By cutting off funding for Harvard, Trump is saying he wants to eliminate a valuable American asset, which is Harvard’s research and development, and instead promote manual labor in the US. According to Trump’s plan, Americans will assemble smart phones in the US that use new chips designed and produced in China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/trump-attacks-unify-divided-harvard.html
As usual, Ian Bremmer has a good take on the Harvard issue:
First, the money Harvard stands to lose isn’t going toward the Comparative Literature department or printing up flyers for open air seminars on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not going for the hiring of more faculty for the Queer Theory curriculum. It’s mostly invested in scientific research, particularly in the School of Public Health. It is money intended to advance our understanding of multiple sclerosis and to limit the spread of tuberculosis. The long-term damage to public health here should be obvious to anyone.
Fareed Zakarua’s recent column in the Washington Post is also right on point:
The Trump administration’s war on Harvard is bizarre in many ways. Claiming to be fighting antisemitism, the administration has demanded that the university cede control over large parts of its academic affairs and hand over private information about its international students. The administration has never explained why it has singled out Harvard (and the problems that it claims to be concerned about are not particularly egregious at Harvard). Its main weapon — the withdrawal of federal research funds to Harvard — is aimed at the parts of the university that have virtually nothing to do with the “woke ideology” to which Trump objects. More than 90 percent of the funds that the government has threatened to deny Harvard are for research in the life sciences, studying diseases, medicines and other such topics. Denying funding for cancer research will not affect people protesting for Palestinians. It will almost certainly knock Harvard off that Nature Index list.