Trump Orders Harvard to Implement Viewpoint Diversity or Else!

Apr 12, 2025

Executive Watch has previously documented the Trump administration’s abuse of executive power to put pressure on Harvard University. But it’s worth taking a moment to examine the administration’s central demand against Harvard.

Here is the crucial passage from the administration’s April 11 letter:

By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. …
Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.

Does this really apply to “every department or field”? Does it mean that the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis has to hire a “critical mass” of flat-earthers? Does the Harvard Medical School have to hire a “critical mass” of anti-vaxxers?

Maybe so, but we can assume the Trump administration is more concerned with political ideology, and this is a straightforward demand for Harvard to hire only new faculty that is ideologically approved by the Trump administration, as represented by its appointed political overseer.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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