The Government Cannot Fix Universities

To the Editor:

Gary Gambill — **The reading room at Widener, June 6, 2022. © Daniel Pipes**

What Sen. Dan Sullivan found - anti-Israel signs and symbols in the reading room of Harvard’s premier library - is indeed shocking (“An Antisemitic Occupation of Harvard’s Widener Library”). Bravo to him for pointing this out and condemning the university’s “craven, morally bankrupt” leadership for allowing such antics.

Mr. Sullivan, however, offers the wrong solution to this problem when he contends that “It is time for Congress to save these important and once-respected [universities] from themselves and their weak leaders.” Harvard is a private institution. Government must not attempt to “save” it. That way lies state control over everything and ultimately totalitarianism.

True, the taxpayer funds students, research, and more at universities, but these monies must not be weaponized to force them to do the government’s bidding. That way lies perdition.

Rather, the burden to save private institutions falls on private citizens. That means they either exert influence over existing ones or found new ones. Admittedly, this requires hard work but we must not succumb to the temptation of easy solutions.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Pipes
Harvard AB ’71, PhD ’78
President, Middle East Forum
Philadelphia

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum and author of the just-published Islamism vs. the West: 35 Years of Geopolitical Struggle (Wicked Son).

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Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes, a historian, has led the Middle East Forum since its founding in 1994. He taught at Chicago, Harvard, Pepperdine, and the U.S. Naval War College. He served in five U.S. administrations, received two presidential appointments, and testified before many congressional committees. The author of 16 books on the Middle East, Islam, and other topics, Mr. Pipes writes a column for the Washington Times and the Spectator; his work has been translated into 39 languages. DanielPipes.org contains an archive of his writings and media appearances; he tweets at @DanielPipes. He received both his A.B. and Ph.D. from Harvard. The Washington Post deems him “perhaps the most prominent U.S. scholar on radical Islam.” Al-Qaeda invited Mr. Pipes to convert and Edward Said called him an “Orientalist.”