As Harvard University files their lawsuit against the Trump administration, the rest of the elite Regime institutions circle the wagons. NBC Nightly News ran an exclusive interview with Harvard’s president that could best be described as crisis comms, seeking to shape public opinion ahead of litigation.
Watch the beginning of the interview, with anchor Lester Holt’s framing:
LESTER HOLT: Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its push to reshape higher education, with President Trump signing an executive order making changes to the university accreditation bodies and another calling for a review of colleges’ financial ties with foreign donors. It comes as the Harvard University president is speaking out for the first time since the school sued the federal government.
Did you have to take a deep breath before you agreed to file a lawsuit? That’s a big step. Especially given who you are suing.
ALAN GARBER: It is a big step. And it was more than one deep breath.
HOLT:That was a tough one?
GARBER: It was tough.
HOLT: Harvard president Alan Garber on campus today reflecting on the university’s showdown with the Trump administration, over its demands that the school accept government-ordered changes. Harvard accusing the administration of illegally withholding $2.2 billion in federal funding as a form of leverage. Among the list of the federal government demands, eliminate DEI programs, make broad changes to admissions and hiring practices. At the center of it all, allegations anti-semitism on campus went unchecked.
I don’t recall anyone interviewing the presidents of the many universities that entered into consent decrees with the Trump administration over DEI, hiring practices, and antisemitism. Now that one of the crown jewels of the elite establishment has decided to fight back, NBC is all too happy to lend a hand and a platform.
Part of the purpose of this public relations campaign is to attempt to establish Trump’s college reforms as some form of government overreach, and to establish that this overreach is some unique and novel abuse of power. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It was just last year that the Biden Department of Education attempted to forcibly impose the trans agenda on our public schools. A proposed Title IX rewrite made lunch program monies conditional to bathroom accommodations for “trans” students, and sought to impose biological men competing in women’s sports. No one so much as attempted to bother to report on those encroachments.
Likewise the matter of Harvard’s endowment, whether earmarked or not, never came up. The real issue here isn’t academic freedom but whether the American taxpayer should continue to fund these programs, NBC tongue bath notwithstanding.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2024:
LESTER HOLT: Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues its push to reshape higher education, with President Trump signing an executive order making changes to the university accreditation bodies and another calling for a review of colleges’ financial ties with foreign donors. It comes as the Harvard University president is speaking out for the first time since the school sued the federal government.
Did you have to take a deep breath before you agreed to file a lawsuit? That’s a big step. Especially given who you are suing.
ALAN GARBER: It is a big step. And it was more than one deep breath.
HOLT:That was a tough one?
GARBER: It was tough.
HOLT: Harvard president Alan Garber on campus today reflecting on the university’s showdown with the Trump administration, over its demands that the school accept government-ordered changes. Harvard accusing the administration of illegally withholding $2.2 billion in federal funding as a form of leverage. Among the list of the federal government demands, eliminate DEI programs, make broad changes to admissions and hiring practices. At the center of it all, allegations anti-semitism on campus went unchecked.
Is this really about anti-semitism?
GARBER: I would say that at Harvard, we have a real problem with anti-semitism. We take it very seriously, and we are trying to address it. There’s no doubt about the severity of that problem. We don’t really see the relationship to research funding at Harvard and other universities. They are two different issues.
HOLT: GARBER said he had no choice but to fight back against what he believes is government overreach.
GARBER: What they are indicating is that they want to directly review who we hire on our faculty. That has implications for what kinds of views can be expressed on campus. They also want to be able to tell us who we need to fire. And they also want to intervene in our admissions processes. That is what we are objecting to.
HOLT: You’re taking on the most powerful man in the world.
GARBER: We are defending what I believe is one of the most important linchpins of the American economy and way of life, our universities.
HOLT: How much pain can Harvard absorb here?
GARBER: We don’t know how much we can actually absorb. But what we do know is that we cannot compromise on basic principles like defense of our First Amendment rights.
HOLT: Is this bigger than Harvard at this point?
GARBER: Of course it’s bigger than Harvard, because we look at what’s at risk here. And what’s at risk is the excellence of higher education in the United States, and in particular, the research mission of many of our universities which play such a vital role in the U.S. economy and in the health and well-being of the American people.
HOLT: One of Harvard’s programs at risk due to the funding freeze is tuberculosis research. If funding were to be turned on, how quickly could you get back to work?
SARA FORTUNE: It’s a hard question. Because today, we could start relatively quickly. Ten days from now, you know, as the network unravels, the damage becomes irrevocable.
HOLT: Is this a fight you can win?
GARBER: I don’t know the answer to this question. But the stakes are so high that we have no choice.
HOLT: In a statement, The White House criticized GARBER’s comments and said President Trump is standing up for every student denied an education or safe campus because left-wing universities fail to protect their civil liberties.”
