In Case You Missed It
In Liberal Currents, IHS President Emily Chamlee‑Wright argues that Harvard’s legal challenge to the Trump administration’s actions—including a freeze on $2.2 billion in federal research funding and the threat of barring international students—is more than a campus dispute. It is a battle to protect the institutional autonomy that underpins every association in a free society.
Chamlee‑Wright writes:
“The academy is a public trust, from Harvard to the most humble of community colleges. Harvard’s battle to defend itself is a public articulation of principle: that power is accountable, that evidence matters, that government may not commandeer private associations for partisan ends. ‘A government of laws and not of men,’ as Harvard alumnus John Adams once put it. These are not ivory‑tower luxuries. They are the operating system of a free society.”
This fight, Chamlee‑Wright emphasizes, isn’t solely about Harvard or even higher education in general. It is about whether any civil society institution can function independently of political winds. Cautionary tales such as that of Central European University—which lost its campus in Hungary even after attempting to appease authoritarian demands—underscore the stakes.
Ultimately, Harvard’s stance serves as a model: instead of capitulating to pressure, it has met each overreach with legal resistance. Universities, philanthropists, alumni, and concerned citizens should join in preserving the structures that enable free inquiry, civil society, the rule of law, and democratic self-government.
Read the full essay at Liberal Currents: “Harvard’s Fight Is a Defense of Democracy and Civic Virtue“
