In response to the Trump administration’s series of actions against Harvard University, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board recently posed the question: “Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard?” That is not the right question. The more pertinent question is: Will Harvard stop destroying itself?

Harvard maintains a public image of a prestigious institution, with an admission rate for the undergraduate class of 2025 at less than four percent, indicating that it is still a highly sought-after institution.

Beneath this façade, however, lies a troubling reality. Radical leftist ideology has gradually ruined a once-respected institution from inside.

Admissions Favor Race over Academic Fit

For instance, Harvard’s rigid insistence on pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in its admissions has sparked considerable controversy. In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued Harvard, arguing that its race-based admissions policy discriminated against Asian students by limiting their enrollment.

William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admission, testified that the university indeed had applied different SAT cutoff scores based on race. Instead of reassessing this controversial approach amid legal challenges, Harvard staunchly defended its race-based admissions policy for nearly a decade and even suspended standardized testing requirements in 2021, a change aligned with leftist arguments that standardized tests are “racist.”

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court released a landmark decision against Harvard, ruling that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. Rather than following the court’s ruling, Harvard has sought alternative ways to consider race in admissions, such as probing applicants about their “life experiences.”

This defiance reflects Harvard’s resistance to necessary reform. The university’s insistence on DEI in its admissions process has led to a troubling decline in academic rigor among its student body. The university had to reinstate standardizing test requirement in 2024. Additionally, for the first time in its history, Harvard offered remedial math classes to incoming freshmen in 2025, raising serious questions about an admissions policy that favors a particular racial composition at the expense of academic readiness.

Hiring Faculty Based on Race and Sex

Harvard’s embrace of DEI has also shaped the university’s hiring practices. Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute reported that Harvard’s DEI office encourages faculty search committees to prioritize the applications of women and minorities. Committee chairs are also urged to “continually monitor” the racial diversity of their candidate lists.

Until recently, Harvard mandated that most job applicants submit DEI statements, a practice that effectively excludes candidates who do not embrace leftist racial ideologies. A 2022 survey from Harvard’s newspaper, the Crimson, revealed that less than two percent of more than 1,000 faculty members in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences identified as conservatives.

This overwhelming lack of diverse perspectives stifles the intellectual vibrancy that should characterize a premier educational institution. Students are deprived of the opportunity to engage with a wide range of ideas, ultimately compromising the quality of their education, all while they pay upwards of $80,000 annually.

After the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in SFFA v. Harvard, Harvard implemented only minor changes to its hiring practices, including removing the mandatory DEI statement from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences hiring process. The university, however, still promotes optional DEI statements for faculty positions, according to Rufo.

Omar Sultan Haque, a researcher with 23 years of experience at Harvard, referred to the university’s current approach as “Diet DEI,” which is a diluted form of the original DEI initiative that is “more dishonest.” Haque said the “Diet DEI” has the same effects in “practices, norms, and the larger culture of orthodoxy and taboo” on campus.

He also warned that Harvard “favors progressive viewpoints to the detriment of open inquiry, especially on social, moral, and political topics in teaching and research.” He said the university’s ongoing commitment to radical leftist ideology indicates that Harvard “cannot be reformed from within.”

The Ivy League Is Full of Plagiarism and Scandal

Haque’s warning is not an exaggeration. Harvard has been embroiled in a series of academic scandals in recent years. In 2024, former university president Claudine Gay resigned amid plagiarism allegations, marking a significant reputational setback.

Shortly thereafter, Khalid Shah, a prominent neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, was accused of falsifying data and plagiarizing images in 21 papers. This misconduct compelled Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where Shah contributed research, to retract six published papers and correct 31 others, revealing serious lapses in research oversight.

Adding to the irony, Francesca Gino, a celebrated professor at Harvard Business School known for her work on dishonesty, was recently found guilty of fabricating data and subsequently fired after a lengthy investigation. These scandals suggest that Harvard’s emphasis on DEI is compromising its academic standards. Once a beacon of research excellence, the university is increasingly viewed as “totally corrupted,” Haque says.

Top U.S. University Sells Out to Foreign Money

Harvard’s corruption is also strikingly evident in its addiction to foreign funding. According to the Free Press, “Harvard has historically received the most funding from foreign donors ($3.2 billion), followed by Cornell and Carnegie Mellon (which have each received $2.8 billion).” The top two foreign donors are China and Qatar, which have given top American universities more than $2 billion between 2021 and 2024. This figure is likely understated, as many institutions, including Harvard, tend not to fully disclose all contributions they receive.

Financial ties with foreign entities are problematic, as research has revealed a troubling link between universities that accept funding from authoritarian regimes and a decline in democratic values on campus such as free speech and academic freedom.

Harvard’s financial connections with China help explain why the university, which claims to uphold liberal values, has been kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This includes allowing the CCP to influence Harvard’s research and narratives about China, canceling Chinese dissident talks on campus, providing training to CCP officials from an entity on the U.S. government’s sanctioned list, and disciplining student protesters who criticized China’s human rights violations during a talk on campus by the Chinese ambassador.

Harvard Promotes Politics over Education

Similarly, Harvard’s financial ties with Qatar may have contributed to the alarming rise of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. University leaders have been slow to respond and often ineffective in addressing this issue. A particularly troubling example is Harvard’s recent decision to reward two pro-Hamas students who harassed a Jewish student named Yoav Segev last year, which shows “Harvard is currently a diseased institution which is filled with ideologues,” said Segev in an interview.

Harvard has been on a  self-destructing path, a trend that predates the Trump administration. The university could have continued to command high tuition while indoctrinating students with radical leftist ideologies and promoting narratives funded by foreign interests, as long as the public remained largely oblivious to its inner decay.  The Trump administration’s actions against Harvard, along with the university’s decision to engage in a legal battle, have exposed Harvard’s corruption, deterioration, and radicalization to the public.

Even if Harvard emerges victorious in its lawsuit, the days of its reputation as a premier institution are ending. Haque predicts that Harvard may eventually fade into a “sanctimonious irrelevance.” When that inevitable day arrives, Harvard will have only itself to blame for its downfall.

Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She's a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including "Confucius Never Said" and “Backlash: How Communist China's Aggression Has Backfired." Her latest book is the 2nd edition of “The Broken Welcome Mat: America’s UnAmerican immigration policy, and how we should fix it.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.