Trump Vs Harvard: If He Wins, America Loses
- Renuka Bisht
- TNNUpdated: Apr 17, 2025, 19:35 IST IST
The richest American university will be hit by govt funding freeze because its endowments can’t be used for general financing. But a weakened Ivy League will cost US even more, and benefit China
Universities are the enemy, said JD Vance in a speech some years ago. And now that’s the key higher education policy of the Trump administration. Wouldn’t it be cool, the president suggested at lunch on April 1, per an NYT report, if govt simply cancelled all of Harvard’s $9bn in federal contracts and grants. Less than two weeks on, the university finds $2.3bn of its funding already frozen.
It’s out of Harvard that Joseph Nye coined the phrase soft power — the ability to obtain what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. To the world, it’s bizarre that an American president himself is pulling the rug from its institutions of great soft power. To MAGA, it’s a promise fulfilled. Trump had warned “every college president” while campaigning, “vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
It’s out of Harvard that Joseph Nye coined the phrase soft power — the ability to obtain what one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. To the world, it’s bizarre that an American president himself is pulling the rug from its institutions of great soft power. To MAGA, it’s a promise fulfilled. Trump had warned “every college president” while campaigning, “vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
