On Friday, the New York Times published a chart of universities that attract the most international students. The venerable Harvard was at #15. Illinois Tech claimed the top spot, with 51% of its students from abroad. The elite Carnegie Mellon University, reputed for its leadership in technology and management, ranks second with 44% of its student body from foreign countries.
So, why did the Trump administration take the extraordinary step of removing Harvard's ability to invite international students in the future and requiring existing international students to find alternate institutions to transfer to? [Harvard, as expected, quickly filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Boston. The judge, as expected, promptly ordered the Trump administration to back down].
Liberal media outlets have charged that the Trump administration is at war with Harvard. Perhaps so, but isn't it amusing that no outlet has questioned why the Trump administration has not targeted the top 14 schools that bring in more international students than Harvard? Is it plausible that Harvard could be at fault?
A look under the hood shows that despite its elite reputation, Harvard engages in questionable practices in all aspects of its mission of training students, learning, and research. It is ironic that were it not for its reputation, Harvard could not have survived these questionable practices.
For the world's most well-known school, Harvard does not always offer admissions based on merit. The University has a history of discrimination against whites and Asians. In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), representing Asian American students, filed a civil rights lawsuit, alleging that Harvard holds Asian Americans to a higher standard in admissions, including a higher threshold in academic and extracurricular achievements. Harvard also routinely used character ratings influenced by racial stereotypes, the suit charged.
Yascha Mounk, a political theorist and a teacher of expository writing at Harvard, wrote an opinion essay admitting that "the admissions process is deliberately skewed against Asian Americans simply because there are too many good applicants from this ethnic group." Harvard, as usual, won in federal court in friendly Boston. The district judge in Boston who oversaw the case and ruled in favor of Harvard, finding that the University's admissions process did not discriminate against Asian American applicants, was Allison D. Burroughs, an Obama appointee.
The United States Supreme Court, in a landmark 6-3 decision, reversed Judge Burroughs' ruling and struck down Harvard's race-conscious admissions policy, finding that Harvard violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Judge Burroughs just ordered the Trump administration to back off on Friday. Harvard knows how to judge-shop.
William R. Fitzsimmons has been Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid since 1986. For a university that markets itself as an agent of change for a better world, it is extraordinary that its dean has been ruling with an iron fist for nearly 40 years. Long before the term "woke" existed, Fitzsimmons engaged in DEI initiatives to recruit students by using vague terms that confuse aspirants. The ambiguous terms include "academic promise," "special talents," and "outstanding personal qualities." Reasonable people would likely pick different students from a group of ten students based on these abstract standards.
For one of the most well-known schools for learning and research, nearly 30% of its incoming class is admitted without any demonstrated merit at all. These admits fall into categories unrelated to the vague terms that Harvard itself uses: Athlete (A), Legacy (L), Director's List (D), Royal child, and Children of faculty (C).
Harvard's caveats to protect against lawsuits regarding its admission policies are legendary: "Harvard seeks a distinctive and diverse national and international student body...by carefully choosing from a broad range of applicants who seem to us to offer the most promise for future contributions to society...not all of the students who are best prepared for college will be among those with the most future promise..nor are all of the most promising well prepared academically...Harvard looks for students who make the most of their opportunities and the resources available to them, and who are likely to continue to do so throughout their lives."
In other words, Harvard grants admissions to anyone it wants and is not accountable to anyone. A corporation hiring employees by these loose and vague standards would run afoul of numerous labor provisions, both federal and state.
Harvard also has among the highest staff-to-student ratios for a university, indicating the bloated nature of its employment practices. The University accepts about 1,650 students each year for a total undergraduate strength of 6,600. As of Fall 2023, Harvard employed approximately 18,219 non-faculty staff members (excluding the 2,448 faculty members) for an unbelievable 3:1 ratio of staff to undergraduate students. What exactly do these staff members do throughout the year? How much of the staff is being paid from federal tax dollars funneled to Harvard for research projects?
Despite such a large staff, why wasn't Harvard able to better manage student protests on its campus after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, when other schools around the country did a far better job protecting Jewish students?
To counter public criticisms, Harvard did something only Harvard would do. It commissioned two task forces—one pro-Jewish and one pro-Palestinian—to report on how the college managed campus protests. It showed that Harvard was more interested in spin, giving a voice to both parties without making tough administrative decisions to combat hostility on campus. It is little wonder that both task forces described an atmosphere of fear and exclusion, as well as deep divisions over curricula, protests, and the scope of academic freedom. The reports, each hundreds of pages long, urged Harvard to implement sweeping changes that would alter everything from the University's oversight of programs and disciplinary processes to its academic programming and admissions policies. The Trump administration demanded these very same changes as a condition for continuing to receive federal research dollars.
Bill Ackman, the billionaire financier and Harvard alumnus, answered questions about Harvard's decline in a lengthy session at the University of Austin and repeatedly stated that the Trump administration was mainly correct in pursuing its actions against Harvard. If only the mainstream media outlets were curious enough to listen, they would change their narrative.
Related: Bill Ackman's views about Harvard on X
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17. Trump Hits EU With Tariff Ultimatum—TIPP Staff, TIPP Insights
18. Judge Temporarily Blocks White House Ban On Harvard’s Ability To Enrol Foreign Students—TIPP Staff, TIPP Insights
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