WSJ: A Conservative Harvard Professor on How the University Can Save Itself
In recent reports about the Trump administration’s assault on Harvard, the statistic is often cited that, at most, 3% of Harvard faculty members identify as conservative. I’m one of that 3%. I’ve taught at Harvard for 40 years. I’ve known some of my liberal and progressive colleagues for decades. I have great respect for many of them as scholars, scientists and human beings. I have a good idea of how they think.
Conservatives and libertarians who detest illiberal progressivism often imagine Harvard as the great Battleship Woke, crewed by faculty, students and administrators united in their desire to blast Western civilization and traditional America out of existence. They note that more than 90% of political donations from Harvard employees go to the Democratic Party.
That may be true, but the Harvard Undergraduate Open Data Project found that in the 2020 election, just 30% of Harvard faculty gave more than tiny amounts to political campaigns, and these donors were concentrated in the Kennedy School of Government and the Law School. Among Harvard faculty—at least, those who choose to answer surveys about their politics—only 32% say they are “very liberal.” What do the 45% who are merely “liberal” and the 20% who confess to being “moderate” think about Harvard’s current direction?
My sense is that the great majority of my colleagues don’t care for campus political activism. As an out-of-the-closet conservative, I often find myself playing the confidant to my liberal colleagues. They sidle up and say, sotto voce, “Please don’t tell anyone I said this,” then proceed to unload their disgust with the latest activist outrages. They might have identified as leftists in their college years, but a frequent refrain I hear from them now is “this is not what the left used to stand for.”
Faculty at Harvard for the most part are serious scholars and scientists who just want to get on with their work. They have books to write and papers to publish. They want to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. They resent it when activists create turbulence at department meetings and waste everyone’s time.
The biggest time-waster at the moment is dealing with the budget cuts and hiring freezes set off by the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal funding. Many of my colleagues can see clearly enough that this crisis has been triggered by progressive activists, who are predominantly graduate students or members of the university’s vast diversity bureaucracy. Many faculty wish that the fanatics would just shut up and take the target off Harvard’s back.