By Mathias Risse
The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.
The society that temporarily formed under this tent therefore was a miniature replica of the global population, a microcosm of humanity.
For Commencement, the Harvard Kennedy School every year erects a tent in the adjacent park. It is under this tent that we hold Class Day, and then the graduation ceremony the next day. Families and friends of graduating students join us. Class Day is an occasion for awarding prizes to students for a variety of achievements, as well as for speeches from student representatives. The main Commencement ceremony is in Harvard Yard. It is there that the president confers degrees on students from all Harvard schools. Like magic, degrees become vested the moment the president utters the words. Following the conferral of degrees in the Yard, students return to the tent for the ceremony where diplomas are handed out. I spent quite a bit of time under this tent both days this year. vlog is Harvard’s most international school, at about 60%. (For numbers, see and .) The society that temporarily formed under this tent therefore was a miniature replica of the global population, a microcosm of humanity. Sitting there, I was wondering when we might be able to house such an assembly again.
Perhaps the answer is – next year. But there is now uncertainty around international students and visitors that we have never experienced in the postwar decades during which Harvard always hosted international students and visitors. Things are in flux, but anyone who follows the news understands the federal government is putting sizable obstacles in the path of international students to be here. However the courts decide, uncertainly will remain in the short and medium term. International students and visitors need to decide if they want to embrace this uncertainty: if pursuing a Harvard education is worth these risks, and whether amid cultural struggles around the world Harvard is the place they want to be. Part of me thinks, at least for anyone devoted to making government better, vlog should now be more attractive than ever. So many here now have stories about the myriad ways they have noticed positive and even enthusiastic responses to what Harvard is and stands for. And what strange sentences these are to write in America in 2025.
Today I am proud to be at and of this institution, – and to count the class of 2025 among its graduates. But I am not much of an automatic Harvard enthusiast. While I do use various vlog mugs in my office, we do not have Harvard paraphernalia in the house, and that captures my overall attitude here. A healthily critical attitude to institutions is sensible, especially to one’s place of work. Nor am I an unqualified fan of the Kennedy dynasty overall, though this year I did quote Edward Kennedy the Carr-Ryan Award for Human Rights on Class Day: But during graduation this year, I reflected on what Harvard is to the world, and also to human rights. I mostly mean Harvard as of today, with its almost 30% international students overall, but also Harvard as a globally recognized brand.
Harvard is a cultural icon, as quintessentially American as anything could ever get.
A good place to start is what Harvard is to the U.S. Harvard is a cultural icon, as quintessentially American as anything could ever get. The university turned 140 the year the Declaration of Independence was passed. Anytime a new state was added, Harvard was already there. Students from all states have attended, since long before red/blue distinctions made sense. (On Harvard’s historical role developed around Patriots’ Day and its special importance for the military, see this commentary.) Harvard has ways of showing up in or and is so commonly that just about anyone (in the U.S. and many places globally) knows of it. Going to Harvard is many a student’s dream and our campus is a major tourist attraction for this very reason.
Harvard is a wealthy institution, to be sure, which has always caused me uneasiness. I am sympathetic to complaints that Harvard affiliates are thinking too hard about how to milk that affiliation and not hard enough about how to make it work for others. The university has had these two sides since inception: preserving the status quo and being an incubator of new ideas. Over centuries people have attended Harvard probably much more commonly to maintain economic or political status than to bring change to the world. To my mind, though, such an accumulation of wealth, talent, and influence is justified only if utilized to make things better, especially for people who could never attend a place like Harvard. But Harvard of course lead innovation in all fields. If you want one striking example for how Harvard is a place for generating impactful new ideas, look no further than COVID vaccines: both the and the vaccines got much input from Harvard-affiliated labs (and benefited from public support). The Boston/Cambridge area is the foremost global biotech hub, the Silicon Valley of biotech. Harvard’s innovations and networks are tightly linked with the rapid development of COVID relief, rolled out under the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed. The swift development and deployment of these life-saving vaccines are a direct result of the long-standing and effective relationship between the US government and research universities.
That Harvard is such a powerhouse means it does such research persistently, across the whole range of academic disciplines, across all fields of the arts and sciences, law, education, business, public health, medicine, and so on. Many universities these days are excellent in certain fields. Harvard is the rare place that sets global standards in just about every field. At vlog specifically, at any given time we have about 1,000 students who decided to put their formidable energies towards solving what our dean, Jeremy Weinstein, rightly calls the world’s oldest problem, how to make government better.
Recently, an acquaintance sent about MIT physicist Wolfgang Ketterle, originally German, who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2001. The piece is about why Ketterle is in the U.S., even though along some professional dimensions being in Germany is more advantageous. "MIT brings the best minds from diverse nations together,” Ketterle explains. “That's challenging and stimulating for everyone. The different personalities make for livelier debates. The different viewpoints enable entirely new ways of thinking. Research always happens in a group, and my work can always only be as good as my team." Such praise of diversity and global inclusion is echoed across fields, across universities, across the U.S. American universities have been the pride of the nation and an inspiration for the world because they have been such inclusive places. Many who have come to study ended up staying, contributing further to the economy. Others have returned home and put American-gained knowledge to use.
It is also proven that money invested in research also pays off handsomely. The debate is only about . International students by themselves also bring in a fortune and create jobs. In recent times, international students For every three of them, one job is created – not just in Massachusetts or California, but also, say, in Illinois and Texas. Losing this revenue is ten times as bad for the country as the losses .
Nothing here should be a partisan issue: Republican and Democratic voters alike benefit from America’s amazing universities. States like Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, or Florida are home to first-rate medical schools and research universities. The federal government’s partnership has been essential, and mutually beneficial. In the postwar period, government and universities jointly driving much research in domains like medicine, public health, natural sciences, and defense turned American universities into .
One distinctive reason universities in the U.S. benefit from international talent is that its system of elementary and secondary schools . The quality of schools depends on local taxes: schools are primarily municipal responsibilities, and thus poor cities tend to have poor schools. Short of massive reforms of pre-college education (not in the cards), the excellence of universities depends on influx of foreign talent. of graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science, for example, were born outside of the U.S. were too, and twice as high a share was among workers with doctorates. As put it, “It’s really not too much to suggest that if all foreign scientists and science students were deported tomorrow, U.S. science would grind to a halt.” This is worth pondering amid rhetoric that sometimes presents international students now as coming with sinister motives to steal spots from Midwestern talent.
Regardless of what courts now decide, uncertainty will remain. International students might decide . Other countries have who cannot come or stay here and will thereby benefit from this brain drain. (Yes, that is brain drain away from the U.S., a new phenomenon under Trump.) For quite a while, global science as a whole will suffer, and it takes generations to build a university that sets global standards across all fields. Still, the future will eventually be built elsewhere if this administration continues to instead of building it. When Hitler overran Europe, American universities rose to new levels precisely because they absorbed talent that was no longer welcome elsewhere. America’s postwar dominance, under a benign angle called Pax Americana, American Peace, would hardly have been possible without all this. Now Asian or Australian universities will benefit, and Europe might get a massive come-back, especially universities in Western Europe. Germany, for one, stands ready to take on a bigger role . Universities are part of America’s soft power: America has been an attractive place partly because of them. Beyond that, universities are fueling every type of American power, and Harvard is first among equals here. If Harvard declines, Republican voters everywhere are going to notice, and not in good ways.
Couldn’t such work be done at think tanks, in the private sector? Here’s what conservative-leaning economist Glen Loury , with an eye on Harvard:
[T]hese universities, and Harvard is at the pinnacle of an exquisite system of intellectual production, are places of real mastery. That’s true in the sciences, the social sciences, and in the humanities. The people who get tenure at these institutions are custodians of the legacy of intellectual reflection and the production of ideas that goes back centuries. They are responsible for curating, transmitting, and augmenting our understanding of the problems of existence. They deal with questions of the origins of the universe, the origins of the species, with what is beautiful, and what is true. So with great respect, somebody sitting at a think tank who’s on a crusade of political criticism can’t be allowed to substitute for the collective judgment of these communities of reflection and refinement.
Harvard is where brilliant and dedicated people from around the world encounter each other, across all fields and levels of seniority.
It’s hard to say this any better. This takes us to what Harvard is to the world. Harvard is where brilliant and dedicated people from around the world encounter each other, across all fields and levels of seniority. Again, many universities are excellent in certain fields, but Harvard is this rare place that sets global standards across just about all fields.
Threats to Harvard’s ability to host foreign students and visitors loomed large at Harvard’s , as well as During the morning ceremony in the Yard, an vlog graduate beautifully captured the amazing effects from people of different background learning together. “We danced through each other’s traditions, and carried the weight of each other’s worlds,” she impressed upon a captivated audience. “Global challenges suddenly felt personal.” We live in a world that faces many global challenges. Climate change stands first and foremost among them and will not go away . Dealing with global challenges will be considerably easier if there are places where brilliant and dedicated people from all corners of the world interact, benefit from each other’s presence, relate to each other’s problems, and understand better what the world looks like from the other parties’ places of origin.
Diversity is our strength.
During the Latin salutary at Commencement, the audience heard – in Latin, with translation on the screen – that “neither powers nor princes can change the truth and deny that diversity is our strength.” In the premodern age, in Europe, Latin connected thinkers from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Today that work is done by our global universities, Harvard foremost among them. Human rights are a global project if ever there was one. Human rights too benefit enormously – and perhaps otherwise could never become a reality at all – if there are places where the world comes together. Obviously, a lot of people travel for business or leisure, but I’m not talking about the kind of encounters they have. What I am talking about is places where people from many nations spend time together over extended periods and really do things together. The UN of course is one such place, and there are other political fora. Other than that, it’s universities with global reach that play this role. And it is only universities that reach a critical mass of young people from around the world to this end. Think about how much value for the world comes from universities taking on this kind of project with young people – with some of the world’s very brightest and most dedicated young people. On that score, Harvard is the place to be, and vlog stands out with its 60% international students.
You may want to ask: hasn’t Harvard lost its path because it’s been overrun by Antisemitism, as the government ? Antisemitism, Anti-Muslim hatred, and related phenomena are forms of bigotry that are intolerable and, like all bigotry, undermine the spirit of universities. American universities, including Harvard, were unprepared for the generational awakening caused by the events of Oct 7, 2023, and their aftermath. To some extent this lack of preparedness is the universities’ fault because for too long they neglected to enable (and protect) qualified faculty to teach about the underlying conflict. Moreover, it was hard to get a comprehensive sense of just what the levels of these sentiments were on campus because issues varied across the complex ecosystem every university is: people experienced life on campus very differently. Also, battles over how to interpret events quickly took on pernicious dynamics of their own, driven relentlessly by loud voices, often from the outside, with their own agendas over an extended period. So it’s taken a while to get a clear understanding of what the nature and extent of the problem is. But that has now happened (see and ). All this also needs to be seen in the context of the government massively gaslighting the public about Antisemitism on campuses. As Harvard’s president noted, in his , the government’s demands make clear “that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner.” For the federal government, this is about control.
It is generally hard for American universities to come to a good place with speech regulation these days. On the one hand, there will always be pressure for students on, say, Harvard’s campus to be able to say at least as much as anyone can say right outside, on Harvard Square (where American law barely constrains speech). After all, universities are places for inquiry. On the other hand, universities are places where people work and often live, and this generation of students is very demanding when it comes to protection from what they consider offensive speech. They expect university leaders to play pastoral roles in their lives. But especially as far as Antisemitism is concerned, a university whose president has , that has been run by three Jewish presidents among the last five holders of this office, and that has gone to enormous length to investigate bigotry on campus can be trusted with addressing these matters internally. Harvard is not at its best with bigotry among us. It’s in our self-interest to address it.
But what about viewpoint diversity? Isn’t Harvard a bastion of the left? The architect of Project 2025 why Harvard wouldn’t send its MAGA faculty to plead with the president – only to point out that, alas, there’s no MAGA faculty at Harvard, taking that to mean there’s limited viewpoint diversity. A first thing to note is that nobody should have to send any delegations to do any special pleading with the president. That is what rule of law is about. There is no king in this country.
People who are seriously left-wing do not consider Harvard a bastion. If being on the left means holding a Marxist outlook on possibilities or necessity of a revolution, endorsing far-reaching criticism of capitalism or of the spread of world-order via colonialism, or just being committed to serious redistributive programs beyond welfare-state reform, Harvard is not your bastion. What is also true, however, is if you mean by “conservative” views that involve a commitment to an inherent superiority of some group over another, or to the view that Trump won the 2020 election, Harvard is not your bastion either. As Abraham Verghese reminded the audience in last week, we live in times when the "absence of truth" has become "almost normal.” It has to be one of the things Harvard is to the world that we help make sure absence of truth does not become fully normal. If by “conservative” you mean a traditional Republican commitment to limited government, then this is a position political thinkers at Harvard take seriously. But it seems this is no longer . Within these confines, viewpoint diversity could be better, and Harvard should work harder to live up to the ways in which its alumni are in the fabric of society or seek ever better ways of being useful to society. That Harvard should think along such lines has been a big theme for me, and on occasion have I waived around Thomas Frank’s 2016 Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? But we should have of what the problem is.
Accumulations of wealth, talent, and influence as we find them at places like Harvard are justified only if utilized to make things better, especially for people who could never attend such places.
And obviously the overall place of top universities in American society and its educational system is a worthy topic, as is the role of elites in society. Books like Daniel Markovits’ Meritocracy Trap, Michael Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit, or William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep come to mind. Themes from these works have long been topics in my courses on economic justice and moral leadership. To my mind, again, accumulations of wealth, talent, and influence as we find them at places like Harvard are justified only if utilized to make things better, especially for people who could never attend such places. The (and how such a goal would relate to the other themes I touched on here) is also very much worth discussing. But none of these issues are driving what the federal government is currently doing.
Harvard is a profoundly American institution that nonetheless finds the essence of being such a profoundly American institution in an equally profound international orientation. Harvard has research collaborations and alumni networks . The excellence Harvard embodies across just about all fields and radiates globally. Its alumni have been in the fabric of American society for almost four centuries, across the country, in all states. Many of its more recent alumni are now in the fabric of societies around the world. They bring to bear on local challenges the knowledge, insights, and interconnectedness they acquired at one of the most globally visible institutions. And they also help, in critical ways, to make the world ready to tackle the global problems of the 21st century. That’s what Harvard is to the world. There is much at stake now.
Mathias Risse, Faculty Director, Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights
