‘We witnessed our school lose its way': Harvard alum Dr. Oz defends Trump's crackdown

Yahoo

2 days ago

Dr. Mehmet Oz downplayed concerns surrounding President Donald Trump's efforts to ban Harvard from accepting international students during an interview with POLITICO White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns.
But Oz, a Harvard alum and current administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he believes Harvard will be able to recruit international students with vetting in the future.
'I think that will happen over time, but this is a bigger discussion about what is Harvard willing to do to truly represent the best interests of its students and the American people,' Oz told Burns on the debut episode of 'The Conversation' podcast.
However, Oz said he has witnessed his alma mater 'lose its way.'
'We will continue to train the best and the brightest of other parts of the world. We want there to be a brain drain towards America from those nations,' Oz told Burns. 'But there's been a change in my alma mater, Harvard, that anyone who went to school with me would have to acknowledge. We witnessed our school lose its way.'
The administration's fight against Harvard has escalated in recent weeks, which began in April after the university refused to adopt new policies on student and faculty conduct and admissions demanded by the administration.
Trump's most recent retaliatory efforts to ban foreign students, who make up 27 percent of Harvard's student body, are at the center of a heated legal battle. A federal judge extended its block on the administration's ban Thursday. Trump has also pursued other pathways of retribution against the Ivy League university, such as rescinding grant money and floating redistributing it to trade schools.
Trump's supporters have praised his attacks on Harvard and other institutions, saying they have facilitated 'woke' ideology. But in the interview, Oz acknowledged the value of his Ivy League education and said he hoped it remained a path for people in the future.
Trump, too, has said he is only reforming the university: "The last thing I want to do is hurt [Harvard], they're hurting themselves,' he said this week.
Burns cited families like Oz's, who is the son of a Turkish immigrant, as a 'prime example of the benefits of having smart, hardworking people from other countries come to the U.S. to pursue the American dream.'
'No one from my family had ever gone to Harvard. My dad knew of Harvard because even in Turkey they knew of Harvard. And [it] was the only school he wanted me to apply to,' Oz said. 'And it changed my life completely that I went there. I want others to have that opportunity as well.'
The full interview with Oz will be released in this Sunday's debut episode of 'The Conversation' with Dasha Burns.