I was one of a few conservative professor at Harvard — here’s where the school went wrong

Harvard is in a fix.  The nation’s top university is under siege from the Trump administration for the heavily partisan diversity it has practiced for decades. Republicans have long been aware of the hostility that American universities show for them, but President Trump has led a policy reaction that could have occurred long ago. His siege on Harvard is a squeeze by a much stronger government that holds the money against a weaker university that wants and needs its funding.  

Harvard makes its case for government money by emphasizing the scientific cancer research it performs. This, they imply, is service to both parties that keeps Harvard independent while still deserving of support.

Yet earlier Harvard, had gone so far as to renounce its independence. In 2023, it appointed a president, Claudine Gay, who immediately declared that the old idea of an Ivory Tower was obsolete. Harvard would now act as a “part of society.” What is the difference?

The Ivory Tower was an image, medieval like the university itself, of an institution made of a valuable material and grounded in society but towering above it. In this view, any university in America depends on America for its survival but does its best to rise above its politics. Politics is argument, for example about welfare policies. As an Ivory Tower, the university tries to define the bigger, more abstract question of what is welfare. Policies are about society; abstract definitions come from the Ivory Tower.

In abandoning the Ivory Tower Harvard was denying its independence. How well that worked was shown in Rep. Elise Stefanik’s later trouncing of Claudine Gay. The unfortunate Harvard president was humiliated and forced to resign. Here, society showed Harvard the harm and indignity that come when a university forgoes its independent devotion to the pursuit of truth and becomes a “part of society.”

Harvard had long since lost its independence by allowing one party on the left to dominate all its parts and every activity, including science. Its vocabulary was woke, its legacy was said to be slavery, its honors delivered to liberals, its attention given to affirmative action in admissions and hiring. In this deliberate but often concealed movement, black leaders were held up for public honors but the real gainers were feminist women. These women (and their male collaborators) made sure that no conservatives, especially no women conservatives, would receive the favor or justice they deserved.

I know something of this ugly development because I lived through it. I am a retired professor, a conservative Republican, who taught at Harvard for 61 years. With routine lack of success I opposed it with sweet reason, the only weapon I had. I started out with a few companions, but they were not replaced when they left or died. I was pretty much by myself and gained a certain notoriety that was scant reward for my efforts. I was almost never invited to speak publicly for “the other side.” In private meetings I was heard, but not listened to.

There were two “lost causes” for the conservative side that were my specialty: affirmative action and grade inflation. Strangely, with a kind of poetic justice, these two questions are now suddenly lost causes for liberals. My retirement, not my speeches, apparently did the trick. 

Affirmative action was never popular. By effectively excluding white males, it violated the basic rule your mama teaches that two wrongs don’t make a right. It was originally said to be temporary because those it benefited would catch up and become equal. But when that did not happen, it had to substitute “equity” for equality, and make affirmative action permanent.

And to cover over this move, professors entered the sensitive practice of grading and created a false equality by giving everyone an A. Grade inflation was the necessary companion of affirmative action.

Yet, despite having almost won these causes, I would like people to know what I said with my conservative reasoning. It’s partly “I told you so,” always the comeback for advice not taken.

But it’s also to show that conservative thoughts and policies were available and usable earlier, as they are now seen to be.   

My book is titled “Where Harvard Went Wrong.” It contains articles and speeches given to Harvard that for fifty years fell on deaf ears.  The deaf ears I address were at partisan, trendy Harvard. You can read these writings whoever you are. Liberals can learn that conservatives are neither despicable nor unworthy, and that they will not disgrace the university all of us can cheer for. Now awake to the woke universities, Republicans will not forget the injustices done to them and will not fall silent for the next administration whichever it may be. I believe that the universities’ game of ignoring the other side is over.

Harvey C. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government, Emeritus at Harvard and the author of “Where Harvard at Wrong.”