How Trump Is Undermining Academic Excellence

When I started teaching economics in 1979, I began the semester by listing the industries in which the U.S. clearly led the world – computer technology, aviation, steel, automobiles, among many others. By the time I retired in 2022, that number had fallen to a precious few. Yet, those residing outside the U.S. can readily identify two particular areas where we still dominate.

The first is quality medical care. No wonder people from around the globe travel to the Cleveland Clinic, Memorial Sloan Kettering, the Mayo Clinic and the like. Many complain about inadequate healthcare access in the U.S., but would they hop on a plane to another country if they needed serious, world-class attention?

The same is true for higher education. The various global rankings agree: more than half of the world’s best universities are located in the U.S. Is anyone surprised that the president of China sent his daughter to Harvard, or that the Russian Foreign Minister’s child went to Columbia? And let’s not forget a uniquely American invention – the residential liberal arts college. Schools such as Williams and Amherst, Bowdoin and Wellesley, represent the gold standard for undergraduate instruction. 

Alas, the Trump administration seems hell-bent on destroying educational excellence in this country. By decimating research funding that keeps our top universities at the forefront of science and innovation, taxing endowment earnings for the most prestigious private colleges and universities and threatening to revoke visas for international students, higher education as we know it is in real peril. And doing this ostensibly in the name of supporting Jews leaves us once again as a scapegoat for other agendas. The idea of cancelling visas of Israeli students studying at Harvard as part of President Trump’s self-described effort to combat anti-Jewish hatred on its campus would be comical if it weren’t so painful.

Beyond its ethical implications, all of this flies in the face of well-established law. The roots of excellence for private colleges and universities lie in their independence from government interference. As Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in his concurrence with a celebrated 1957 Supreme Court decision, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, the courts need to protect academic institutions “against the grave harm resulting from government intrusion into the intellectual life of a university.” That ruling spelled out four fundamental freedoms: who teaches, who are the students, what is taught and how it is taught. 

I certainly don’t mean to imply that Harvard and its peers are blameless with regard to sowing the seeds of their current predicament. We should always remember that in the hours following the Oct. 7 massacre, dozens of “progressive” Harvard student organizations issued a statement asserting that Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” And then there is the inaction by Harvard and other schools in light of the subsequent rise in anti-Jewish hatred, and the anemic appearance before a congressional committee by then Harvard President Claudine Gay and her fellow university “leaders” who didn’t have the moral fiber to acknowledge that calling for the genocide of Jews violated rules of student conduct. 

Fortunately, Gay’s successor, Alan Garber, is a significant step up in terms of leadership. But the door was left wide open for the Trump administration to do whatever it could to bring Harvard down.

Bill Bowen, the transformative president of Princeton in the 70s and 80s, used to say that it is much easier to destroy greatness than to create it. Fifteen years ago I met with India’s government minister overseeing its higher education system. He told me that within 25 years there would be a dozen Harvards in his country. I wished him lots of luck.

It took almost four centuries for Harvard to become the premier university in the world, and it will not crumble overnight. But take away its labs, its foreign students, and its endowment earnings, and its future is anything but bright. And who knows what this administration will think of next?

President Trump loves superlatives — the largest crowd, a beautiful tax bill, the most tremendous meeting ever, the perfect phone call.

What a pity it would be if his vindictiveness were to lead to the decline of an industry that truly is the best by global standards: “elite” higher education in the United States.

Morton Schapiro served for more than 22 years as President of Northwestern University and Williams College, where he was also Professor of Economics.