A Weaker Harvard Is a Weaker America

The White House attacks could damage an institution that plays a vital role in the US economy and its power abroad.

- Gautam Mukunda

Imagine if China or Russia tried to destroy a US asset that generates tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value, plays a major role in American leadership in science and technology, and turbocharges its prestige and soft power.

We'd expect the US government to go to war to defend it. But in attacking Harvard University, that's exactly what the Trump administration is trying to do.

Despite the school's failures and flaws, it remains a vital national asset—and the administration's actions are far more dangerous to America than they are to Harvard.

When you tour Britain's Cambridge University, your guide will show you empty niches containing stone fragments. They're the remnants of statues smashed by Puritan fanatics during the English Civil War. But Cambridge survived and flourished.

Universities are enormously resilient and count time in centuries, not electoral cycles. Long after the Trump administration is gone, there will still be a Harvard.

But an America deprived of everything Harvard contributes will be far poorer and weaker.

I have a stake in this battle: I spent seven years on the faculty at Harvard Business School and still teach in the Harvard Kennedy School's Senior Executive Fellows programme. But I'm also the first to agree with colleagues who say the university has fallen short of its ideals.

Its own reports on anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias on campus contain devastating revelations about the school's inability to maintain an orderly and safe learning environment for everyone.

Harvard should better protect its students—even, when necessary, from each other. It must guarantee freedom of speech on campus. And it should find ways to have more diverse political representation among both students and faculty.