Can Harvard Remain Nonpartisan in Trump’s America? Yes and No

Last Tuesday, Kellyanne E. Conway, a senior adviser in President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration, spoke at a forum at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

Conway is perhaps best known for explaining away lies about Trump’s first inauguration crowd size as “alternative facts” in 2017. Back when she made those remarks I had been teaching political philosophy for 17 years and had never felt it necessary to abandon nonpartisanship in my teaching. But I took issue with Conway’s alternative facts right away, and I did so in the classroom.

Eventually, talk of alternative facts gave way to Trump’s flat-out election denialism — and with his second term approaching, Trump’s early personnel choices suggest that those who sing the song of election theft are favored.

In the face of a Republican party that, regardless of what it has gotten right, has subscribed to a cult of personality and returned to power on a story anathema to democracy itself, can Harvard remain nonpartisan?

Yes and no.

Yes because we must continue to invite Republican leaders to the University for discussions, and keep places like the IOP open to all — even those who support Trump’s election lies. No because when confronted with such lies, we cannot let nonpartisanship deter us from our commitment to “veritas,” to truth.

This election was a breathtaking legitimization of Trump’s Republican Party. Trump is one of the best-known individuals in all of history. After seeing him do his thing for about a decade, at least a near-majority of Americans not only brought him back into office, they turned his story into one of the greatest American political successes, ever. Like it or not, we have to accept the democratic credentials of this president and his party.

But if our country ever hopes to permanently move away from a party committed to lies, the best way to do so is to help change it from within. To that end, we need to keep engaging. Otherwise Republicans will only talk to each other, amplifying their extremism and depriving us of opportunities to learn how they think and operate.

Our problem is that an invitation to speak at Harvard is automatically seen as an honor — but it does not need to be this way. At the university level, we must cultivate a language in extending invitations that separate efforts at honoring people from invitations to simply have political conversations. Some people would have to be beyond the pale for such conversations, but surely not those with the democratic credentials of Trump’s party. As a director of a Harvard human rights center myself, I am keenly aware that cultivating such a language is hard. But it is essential, and much overdue.

Of course, keeping the University’s fora open to a broad range of political beliefs does not mean we must treat all beliefs equally. When it comes to upholding the truth, we should not — must not — be nonpartisan. And indeed, at Conway’s recent forum, members of the audience, who sparred with her on alternative facts and other controversies, made sure we were not.

I will continue to say in my classes that talk about alternative facts in the context of determining crowd sizes and election results is unacceptable; that Trump lost his 2020 reelection bid to the 80 million Americans who voted for President Joe Biden; and that we have yet to see credible evidence for claims that Haitian immigrants devour their neighbors’ cats and dogs, or that little boys leave for school only to come back as girls.

As long as the Republican Party makes such odious and ludicrous statements, we must all stand up and insist on the truth. And their current democratic credentials notwithstanding, we should also point out to Republicans that Trump’s 2021 involvement in an insurrection means that he supports democracy only when it serves his own ends.

I don’t recommend this approach because I believe truth is the dominant value always and everywhere. Insisting on moral or religious truth in the political domain has caused much bloodshed over the centuries. And in our personal lives we surround ourselves with half-truths all the same, about ourselves and those dear to us.

But there is a great significance to truth in quite a number of contexts, especially those in which we have widely accepted verification methods, determining crowd size and counting votes among them. These mechanisms provide us with a shared factual basis, at least for the process of democratic decision-making. Talk of alternative facts in such contexts undermines democracy.

Truth isn’t just important for us as individuals, it’s important for Harvard as an institution. After all, we are constantly scribbling “veritas” all over the place. Facing an incoming presidential administration that has promised to cut funding to schools that teach “critical race theory,” it is more important than ever that Harvard defend academic freedom and continue to offer classes that engage critically with American history and its role in the world.

At the same time, as an institution and as individuals in it, we must engage in deep soul-searching for how to contribute to the flourishing of this country in an interconnected world. We must come to terms with the reasons that many Americans do not trust elites, including us. We must ask how we can wield our own Harvard credentials in service of society, rather than in service of ourselves.

We must play a constructive role in securing a genuinely democratic future for the United States of America — a truly nonpartisan act. It won’t be easy, but it’s the world we live in now.

Mathias Risse is the Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and the Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.