Laurence Tribe on CNN Likens Trump’s Attempted ‘Takeover’ of Harvard to Hitler and Erdogan: ‘The Dictator’s Handbook’

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spoke to former Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe on Tuesday about the university’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing the government of trampling its constitutional rights by pulling funds as a means of punishment for refusing certain demands.

“Happening now, leaders from more than 100 colleges and universities are warning that political interference by the Trump administration is, quote, now endangering American higher education, close quote. This is as Harvard University is filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration, accusing the White House of violating the First Amendment and freezing federal funding to the school,” began Blitzer, adding:

Joining us now is Laurence Tribe. He’s a university professor of constitutional law at the Harvard Law School. He also acted as an important advisor to both President Obama and President Biden. Professor Tribe, thanks so much for joining us. The university says its constitutional rights have been violated. As I said, you aren’t involved in this lawsuit, but help us better understand the claim that Harvard is making.

“Well, the basic claim is one that really connects what’s going on here to what’s gone on throughout history when autocrats and tyrants and basically mafia-like leaders decide that they really don’t want universities to be independent. Nice little university you have there, be a shame if something happened to it. That’s what Hitler basically said, although it sounds different in the original German,” Tribe replied, adding:

When he sent it to the university at Frankfurt and then took them over. That’s what Orban has done in Hungary, that’s what Erdogan has done in Turkey. It’s a standard technique.

And in this case, Harvard has filed a very detailed and, I think, irrefutable complaint, making clear that all of the laws Congress has passed that impose conditions on universities as recipients of Congress’s money, all of those laws, rather than supporting the Trump administration, support Harvard.

The laws establish that the university has to go through a number of procedural steps in order to meet the requirements of the federal government, but the federal government is not allowed to say, we don’t agree with your way of thinking. We don’t agree with the kinds of ideas that your students have. We don’t think that you should allow that much peaceful protest.

This complaint makes it clear that when the Trump administration confronted Harvard with a series of demands that amounted to a claim basically to take over the educational process, it had crossed the line, both in terms of the laws that Congress had passed and in terms of basic precepts in the U.S. Constitution.

And if we allow the government to take over private institutions that are centers of innovation, of medical advances, of advances in philosophy, of better understandings of history, we will play into the dictator’s handbook, because that is what dictators want. They want to shut down independent thought and centers of potential opposition.

By taking the offense, Harvard has set an example for other universities, some of whom I think were teetering on the edge. Should we cave in the way Columbia did or should we stand up? I think that Harvard is encouraging many others to stand up because when we win, and we will, they will realize that going along with dictatorial demands doesn’t get them anywhere. The dictator is never satisfied. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. And instead, if you stand up for your rights, resist, use the legal system, it’s surprising how well you can do. And I’m looking forward as an observer, not a participant in this case, to seeing Harvard basically wipe the floor with these dictators.

Watch the clip above.