Laura Meckler:
Absolutely.
I mean, what this is really is a war, not just on Harvard, but on higher education more broadly. And it comes amid like a real — what used to be thought of sort of as a rift and now is a real rupture between the relationship between the Republican Party and conservatives and higher education, specifically elite higher education.
Whereas colleges and universities were once thought of, sure, of universally as a crown jewel of this country, something we could all be proud of, something that the government was happy to invest that money into federal grants, because they were producing groundbreaking research in medicine, engineering, and other fields, and now it’s viewed much differently. And that has implications for everyone.
Today, it’s viewed as a place where conservative thought is not welcomed, where they are elite and looking down their nose at everybody else in the country and that the Republican Party, especially Donald Trump, has tapped into that. And that’s really what we’re seeing play out.
This is a fight with Harvard right now, but it is really a much bigger question about, how does this country view higher education? And will the Republican Party continue to its historic support for research and educational opportunity that these colleges and universities provide?
