If politics can be said to be a team sport, then MSNBC host and Thursday Morning Joe panelist Al Sharpton is the coach who puts the ball on the tee, and Rep. Jamie Raskin is the batter who takes the easy swing. Sharpton asked if a federal judge ruling President Trump illegally withheld funding from Harvard proves that his anti-DEI policies are political, and Raskin dutifully replied they are, going so far as to label them “Stalinist.”
Sharpton wondered:
I want to ask you, following up what you just said. Do you feel that the whole fight around DEI, which in many cases have been distorted, now can have a clear view that this is something that the administration is politicizing and that the academic community has been trying to deal with more on a balanced way, not an advocacy way, and that this ruling can help bring that forward, even though it will likely be appealed by the president and go to a Trump Supreme Court, at least that's what they'll try to do?
Of course, Raskin agreed, “Yeah, I think that's right. Obviously, Trump has wanted to attack any kind of diversity or equity initiative at the colleges and universities and made common cause with the most right-wing forces in the country to try to dismantle it. Of course, if there were any race discrimination or gender discrimination going on, then people should bring those as lawsuits.”
Raskin then claimed that if the federal government, which is charged with enforcing civil rights law, were to involve itself in those controversies, that would be akin to Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin, “But otherwise the federal government should back off and allow the colleges and universities to govern themselves. We don't need the Trump Administration and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump micromanaging the admissions process of colleges and universities across the country. We're talking about thousands of campuses, and you know, we don't need to have Stalinist-style control.”
The only response from the six-person panel was from former MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who could be heard snickering and seen smiling in agreement. However, the question surrounding Harvard is whether or not it has an institutionalized anti-Semitism problem and whether Trump’s blocking of funding is an appropriate response to that, not its admissions or even its DEI initiatives. But speaking of Harvard, admissions, and federal judges, the judge that ruled against Trump is Allison Burroughs, the Obama appointee who previously upheld Harvard’s admission standards before the Supreme Court overruled her and banned affirmative action.
Here is a transcript for the September 4 show:
MSNBC Morning Joe
9/4/2025
9:02 AM ET
AL SHARPTON: Yes, I want to ask you, following up what you just said. Do you feel that the whole fight around DEI, which in many cases have been distorted, now can have a clear view that this is something that the administration is politicizing and that the academic community has been trying to deal with more on a balanced way, not an advocacy way, and that this ruling can help bring that forward, even though it will likely be appealed by the president and go to a Trump Supreme Court, at least that's what they'll try to do?
JAMIE RASKIN: Yeah, I think that's right. Obviously, Trump has wanted to attack any kind of diversity or equity initiative at the colleges and universities and made common cause with the most right-wing forces in the country to try to dismantle it. Of course, if there were any race discrimination or gender discrimination going on, then people should bring those as lawsuits. But otherwise the federal government should back off and allow the colleges and universities to govern themselves. We don't need the Trump Administration and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump micromanaging the admissions process of colleges and universities across the country. We're talking about thousands of campuses, and you know, we don't need to have Stalinist-style control.