Trump and his ilk are at it again. They are not going to back down. Yes, it’s Harvard, his eyesore, and it has gone red and swollen over the days. No one is blinking.
Harvard has both the court of law and public opinion and some reserve in the bank to maintain her stare. But Trump has about 4 years, the power of the office and the whole US gold and financial reserves to glare with flair. He is in no hurry to see how long her most famous son can stay under water.
What is truly worrying here is what is Trump’s true aim of ending foreign student enrolment almost immediately and threatening the foreign students, who allegedly support anti-semitism and communism, to leave the University or to go home.
Ms Yaqiu Wang, who came to US from China as a student, admitted that “Beijing has taken advantage of American academic openness to engage in espionage and intellectual property theft”, but she still called the measure “deeply concerning.”
“Broad revocations and blanket bans would not only jeopardise the rights and livelihoods of Chinese students studying and working in the US, but also risk undermining American’s longstanding position as the global leader in scientific innovation.”
A former lecturer of Harvard Business School, Gautam Mukunda, reminded us that when it comes to accusations of anti-Semitism, we must not forget that “the last four Harvard presidents were Jewish (including the current one), as is Ms Penny Pritzker, chairwoman of the Harvard Corporation, the ultimate authority over the university.”
He wrote an article titled, “A weaker Harvard is a weaker America”. He said that any attack on Harvard is an attack on America itself. “If you really believe in America first, attacking (Harvard) is the last thing you’d do.”
He lists down the contribution this son of America has made.
1) It has produced “eight presidents and countless members of Congress, governors, Supreme Court justices, chief executives, and so on.”
2) Over 20 years, “Harvard founders have average nine unicorns – start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion.”
3) In the last five years, “companies founded by Harvard alums have gone public with a combined value of US$282 billion”. He emphasised: “I’ll also note that a quarter of all unicorn start-ups have a founder who came to the US as a foreign student – exactly the population Mr Trump is targeting at Harvard and other schools).
4) “When Nature ranked the top 10 research universities in the world in 2023, eight were in China. Well, most of them are falling behind; Harvard was No. 1.”
5) “The school is also a powerful instrument for the propagation of US values. In the last 25 years, leaders from Canada and Taiwan have studied in Harvard.”
And the list goes on and on.
What is Trump’s true motive then? Has Trump ever considered a more constructive way to engage with Harvard? Is the fight really about concerns over anti-Semitism and communist infiltration? Or is it nothing more than a tv reality show of the presidential bravado because he thinks he is better (or smarter) than Harvard?
And I don’t need to tell you that this is dangerous because knowing Trump’s character (or the lack of it), the fight is too visible for him to back away, without being labelled as weak. Especially not with Harvard.
He will thus not accept anything less than open submisison. There is no win-win here, it’s just do as I say, that is, I-win-by-your-surrender. Mind you, this fight is a microcosm of his tariff fight with China, and to lose on home ground is beyond humiliation for an ego-fueled commander-in-chief.
Alas, they say a little learning is a dangerous thing. Knowing too little about a subject, and not knowing that you know too little about it, makes you a pest in a conversation.
But when you wield great power, you cannot be so easily dismissed like a fly. Compound that with the desperate need to be right, when you no longer care about what is right or wrong, it would truly be a dangerous thing.
Ignorance is therefore not always bliss; not when you’re unable to admit that you can be wrong. And not when you will go out of your way to make sure that you have the last word.
That is where power ossifies to become absolute. And we know where absolute power ends up in the hands of someone like Trump.
It’s a David and Goliath fight here, and despite a man-child boasting at the top of his lungs that his toys are bigger, I believe in the long run, the tortoise will outrun the hare. At times you let go and surface to breathe because you want to catch enough air to fill your lungs for the longer run that matters even more.
Harvard has been around for nearly four hundred years. Trump has less than four years to go (and this time, the presidential tantrums will truly end for good).
Michael Han
