Harvard is exploring establishing a center for conservative scholarship as it volleys strike after strike from the Trump administration.
The initiative “will ensure exposure to the broadest ranges of perspectives on issues, and will not be partisan,” a Harvard spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, adding it would emphasize “evidence-based, rigorous logic and a willingness to engage with opposing views.”
The Ivy League school has already pitched the idea—potentially modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a right-leaning think tank—to prospective donors, according to the Journal, with one person familiar with the talks estimating the project could cost between $500 million and $1 billion.
A university spokesperson said the proposed program would “promote and support viewpoint diversity”—perhaps a nod to the Trump administration’s accusation that Harvard stifles the kind of environment needed for “intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor.”
The White House has charged the university with tolerating antisemitism and pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices that Trump has derided as discriminatory.
“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders,’” the president wrote on Truth Social in April.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded the university undergo a sweeping overhaul of its governance, hiring practices, admissions policies, teaching, and research in an April letter—a demand the university rejected outright.
In retaliation, Trump has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding—now the subject of an ongoing lawsuit—and attempted to block its ability to enroll international students. He has also threatened additional financial penalties, including targeting the school’s tax-exempt status, accreditation, and ability to enroll foreign students.
A person familiar with the administration’s views told the Journal that the White House would see the creation of the center as a performative gesture rather than a meaningful concession in ongoing negotiations.
The idea of a Hoover-style institute at Harvard—where fewer than three percent of faculty identified as “conservative” in a 2023 survey by The Harvard Crimson—has reportedly been explored for several years.
Stanford’s public policy think tank, which promotes free markets and limited government, is officially non-partisan but widely seen as a conservative hub and has produced a long roster of right-leaning scholars and policymakers.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served under President George W. Bush, is its current director, while Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, was a longtime fellow at the institute.
