devotion to coddling – and sometimes standing with – antisemitic, pro-Hamas campus mobs.

Harvard has been one of them, having an antisemitism problem that is worse than most people realize, something that was exposed in part thanks to Rep. Elise Stefanik’s pointed questioning of then-Harvard President Claudine Gay in Congressional hearings last fall after the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

A year later, Harvard – which is under new leadership – is facing a lawsuit on the grounds that Jewish students were allegedly “subjected to cruel antisemitic bullying, harassment, and discrimination” while the university turned a blind eye.

It is also feeling the heat that came from Donald Trump winning a second presidential term, and having Republicans now control the House and Senate, all things that the school’s president, Alan M. Garber, is reportedly citing as the impetus for a post-election messaging shift:

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the turn against higher education in Washington posed a greater threat to the University than anything in recent memory, making his most direct comments yet on Republicans’ sweep to power during a closed-door session of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

At the FAS meeting on Dec. 3, Garber said he met with roughly 40 members of Congress during six trips to Washington since becoming president. Garber said he emerged from the conversations convinced there was bipartisan frustration with Harvard and acknowledged that he believes the criticisms contain elements of truth.

[…]

Garber said he saw the election results as an anti-elite repudiation by the American electorate. Harvard, he said, must listen to public criticism with “empathy and humility.”

The Harvard Crimson‘s story noted that Garber did not indicate as to how and what – if anything – would be changed.

Garber, no doubt, is motivated to a great extent by what he and other Harvard leaders fear could come in the form of more Congressional hearings and the possible yanking of research funding once Trump is back in office:

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 praised President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the National Institutes of Health as a “serious and dedicated researcher who has always been well-intentioned” during an interview with The Crimson on Tuesday.

Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya — Trump’s nominee to lead the NIH — was Garber’s former student and research partner at Stanford University, where Garber was a faculty member for 25 years before moving to Harvard to serve as provost.

The praise for Bhattacharya comes even as he reportedly threatened to tie a university’s likelihood of receiving federal research grants to academic freedom on its campus, a policy that could jeopardize the hundreds of millions in federal funding that Harvard receives each year.

“We could not carry out our mission the way we do now without substantial federal research support, nor could we provide the benefits to the nation that we do now without that support,” Garber told the Crimson earlier this month.

Many, including Prof. Jacobson, firmly believe that higher ed can no longer “be reformed from within.”  Serious threats to federal funding, however, can sometimes produce remarkable “changes in hearts” from some of these folks, so it will be interesting to see if Barber’s words ultimately translate into meaningful actions in the coming weeks and months for students and faculty alike.

As always, we’ll keep you updated.

— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —

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