I believe in academic freedom as much as the next guy. But I also believe that in the attacks by the Trump administration, Harvard University is getting what she richly deserves.
Harvard exercises enormous power in American life as the source of the ideas—most notably the bad ideas—that shape our society. Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Studies (both mutations of Marxism) got their academic imprimatur partly from their Harvard connections. So also did the older corrosive theory known as “legal realism.” Harvard is responsible for other baleful influences on the law schools as well, which all-too-often slavishly follow Harvard’s lead.
Harvard people got Obamacare passed, and then sustained it against a well-deserved constitutional attack. Harvard notoriously discriminated against Jews in the 20th century. Later, it returned to form by discriminating against student and faculty applicants from “middle America"—thereby giving unfair advantages to key constituencies of the National Democratic Party. This is what landed the school in trouble with the U.S. Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023).
Identify a piece of constitutional nonsense invented to justify federal government overreach, and you can usually find Harvard people promoting it. For example, one of the most influential authors of the 20th century disinformation campaign against the Constitution's "convention of states" procedure was a Harvard law professor.
Through its faculty and student selection practices, the ideas it produces, its student education, and its alumni circle, Harvard gives a huge leg up to the political Left generally. And federal dollars, in turn, have given a huge leg up to Harvard.
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Now comes the news that Harvard Law Review—traditionally the most influential law journal in the U.S.—also has been discriminating in article and staff selection based on race and ethnicity. No surprise there. Harvard Law Review has long discriminated heavily in favor of leftist viewpoints generally.
Publication in HLR is a key to academic influence and to academic privileges and positions. So the journal's discriminatory conduct helps assure that conservative influence is limited and that conservative scholars are locked out from privileges and positions.
But there’s another reason Harvard had it coming: The school is a co-conspirator with federal spending programs that, constitutionally, should not even exist. Harvard cooperates with those programs because of the cash they bring.
But now Harvard is learning that “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Good.
A personal note: For better or for worse, all my life, I’ve found I'm often way ahead of the curve. For example, in a Townhall.com column, I pointed out—months before others noticed—that the Joe Biden dementia scandal wasn’t just about Biden’s dementia, but about the cabal that covered it up and exercised power under this name.
However, on the subject of Harvard, I was much further ahead: Over a decade ago, I wrote an article for CNS News called “Boycott Harvard.” Among my comments:
* [I]n almost every political nook and cranny these days, someone with a Harvard degree is gumming things up.”
* “That [Harvard] crowd can do more than positive damage. They can also obstruct progress. I’ve seen this in my own field of constitutional scholarship.”
* “We are not supposed to have an aristocracy. How did it happen that our governing elite has been shaped so heavily by a single institution?”
I concluded that a Harvard degree should not be considered an advantage for public service, but a disadvantage. It should be something to overcome, like an old misdemeanor conviction for streaking.
But in the interest of full disclosure, maybe I should tell you that my own law degree is from Cornell—which is no great shakes, either.
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, authored “The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant” (3rd ed., 2015). He is a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s “Heritage Guide to the Constitution.”
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