According to the Sodom and Gomorrah test in the Bible, God was about to smite these two cities for the evil ways of their inhabitants. Abraham then intercedes and pleads with God to spare the cities. After some negotiation, God agrees to spare the cities if there exist “ten righteous men” therein.
There were not ten righteous men in the cities, but is there at Harvard University? That is, if the standard used is changed from biblical morality to “viewpoint diversity,” does Harvard have even ten conservatives on its faculty? Can there be found in its faculty of almost 2,500 ten ideologically conservative or libertarian professors? Well, sort of.
According to The Crimson’s annual survey of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in July of 2022, only between one and two percent of faculty describe themselves as “conservative.” Yes, there was Robert Nozick and Steven Pinker, really a libertarian and a centrist liberal. There was E. O. Wilson and Harvey Mansfield, who might fit this bill, but today we are mighty thin on the ground. If this world class university passes this examination at all, it does not do so with flying colors.
On the other hand, according to a survey by the College Fix, “Only seven Harvard professors identify as conservative.” This would constitute an abject failure of the campus Sodom and Gomorrah test.
Yet, the Wall Street Journal castigates Donald Trump for trying to “run” Harvard. This august editorial board castigates the President for his: “unprecedented attempt by government to micromanage a private university.”
Now, a fully private university need not engage in even a smidgen of viewpoint diversity. However, a partially government funded private university is an entirely different kettle of fish. Harvard owes part of its funding to the taxpayers of the country, amounting to about 10 percent of its annual budget, though this figure does not include student loans and other assistance given directly to students by the federal government. Nor does it take into account that Harvard is a tax-exempt nonprofit.
The libertarian perspective on this is that while its professoriate need not “look like” America, at least 50 percent of them ought to think like the taxpayers of this country, since the electorate is roughly equally divided.
Skin color is entirely irrelevant to the mission of a college, but what is taught there is certainly not. At present, apart from a few private universities such as Hillsdale and Grove City, higher education in this country is almost entirely in the hands of socialists, Marxists, communists, fascists, queerists, feminists, black “studies” ists, antisemites, wokeists, “progressives,” along with other “whining studies” professors. They do not, the pack of them, come anywhere near representing the political economic philosophy of the citizens of this nation. So the citizens are being cheated not only by being taxed for the “education” of other people’s children, but also by having their viewpoints trampled upon for the most part.
Tax exempt status is reserved for entities which presumably operate in the public interest. Harvard, with its faculty radically skewed toward the left, does not come within a million miles of any such desiderata. Were it to do so, its teaching staff would be something like 45 percent liberal, 45 percent conservative, and 10 percent libertarian. True, the Libertarian Party typically garners only 2-3 percent of the vote, but more folk are “low-tax liberals,” who support at least a modicum of free enterprise plus legalization of victimless crimes having to do with sex and drugs.
Enter theWall Street Journal editorialists. According to these worthies, intellectual diversity is no business of the government. They sneer at this very concept. They aver that government’s “biggest and only reach is requiring viewpoint diversity,” which it doesn’t define. “Does this mean that the English department must hire more Republicans and Shakespeare scholars?” they ask. The answer is no, because they can’t hire more Republicans until they hire the first Republican. That is exactly what this would mean. And Republicans are almost as scarce as hen’s teeth in departments such as physics, chemistry, and mathematics. In English departments? A conservate scholar located there would be a logical contradiction, akin to a square circle.
As for Shakespeare scholars, these editorialists are living in the past. The Bard is a dead white male, almost entirely banished from all woke departments of literature. What is so wrong with bringing back to English departments perhaps the best playwright of all time? What is so wrong with having at least a partial representation of conservative and libertarian professors in departments of sociology, history, political science, and other humanities and social sciences? Apart from economics—and even there only minimally—there are virtually none of these scarce creatures located therein. There is nothing wrong with such a scenario at all. It is entirely justified and long overdue.
Donald Trump is attempting to move us in this very proper direction, the contrary claims of the Wall Street Journal editorial board to the contrary, notwithstanding.
If I can put words into the Donald’s mouth, he is not at all attempting to violate any of Harvard’s rights. He is merely saying to this school, in effect: “You want to ruin education in this biased manner? Fine. God bless. Keep on trucking. Just do it on your own dime, and don’t expect any financial support, at least not from my administration.”
Walter E. Block is co-author, with Alan G. Futerman, of The Classical Liberal Case for Israel, with commentary by Benjamin Netanyahu (Springer, 2021). Block last appeared in AQ, with Alan G. Futerman, with “University Presidents Call for Peace and Thus Perpetrate Wars” (Spring 2024).
Photo by Jannis Werner on Adobe Stock