Trump's Beef With Harvard

It's undemocratic

The media is laser-focused on the Harvard vs Trump story. Although aware of its importance, at first this obsession annoyed me, my thinking being that the elite media only loves stories about itself. Cynically, I feel that top writers/editors and owners at major publications, like the NY Times, are all graduates of Ivy League colleges….I know that’s not true, but it might be partly true.

But then I gave it more thought.

As the oldest university in the country, founded in 1636, Harvard represents democracy and free thought. People from all over the world want to attend Harvard in part because of what it represents. I know it also represents money, status and establishment; that is a draw for many. And its had its problems. But it is symbolic.

Trump wants to destroy Harvard in order to destroy all that it stands for: liberal thought, DEI, inclusivity, free speech, global awareness. One might assume that Trump would try to attach himself to Harvard because it has represented white elitism for so many centuries, and he is a white supremicist. But he knows they would never “accept” him, and perhaps he realizes that Harvard is much more than a status symbol. He is using it to keep up support from his base, a large majority of whom are not college graduates of any university. For Trump, attacking Harvard is shorthand for attacking woke-ism, and this has been a repeated theme for him, one that spoke very clearly to MAGA voters.

Seeking to hobble Harvard also is personal. As a Queens-born real estate mogul in 1980’s New York, Trump has never felt accepted by the Manhattan establishment, and he has been craving it his whole life. I lived here in the 1980’s I remember how he was ridiculed, and rightly so, he and his father were (and Trump of course still is) corrupt to the core. The joke’s on us, because he reached the highest job in the world, twice— not that it means we accept it or him, mind you.

He says he’s attacking Harvard to stamp out anti-semitism. That’s just a ruse.

A story on NPR today, it was reported that Trump wants to soon have his “gold card” available for purchase. These are supposed to be a quicker and easier replacement for green cards, to allow foreigners to live and work in the United States— at a whopping price of $5,000,000. It’s outrageous. But it’s unclear he will actually offer these for sale, or if it’s legal. How I tie this story to what I wrote about Harvard above is that many immigrants, here and abroad, work hard to get into Harvard, and that it becomes their “ticket” to citizenship eventually. These people are often from lower class backgrounds and it is a way for them to get ahead, become Americans and lead a healthy and properous life. Trump wants to just sell this to wealthy people; he dismisses the idea of working hard and aspiring to a better life through education and study.

Equal opportunity for everyone. Not just the rich.

Thanks for being here, everyone. See you tomorrow! Have a good Tuesday.