Trump’s war on Harvard was decades in the making. This letter proves it | Bernard Harcourt

A message tucked into an old book serves as a reminder that the assault on the institution is part of a long-planned effort

On the shelf in my library, I have an autographed copy of a book written by a former Republican congressman from New York, John LeBoutillier, titled Harvard Hates America: The Odyssey of a Born-Again American. It was published in 1978, two years before LeBoutillier was elected to Congress - and decades before the Trump administration's assault on the institution. But its message is familiar in 2025.

The book is a scathing criticism of Harvard University, in large part over its supposed left-leaning professors who allegedly indoctrinate their undergraduates. Its thrust is straightforward: Harvard is America's problem.

Long after I had graduated from Harvard and was a freshman member of Congress, I realized just how terrible some of the people educating our young are; they are not only liberals, but they use their power" over their students to preach an anti-American leftist point of view. And this is not confined to Harvard. Indeed, this is a disease spreading throughout the academic world.

I believe that this politicalization of education threatens this country. And, coupled with a bias so obviously evident in the media, makes it difficult for we conservatives to get our message across.

Bernard E Harcourt is a professor of law and political science at Columbia University in New York City and a directeur d'etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is the author most recently of A Modern Counterrevolution" in The Ideas Letter