Harvard, under University President Alan Garber, is suing the federal government, in response to Trump Administration threats to revoke large amounts of research funding if a long list of demands having to do with DEI, purported anti-Semitism, and other measures, are not met.
Garber, on national news, said, yes, Harvard has problems, specifically noting anti-Semitism on campus, which they are taking steps to correct. The lawsuit says funding of research is a separate matter, and Garber maintains that the Administration’s demands would impose improper, micro control over Harvard, down to hiring, admissions, and administrative decisions.
Garber explicitly separates the questions of anti-Semitism from those of appropriate government oversight, and of research funding. The former degrade the quality of education and its role in America; the University not only claims its right to address those problems, but has its own informed commitment to correct malpractice. Government threats to research funding to force external social policy measures mix apples with contentious oranges, and Harvard opposes the administration’s linkage.
This deliberate approach makes a rare distinction between what is proper, what is legal, and what is simply political contention. Government attempts to coerce specific behaviors without due process defy the principles of rule of law. Such measures must be opposed, in appeal to all the constitutional and legal disciplines of our society. Harvard’s suit puts up this direct opposition, in a spirit of objective justice. Harvard also is addressing the problems cited in the government’s demands, not least by withdrawing a requirement for “diversity statements” from job applicants. The university does not dispute the moral and social issue, but again insists on its right to police itself. Moral content is one thing, rule of law another.
In contrast, Harvard’s school paper, the Crimson, ran an op-ed objecting to the university’s renaming of its DEO office. The writers call it “Tossing the label of ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,’” characterizing it as a “political expedient” and asserting it “muddies our moral compass.”
What is that compass’ north? “There is a strong public appetite for someone to stand up to the White House, and Harvard’s lawsuit satiated that demand. Unfortunately, this name change flies in the face of these efforts to protect democracy from reactionary political pressure.” Moral true north is to oppose the other side in and of itself, since I see them as a threat to democracy. This is the same partisan conflation of political preference and principle that the administration indulged in its linkage of funding to its objections regarding anti-Semitism and DEI. The Crimson’s authors, like the administration operatives, see only a zero-sum contest of monolithic political “sides,” us good, them evil.
As implied, there is no shortage of polarized partisan voices. It is also true that Donald Trump has energized this disputatious discourse, on both sides. And, as to policy and political preferences in the general sense, Trump did win the election. To invoke constitution, democracy, and rule of law, but to do so only because you oppose the adminitration’s political stances, politicizes constitution, democracy, and rule of law. If those are degraded, as they are by all the political voices today, then the nation’s founding tenets, of rights equally endowed in all, and of government that exists to secure those rights, are also degraded, from ethos of comity to punchline for irreconcilable identity groups.
Undoing polarization is extremely hard, and essential for the nation. Only clearly stated, well delineated courses of action offer and hope for comity. Garber’s attitude carries that approach as few others do today. Objecting to it, like the Crimson editorialists – and any number of demonstrators on any number of campuses –is only to deepen the political trenches, in intransigent political warfare “against those bad guys.” Both brand X and brand Y, those people impede national comity and actually raise a specter of existential threat. Only more stances like Garber’s will allow the nation to act as a nation again.
Common Conviction 