Universities “Need to Look Inward” As To Cause Of Backlash Against Higher Ed

Universities “Need to Look Inward” As To Cause Of Backlash Against Higher Ed

I appeared on April 16, 2025, on The Evening Edit on Fox Business, with guest host Jackie DeAngelis.

The topic was Harvard’s pushback against Trump administraiton efforts to alter the way Harvard does business in order to bring it into alignment with the civil right laws and supposedly educational mission of hte university.

Transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors (lightly edited for transcript clarity)

Video clip:

A lot of Americans are wondering why their tax dollars are going to these universities when they are not only indoctrinating our nation students, but also allowing such aggre egregious illegal behavior to occur.

DeAngelis:

That was White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt addressing the Trump administration’s halt to stop federal funding to Harvard after the school would not comply with the White House’s demands regarding antisemitism.

Joining me now, Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson. It’s great to have you on the program tonight, sir. Thanks for being here.

Big question is, should taxpayers in this country stop funding the anti-Americanism and the anti-Semitism that we see coming out of these prestigious universities? And I just want to, you know, have full disclosure here. I went to Cornell University as an undergrad, and so I think back to my days there and I think about things I saw and how I interacted with professors and other students. It’s horrific to me the images of some of what we’ve seen going on in this country. And I just wanted to get your take on this. President Trump has taken a stand.

 WAJ:

I think there’s two issues. One is civil rights violations. When you take federal money as a university, you’re obligated to comply with the civil rights laws. You don’t have a choice. It’s not a question of free speech, it’s a question of complying with the law. So that’s issue number one.

But issue number two that I think you’re getting at is there is a backlash building against higher education. There’s a backlash where the polling consistently shows that trust in higher education is now at its lowest level ever.  At Harvard, for example, only 3% of the professors identify as conservative versus 37% of the population in the population. 25% [of the population] identify as liberal, at Harvard it’s 80% of the professors.

So what you’re getting is really a cultural clash, which is manifesting itself in these civil rights violations, but it’s really a much more core problem. And people are saying, why are we paying for this? And we’re certainly not going to pay for it if they’re going to violate students’ civil rights.

DeAngelis:

Yeah. And it’s not just about federal funding. Um, action could also be taken with respect to the taxation of endowments as well. It was at zero. Harvard, for example, has a $53 billion endowment. That’s now because of President Trump taxed at 1.4%. But many say, you know, you could potentially do more. Um, while I have you, William, I want you to take a listen to Senator Tom Cotton. He was on Fox and Friends this morning.

Video clip:

Seems like Harvard is fighting the Trump administration harder than they fight antisemitism on campus. They should do a better job of vetting international students to not, to make sure that they’re not admitting America-hating foreigners who come here to take advantage of our education system. These are all fairly simple requests the administration is making to Harvard to simply follow the Law.

DeAngelis:

Although Harvard could be doing a better job with vetting some of these problems, the question around them is, is it coming from the student body or is it coming from the faculty? Of course, the, uh, schools themselves wanna admit the international students, they typically pay full freight to go to the school and they make big donations.

WAJ:

Well, I think it’s coming from the faculty, but also from the administrators. I mean the whole DEI culture on campuses, racializing everything, anti-Americanism built into the teaching. I think it’s a combination of everything.

They love for everything to look like America, but the campuses don’t look like America because in America you find pro-Israel people by a majority, you find a lot of conservatives, you find none of that on the campuses. I think they need to look inward.What could we have done better? Why is it that the population is turning on us? Why it is it that there is this backlash? Why is it that we have a completely imbalanced campus?

They love for everything to look like America, but the campuses don’t look like America because in America you find pro-Israel people by a majority. you find a lot of conservatives, you find none of that on the campuses. I think they need to look inward.

DeAngelis:

Yeah, that’s a great point. In my day it was all about diversity, and making sure there were all kinds of people on campus, all kinds of opinion and discourse and conversation. And now it’s become, very myopic.

William Jacobson, thank you so much. Great to see you tonight, sir.

WAJ:

Thank you for having me.

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