David Brooks: Trump Is Trying to Destroy Harvard Out of Spite

EXCERPT:

BROOKS: “Yeah, it’s an attempt out of spite to destroy Harvard. Now, I have my beefs, like all of us do, with Harvard. I used to go — there’s a bookstore called the Coop in Harvard Square, and I used to go there and there’s a section where the Harvard faculty had their books. And I used to thrill to this section. I shouldn’t admit this on TV, but, like, Sam Huntington, E.O. Wilson, Skip Gates, Helen Vendler, all these legendary scholars. And you would think Harvard is the greatest university ever. And over the last couple years, that section of the bookstore has gotten more boring because the progressive orthodoxy has had a smothering effect on the intellectual vibrancy of the place. So I have my criticism of Harvard. It still remains one of the greatest universities in the history of the world, where they do amazing scientific research, amazing humanistic research. So you have got to hold the belief that, if you’re like me, yes, the place has some serious flaws on anti-Semitism and on excessive progressivism. But does that mean it’s not one of our most wonderful, valuable institutions and that you’re destroying a large part of American wealth creation, American civilization when you take it down? And these are the kinds of distinctions that the Trump Administration simply can’t make. And I may have said this before, but it’s like, you go to the Trump Administration like it’s a doctor saying, ‘I have acne,’ and the Trump Administration says, ‘Okay, we will do decapitation.’ They think that’s a cure. And that’s what’s happened here. It’s a spiteful, incredibly destructive act.”

(via RealClearPolitics)