It’s a move sure to send President Donald Trump into yet another rage: The editorial board of Rupert Murdoch-owned The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed on Friday night asking the question many across the world are wondering: “What does two plus two equal?”
Or rather, is Trump trying to destroy Harvard entirely?
After Trump’s Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem attempted to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students as part of an escalating feud with the Ivy League university, the Journal‘s editorial board wrote that Trump “seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back.” The piece highlighted other attacks on the school, which include freezing billions in federal grants, attempting to dictate its curriculum, admissions and hiring procedures and threatening its tax-exempt status.
The paper previously criticized Trump’s overreach, arguing that many of the demands he made after freezing billions in federal funds for the university “exceed[ed] his power under the constitution.“
Trump’s attacks, the editorial board argues, are short-sighted and risk stripping the U.S. of one of its “great competitive strengths”: the ability to attract the world’s “best and brightest.”
The majority of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs, and “many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses,” the Journal explained. Forcing them to leave Harvard will disrupt their projects and potentially cause professors in those faculties to leave for other universities.
“Even if it’s modified,” the Journal argued, ”Noem’s order will echo around the world as a signal that the U.S. is no longer open to educate the world’s brightest young people. Foreign students will get the message and take their talents elsewhere.”
Some foreign universities are already seeking to take advantage, with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology releasing a statement Friday in which it said it “opens doors to Harvard students amid global academic shifts.”
The opinion piece is not the first time the Murdoch-owned paper has criticized the Trump administration during its second term. Last month, the paper denounced Trump’s tariffs as “the biggest economic policy mistake in decades.”
Two weeks later, when speaking to a Journal reporter aboard Air Force One, Trump dismissed the paper as “rotten,” adding that it had “gone to hell” in becoming “China-oriented and bad for this country.”
After the Murdoch-owned New York Post ran a mocking front page announcing Trump’s decision to run in 2024 with the headline “Florida Man Makes Announcement,” Trump reportedly call the 94-year-old media mogul a “piece of s—.”
In a more recent meeting in the Oval Office this past February, however, Trump reportedly praised him as an “amazing guy.”
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