Harvard professor urges university to embrace ideological balance amid clash with Trump admin

Fox News

4 days ago

Harvard professor Arthur Brooks urged Harvard to see the Trump administration's back and forth with the university as an opportunity for growth and to increase ideological balance at the elite institution during an interview on Wednesday.
"I mean, the whole point of this is not just to get through the crisis. The whole point is to actually see it as an opportunity for change, for growth. That's what we should all do in our lives, and every organization should do. When you have a bad crisis, when you have a big problem, you say, what's the opportunity for us to actually improve? That's how universities need to think," Brooks told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Host Joe Scarborough argued that while he was deeply disturbed by the Trump administration's actions towards the university, he was also concerned about elite universities lacking viewpoint diversity and employing very few conservative professors.
Brooks agreed, saying, "And you're exactly correct. Look, I'm a conservative. I've been a political conservative my whole career," adding, "They've been very open to me at Harvard. But the truth of the matter is, we need more people that actually think differently than the masses. We need more people than just sort of 20:1 liberals to conservatives. And we need to be on top of that and see this as an opportunity to get more ideological balance."
Brooks argued that it wasn't because Harvard needed to have equal ideological representation, but because students' education is "mediocre" when liberal viewpoints aren't challenged.
"Why? Not because we believe that you have to go one-to-one in fairness. None of that. We don't need affirmative action for conservatives. But because when your liberal ideas on campus are not challenged, your education is mediocre and that's just not right," Brooks said.
Scarborough went on to argue that the left has lost elections due to "intellectual laziness," which he suggested was the result of a lack of viewpoint diversity.
"Now we talk about why the left may be adrift and lost. The other side of that is the intellectual laziness that occurs every time you open your mouth, and they all agree with you, and you're part of groupthink, so you never have to defend your ideas. So when you go out and run a campaign, and you think everybody's going to agree with you, it's just the opposite. You never had to be on your toes before, intellectually. And now you do. And you lose elections because of it," Scarborough said.
The Trump administration asked all federal agencies on Tuesday to find ways to terminate all federal contracts with Harvard amid an ongoing standoff over foreign students' records at the Ivy League school.
After the administration also announced it would be eliminating the student visa program at the university, citing "pro-terrorist conduct" at campus protests, a judge temporarily paused the move.
Trump accused Harvard University of being "very slow" to turn over information on foreign students.
"We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country," Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday.