In June of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court found that Harvard University had so egregiously violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits discrimination based on race, that its admissions criteria were ruled unconstitutional.
Less than six hours later, Claudine Gay, then-president of Harvard University, insisted that racial preferences in admissions were “essential to who we are.”
The usurpation of academic worth in favor of sexual orientation, gender identity and race at Harvard was nothing new.
In 2006, university president Larry Summers was fired after suggesting that innate differences in aptitude, rather than discrimination, might explain the underrepresentation of women in science.
While a culture of racial diversity and affirmative action became celebrated, a concurrent and deliberate effort against free speech on campus began. African-American professor Roland Fryer was fired for refusing to subscribe to the orthodoxy that American police were orchestrators of systemic racism, professor Ronald Sullivan was demoted for representing an objectionable client, admitted students were unenrolled for posting offensive memes on Facebook and a feminist philosopher was disinvited for criticizing the transgender movement.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranked Harvard University 248th out of 248 American universities regarding their commitments to free speech and intellectual discourse twice.
Uncoincidentally, only 3% of Harvard faculty identify as conservative. As I and other moderate to right-leaning students began to self-censor our academic output, Harvard’s encroachment against the liberal political order accelerated.
Harvard, in a span of a few years, willingly accepted billions of dollars from foreign sources, including Qatar, Russia and Saudi Arabia, and then willingly failed to report hundreds of millions of dollars more.
In blatant violation of the U.S. State Department and federal law, Harvard created partnerships with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a militia group sanctioned by the United States for its ongoing role in the genocide of Uyghur Muslims.
So pervasive is Harvard’s training of Chinese Communist Party officials that its school of government is quite literally known among Communist members as their “party school.” I sat in a class with a student who professed to have “worked in data analytics for the CCP.”
Simultaneously, although the percentage of foreign students at Harvard stood at approximately 10% in the 1990s, it’s now close to 30%, with a third of them coming from China. Even as the university was accepting a growing share of students and money from hostile countries, its demands on the American taxpayer increased dramatically.
Its annual share of taxpayer funding has ballooned to $700 million, meaning Harvard now makes more money from the American taxpayer annually than from tuition, private donations and room-and-board fees combined.
Paradoxically, whereas Harvard’s total endowment was worth $19.2 billion in 2000, it practically tripled in less than three decades and is now worth roughly $55 billion.
Then, Oct. 7 happened.
After the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Harvard University, an institution that condemned the murder of George Floyd, spoke out in support of Roe v. Wade and denounced the Russian aggression in Ukraine, was silent.
Behind the scenes, Harvard’s leadership was methodically crafting a response, eventually removing the word “violent” from their statement, so as not to “sound like (we are) assigning blame.”
As Jewish babies were being abducted into Gaza, my classmates—the same ones for whom I used their preferred gender pronouns, marched for Black Lives Matter with and attended their progressive far-left events—were busy jumping out of bed to draft an “emergency response” to blame “Israel for all ongoing violence in the Middle East.”
Consequently, a Jewish undergraduate was spat on, an Israeli was told to leave class as her nationality made classmates “uncomfortable,” another Jew was threatened with “heil Hitler,” a different Israeli was assaulted at the business school, a staff member taunted me with a machete and challenged me to debate the Jewish involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a mezuzah was stolen, and an encampment was said up to proclaim “Intifada, intifada come to America” and follow Jewish students on their way to class.
The above are not allegations; they are objective statements of what factually occurred. So pervasive were the civil-rights violations that a judge found that “Harvard failed its Jewish students,” and the federal government rescinded its funding.
Now, in its fight to win back American taxpayer money, Harvard—the institution where all the above acts occurred—is seriously arguing that the Trump administration is abridging its First Amendment rights.
After multiple federal investigations, a lawsuit and countersuit, federal funding cuts, suspension of foreign students, potential patent violations and more, it appears that Harvard and the White House are on the verge of cutting a deal to restore the funds.
I am a Democrat who campaigned for President Donald Trump. I spoke at Trump rallies and at the Republican National Convention. I accompanied Trump to the grave of Chabad Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitch Rebbe, with the family of an American hostage in Gaza. I did these things because I knew that Trump was the only candidate capable and willing to hold Harvard accountable.
Indeed, to this day, after working with the White House on this issue, I have seen not only their unmatched commitment and skill, but how the withholding of federal funds produces results. For example, Columbia University agreed to move the disciplinary process away from the faculty senate and into the purview of the provost.
As such, there are certain areas of structural reforms that the White House can and should insist upon, without which no amount of financial penalties will matter.
To truly reform the university, Trump must stand firm and demand that years of lawlessness by this institution be brought to an end.
As such, I am pushing for:
- A permanent and complete mask ban on all Harvard property, with exceptions made for clearly stated medical reasons.
- A permanent and complete elimination of all diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs. DEI officials cannot be reassigned to renamed programs that serve the same purpose.
- A permanent and complete elimination of Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University, which forbids Jews from attending and collaborates with, and supports, Hamas.
- The permanent and complete removal of Harvard board chair Penny Pritzker from the Harvard Corporation as a fellow and chairperson.
- The permanent and complete ban on accepting gifts, monetary or otherwise, from the Chinese Communist Party. A total ban on any student, be it undergraduate or other, faculty and professor, be it tenured or other, who has worked for and/or with the Chinese Communist Party from enrolling at Harvard University. Exceptions can be made for publicly documented Chinese dissidents.
- A one-year ban on any faculty member who has received five or more misconduct complaints in an academic year from teaching required first-year courses.
- A 15% to 20% cap on all undergraduate foreign students, and a commitment that no less than 80% of all undergraduate students be American citizens. A 25% to 30% cap on all graduate foreign students, and a commitment that no less than 70% of all graduate students be American citizens.
- The creation of the Hoover Institution/Center for Conservative Scholarship with academic credit for degree programs available to undergraduate and graduate students.
- Reformation of the structure of the ad board, thereby making the president and provost of ultimate arbiters on all appeals.
- Full security funding for Harvard Chabad.
- The full resolution of all internal complaints filed since Oct. 7, 2023, alleging anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Zionist and/or anti-Palestinian before any funds are unfrozen.
- The disclosure of all relevant admission data to the federal government since June 30, 2023, to ensure compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action before any federal funds are unfrozen.
- A monetary payment paid directly to the federal government, in an amount agreed to by both parties, before any federal funds are unfrozen.
- An independent, third-party monitor for a minimum of five years, agreed to by both the federal government and Harvard University, that will ensure compliance and conduct annual reports on the aforementioned changes. Failure to adhere to the aforementioned changes would result in the permanent freezing of federal funds.
