During an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday, Harvard Professor and former Harvard President Larry Summers argued that institutions of higher education have made “very serious” errors and deserve to “be pressured and pressured with escalating strength to change that.” And he even agreed with civil rights investigations of multiple schools over antisemitism, but the approach of the Trump administration has been the wrong one.
Summers stated, “Yes, the universities have made some very serious mistakes, and yes, they should be pressured and pressured with escalating strength to change that. I didn’t even have an objection to the way in which the Biden administration opened civil rights cases with respect to a variety of universities and antisemitism. But that’s a very different thing than the kind of persecution that is involved here.”
He continued, “And this escalated yesterday, David, in a profoundly troubling way, when the president of the United States endeavored, by social media, to engage in an individual, specific tax matter, namely Harvard’s 501(c)(3) deduction and to suggest that it be decided on the basis of a political ground. That’s the kind of interference with the IRS that it’s a sacred duty of the treasury secretary to resist.”
Summers also stated that the government doesn’t have the power to determine what beliefs are valued and which aren’t in Harvard’s academic departments and that cutting off research funding doesn’t make sense.
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