Vance compares Harvard to North Korea as he takes aim at school's ‘ideological diversity'
Vice President JD Vance accused Harvard University of having a lack of "ideological diversity," comparing the academic institution to North Korea amid the Trump administration's continuing battle against the school.
Vance said Tuesday that he estimated, without evidence, that "probably" 95% of Harvard's faculty voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and said that universities have become these "almost quasi-theocratic, or quasi-totalitarian societies."
"Right. Very brilliant. Kamala Harris, of course," Vance said at the American Compass anniversary gala in Washington. "But if you ask yourself a foreign election, a foreign country's election, you say 80% of the people voted for one candidate, you would say, 'Oh, that's kind of weird, right? That's like, not a super healthy democracy.' If you said, 'Oh, 95% of people voted for one party's candidate,' you would say, 'That's North Korea, right… That is impossible in a true place of free exchange for that to happen.'"
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
The Trump administration has been at odds with Harvard as it's pushed for the academic institution to install changes to its governance and admissions process in response to incidents of bias on campus targeting Jewish students since October 2023.
But Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said in April that the Trump administration included additional requests for reform that go beyond addressing antisemitism on campus, and the institution would not comply because the demands were unconstitutional.
Specifically, Garber said the new requests "direct governmental regulation of the 'intellectual conditions' at Harvard," including auditing viewpoints of students, faculty and staff members on campus, and eliminating all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices and initiatives at Harvard.
"It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner," Garber wrote in an April letter. "We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement."
Since then, the Trump administration has warned it will pull all federal funding from the school, amounting to a total of $100 million in contracts. That's on top of the $3.2 billion in grants and contracts the administration has previously frozen.
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