The Media Research Center very much approves of President Trump’s war against Harvard University (which may or may not be motivated by Trump’s son Barron getting rejected by it). Curtis Houck lamented in an April 15 post that non-right-wing networks were calling out said war (with a reference to the MRC’s least favorite immigrant):
When the “Big Three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC weren’t lamenting Tuesday morning the plight of their beloved “Maryland man” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, they each complaining about the Trump administration freezing $2 billion in taxpayer funding from far-left and private Harvard University, siding with the university’s insistence it spend taxpayer dollars as it sees fit.
ABC’s Good Morning America led both hours with Harvard, including a tease with co-host Robin Roberts decrying the “escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against elite colleges.”
Later, in tossing to chief national correspondent Matt Gutman, Roberts dismissed the concerns of the Trump administration about anti-Semitism, ideological bias, and racial discrimination as merely “policy demands.”
Gutman declared Harvard President Alan Garber was “the first to openly defy the Trump administration, drawing that line in the sand, saying that no government should dictate to a private university what it can teach, who it can hire, and admit.”
“Harvard, America’s wealthiest university, not backing down in the face of pressure from President Trump, who is threatening to pull roughly $9 billion in federal aid…The administration ordering the school to report foreign students who commit conduct violations to federal authorities, submit to an audit to ensure academic departments have diverse viewpoints, and end all DEI program, share hiring data with the administration, and submit to an audit of admissions data,” he added.
Gutman also threw in the Trump administration’s concerns with Harvard as just one of many hotbeds of anti-Semitic filth: “The administration also calling for the correction of what it calls anti-Semitism on campus, an issue which Harvard said it has already taken steps to address.”
[…]To his credit, Gutman was the only network journalist to mention this important tidbit: “And one of the big questions going forward is Harvard going to dip into that $50 billion plus endowment to make up for that federal shortfall?”
Mark Finkelstein served up his own complaint the same day:
On CNN This Morning, host Audie Cornish devoted a segment to the showdown between Harvard and the Trump administration. Harvard has rejected the administration’s call for it to abandon DEI, among other requirements. In return, the administration has frozen about $2 billion in federal funding to the university.
Noting a statement by the Harvard president, and playing a clip from a Democrat politician, Cornish promoted the notion that this is a fight over Harvard’s “independence” and its right of “free expression.” It’s not.
Harvard is free to rename itself Hamas U. Offer a major in “From The River To The Sea Studies.” Ditch “The Crimson,” and call its teams “The Fightin’ Kidnappers.” All Harvard would have to do is make like Hillsdale College, and reject any federal or state funding.
But Harvard wants to have it both ways: keep the federal funds flowing, while rejecting the obligations that go with it. It reminds me of when, as an 11-year-old, I demanded that my parents continue to pay my weekly allowance, despite rejecting their requirement that I make my bed and mow the lawn. Didn’t work out that well.
Who said Harvard was planning to “rename itself Hamas U.”? Nobody — Finkelstein’s brain must be overheating. He also offered no evidence that Harvard was “rejecting the obligations” of federal funding outside of those just made up by the Trump administration.
Jorge Bonilla had a “REGIME MEDIA” meltdown in yet another April 15 post:
News of the Trump administration’s demands of Harvard University as a condition of continued access to federal funding broke today, and the liberal institutions are up in arms. The evening network newscasts went in on the story, defending Harvard like it was an illegal alien gangbanger about to get deported to El Salvador.
[…]Of course the media are going to stand with universities in their battle against accountability: if the K-12 system is the main liberal indoctrinating institution, then academia is the finishing school. Harvard, as part of the academic elite, is revered among the institutions. Therefore, it is only fitting that the media rush to defend Harvard. The rot runs deep.
One wonders what kind of right-wing indoctrination Bonilla underwent to make him spew so much hatred at the educational system.
Alex Christy went into comedy-cop mode in an April 16 post to whine that a late-night TV host defended Harvard:
The idea that the late night comedy shows are just MSNBC with jokes was on full display on Tuesday’s installment of CBS’s The Late Show. Host Stephen Colbert claimed that the Trump Administration’s recent demands on Harvard were “ridiculous,” “insane,” and “dictatorial,” but Colbert never provided any context for why those demands were given.
[…]More backstory: Harvard, like so many elite colleges in this country, has an anti-Semitism problem. Nevertheless, Colbert was happy with the news, “Boom! Hey, Trump administration, now you’re just like the rest of us, because you just got rejected by Harvard.”
Colbert claimed, “The demands the government made of Harvard were ridiculous and included things like immediately shutting down any programming related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Which would mean big changes to Harvard’s curriculum. Any students registered for ‘Power to the people: Black power, radical feminism, and gay liberation’ will now find themselves enrolled in ‘Intro to Sudoku: Guess where the numbers go.’”
[…]Foreign students who get suspended by their universities for misconduct can have their visas revoked and be deported, so Colbert is, whether he realizes it or not, arguing that foreign students should be able to get away with lawlessness.
Instead, Colbert simply imagined this was about dorm rules, “Oh, great. I mean, dorm RAs were already drunk on power. This would only make it worse. ‘Uh, you guys? You’re not allowed to microwave popcorn in the common areas. I could send you all to El Salvador, okay? Unless you guys wanna hang out? No? Okay.’”
He then celebrated, “Harvard’s president clapped back to these insane dictatorial demands, ssaying,‘The university will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.’ Huzzah! Huzzah! I say. Egad.”
The demands only seem insane if you strip them of their context, which is precisely what Colbert did.
The next day, Christy complained that it was pointed out that Harvard isn’t as “far-left” as Houck and the MRC want you to believe:
CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez did his best Daniel Dale impression on Thursday’s episode of The Situation Room, where he attempted to fact-check President Trump’s assessment of Harvard, in his words, as a “cesspool of leftist thinking,” as false because conservatives, such as Ted Cruz, have attended the school.
The context for Perez’s failed foray into fact-checking came as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem upped the stakes in the battle between Harvard and the administration as he told co-host Wolf Blitzer, “This is an escalating series of threats from the Trump administration against the university, Wolf. And the latest one is from the Homeland Security Department, which is telling Harvard that they may lose their ability to host foreign students.”
[…]Of course, [Tom] Cotton, [Neil] Gorsuch, and Cruz were students, not faculty, and only 13 percent of the Harvard class of 2024 reported being conservative compared to 59 percent who self-identified as progressive. Finally, nobody at CNN would ever suggest that Fox News is a neutral outlet because they employ Jessica Tarlov, but double standards for fact-checks are an industry standard.
Has Christy or anyone else at the MRC ever criticized Fox News for not being “neutral”? Not that we recall.
Christy returned for more whining about Harvard being defended in an April 18 post:
At MSNBC, old habits die hard. On Thursday’s installment of The Last Word, former Mueller Probe prosecutor turned MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann raised the prospect of impeachment for President Trump’s attempts to defund Harvard.
Referencing a Truth Social post where Trump threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status, host Lawrence O’Donnell told Weissmann that, “There is now an active question of did Donald Trump violate the law with that social media posting.”
Weissmann immediately argued Trump was extorting the university,
[…]Any school receiving federal funding is subject to federal civil rights law, but Weissmann then turned into a mind reader in order to claim Trump doesn’t actually care about that, “The reason, the purported reason, is because of Donald Trump’s supposed hatred of anti-Semitism, and I don’t notice his saying a word about the attack on Josh Shapiro and his family on Passover. That is just one example of the lying, that purported reason for attacking Harvard.”
From a legal perspective, Trump’s personal motivations really don’t matter. Either Harvard has violated federal law or it hasn’t. According to the administration, it has, and so if the private school doesn’t want to comply with federal demands, it can survive on its own.
Christy offered no evidence the Trump administration is not specifically targeting Harvard, and he won’t admit that it’s all too clear Trump is attacking Harvard based on his personal motivations.
Bonilla issued another “REGIME MEDIA” complaint in an April 23 post:
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.
[…]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.
Bonilla didn’t explain how accommodation of transgender students is an “agenda.” He also didn’t explain how CBS can be “regime media” if the “regime” it’s supposedly serving is not currently in power — ironic, since he’s the one acting as Trump Regime Media.