By Joshua Arnold
Can old dogs learn new tricks? Harvard University is trying. After being associated with liberalism since before the Great Awakening, Harvard is now asking donors to finance $10 million worth of professorships for conservatives in the name of “viewpoint diversity,” according to The Harvard Crimson, a student paper.
The effort has friends in high places, most notably university Provost John Manning, an associate of the Federalist Society who clerked for Judge Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia.
The effort also has an army of detractors. In a September survey of professors conducted by the Crimson, 47% of Harvard faculty opposed the plan, while 31% agreed with it. More than two-thirds (69%) of faculty self-identified as liberal (either “somewhat” or “very”), up from 63% a year before.
The university sentiment could be even more lopsided. Still, it speaks volumes about the condition of American higher education when a substantial plurality (and near majority) of professors at America’s most premier university oppose hiring faculty with different views.
Harvard’s attempted swerve to the center has not occurred in a vacuum. Since April 2025, the Trump administration has sought to cut $2.7 billion of federal funding from Harvard. A federal court temporarily restored the funding, but the Trump administration appealed that decision on Monday to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
The second Trump administration has grappled with Harvard University in no less than four legal disputes, and Harvard University sees it as retaliation for its well-known ideological bias. “The administration essentially said, ‘Where are the various places that we touch Harvard, and let’s cut them off all at the various places,’” argued former Solicitor General Paul D. Clement on Harvard’s behalf, before the First Circuit.
The university has already made other changes to placate the Trump administration, such as renaming its DEI office to the office of “Community and Campus Life.”
One figure encouraging the perception that the Trump administration is putting political pressure on Harvard to change its ways is retired Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield. Mansfield has long called for Harvard to implement “affirmative action for conservatives,” but for years those calls went unheeded. In September, he advised that “a certain coercion needs to be put to the faculty until this happens” and cheered the administration, “I don’t think that the universities would have changed without [President Trump’s] intervention, and especially without depriving the universities of large sums of money.”
Ironically, Mansfield retired as a professor in 2023, the same year that the Supreme Court struck down Harvard University’s race-based admissions policy as unconstitutional, which dealt a blow to the very notion of affirmative action in any form.
Of course, if professors dislike anything, it is the perception that they are being coerced to do anything. So Mansfield’s loud cries for coercion will certainly do little to reconcile left-wing professors to any university action that smells of surrender.
Indeed, professors across the nation have felt free to weigh in on Harvard’s move. Omekongo Dibinga, a professor at American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, dismissed Harvard’s push for donations to hire conservative professors as a “hypocritical DEI hire process.” Presumably, the hypocrisy comes from the fact that conservatives are the ones willing to disparage diversity quotas.
Other critics offered more substantial arguments. “Even supposing that [silencing] takes place, how would the hiring of conservative faculty act as a countervailing force?” asked Dominique Padurano, professor at SUNY Empire State University who also runs a Harvard college counseling company.
Others were skeptical that hiring requirements had the power to correct the censorious attitude that has led university conservatives to self-censor. “The answer is not partisan quotas, but a credible commitment to intellectual openness and hiring excellent scholars across a genuinely broad range of perspectives,” argued former Harvard visiting scholar Daniel Schatz.
Still other voices indulged in the imaginary world of critical race theory, arguing that Harvard University is not even the progressive bastion many perceive it to be. “I find it a bit hollow when you consider the attacks that many Black students, faculty, and staff at Harvard encounter, to think that it is a bastion of progressive politics,” complained UCLA Professor Tyrone Howard, who specializes in racial equity. “The racial logistics of Harvard are still real, and efforts to hire more conservative viewpoints would only contribute to the long-standing issues that have harmed people of color.”
Despite the cacophony of criticism, Harvard’s plan to hire conservative faculty has already begun to bear fruit. Last month, Harvard announced that it had hired Sherif Girgis to a tenured position as a professor of law, effective January 1. Girgis, who currently teaches at the University of Notre Dame, has a distinguished resumé in both clerkships and academia. He is also known for his 2012 book, “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense,” which he co-authored with Robert George and Ryan Anderson.
One hire is not a trend, but the installment of such an uncompromising conservative on Harvard’s faculty suggests that, with enough monetary incentives from Washington, Harvard University may yet turn the aircraft carrier before it hurtles down the waterfall.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
This article originally appeared here.
