Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers Talks Harvard Reform

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You've spent much of your career when you're in Washington as a professor at Harvard and then as president of Harvard as well. So we want to ask you about this letter that came in on Friday from the United States government. I've read the letter carefully. Set aside for the moment, some of the things that some people find draconian. Does the Trump administration have a point, particularly with respect

David.

I've been sharply critical of Harvard, and I continue to be critical on many dimensions. Anti Semitism is still not responded to strongly enough. There are still excesses of identity politics. There's still concerns about intellectual diversity.

That's all right, But here's the thing.

In America, you have to follow the law and the approach the Trump administration is taking of simply announcing and across the board, freeze is wildly extra legal in its approach. It is not at all consistent with the Civil Rights Act, it is probably not consistent with Harvard's First Amendment rights, and so The right thing to do was surely for Harvard to respond vigorously and strongly. All the more because this is not an isolated thing what's being done to Harvard.

Of our country.

And if a institution like Harvard cannot resist tyranny when applied to it, with Harvard's fifty billion dollar endowment, with all its network, with all its prestige.

Then who can.

So Harvard should not go interjecting itself into politics, but God, when it is the object of an extra legal set of orders and threats, I don't think it had any viable choice at all but to respond strongly.

Let's talk about that extra legal part of what you're saying, at least defonic the representative Republican from New York actually give an Interview Today and Arrival Network saying, listen, colleges like Harvard don't have a right to money from the government. They don't have a right to tax mayor money. And if they don't have a right to tax mayor money, can't the government put conditions on that money?

Show here's the thing.

First of all, the money is not going It's not like the government's funding the DEI office at Harvard, not like the government is funding the student discipline mechanism at Harvard. The government is funding researchers who are doing vitally important research on diseases like diabetes and cancer and als. Show what sense does it make to cut their funding off because somebody doesn't like what the dean of students did

The Harvard Sociology department.

That's not the way free speech works are in a free society. And this is supposed to be done the power of the purse. Remember by Congress, it is not the prerogative of the executive branch. With three days notice, with no hearing, no judicial review, no transparent notification to Congress is mandated by statute to simply discriminately start cutting off previously promised and committed funds because it has a disagreement over an issue with the university.

So, Larry, give us a sense of what is a practical matter this will mean if it continues through. You ran Harvard at one point. You know the budget, You know that fifty three billion dollars in down there. What will it do their operations?

Look, they'll have to make some very important strategic choices. I hope that the university will find ways even if there is a cutoff for some interval of funds, to maintain vitally important programs, to not cut back research. But potentially, if the US government goes to war with our great universities, it means a sharp reduction in the kind of scientific progress that has caused the United States to be the envy of the world and pull so far ahead of

Dominant as in higher education.

All the students from all over the world, at least until this administration came, wanted to come to the United States. A vast fraction of the world's innovation takes place in American universities.

If we put at this put.

That at risk, we are making, I believe, a very very grave mistake. And yes, these issues should be pursued. But destroying medical research grants because you don't think people have been disciplined severely enough, it really doesn't make any sense.

Larry, I wonder if there's cautionary tail here that maybe the higher education system has become too intertwined with the government, that's why they're so dependent upon them.

There may be questions that can be asked of that kind. But gosh, if the government is not prepared to fund basic research, the research which ultimately will make possible the development of new products.

I think we have a problem.

If the government is not prepared to fund scholarships that promote opportunity for our poorest students, who are very able and generate social mobility, I think we have a problem. I think what we need, frankly, is a more mature relationship between the government, the broader society, and the universities. Yes, the universities have made some very serious mistakes, and yes they should be pressured and pressured with escalating strength to

And anti semitism.

But that's a very different thing than the kind of persecution that is involved here. And this escalated yesterday, David in a profoundly troubling way, when the President of the United States endeavored by social media to engage in an individual specific tax matter, namely Harvard's five oh one C three deduction, and to suggest that it be decided on the basis sh of a political ground.

That's the kind of interference.

With the IRS that it's a sacred duty of the Treasury Secretary to resist. It's exactly what was alleged to have happened six levels down, and many people got very upset in connection with the so called Loess Learner case involving five O one C three deductions and conservative groups. If there was punishment of conservative groups, people were absolutely right to have been hugely outraged about it during the Biden administration.

I don't know anything about.

The merits of the case, but for the President of the United States to be calling for changing the tax status of his adversaries, this is new, and I believe authoritarian and a real question about our democracy.

Larry, one last question, since we're on taxes and this is tax week, basically, what do you make of the actions that the Trump administration is taking with respect to the IRS.

I think it's possible that the Treasury Secretary and his senior colleagues are being seriously delinquent in their duty. I look at tens of thousands of people being pushed out of the IRS, even as tax compliance is a massive problem, and hear so many stories have increased tax chieting as

I look at what are.

Probably the extra lawful agreements entered into without even speaking to people at the IRS with respect to information sharing and immigration. I look at the president's involvement in specific cases, and I see the most important line that I thought I was supposed to defend when I was Treasury Secretary, a political tax enforcement, neutral professional tax enforcement, not driven