The Ivy League university has discussed the idea with donors and estimates that the cost for establishing it would be between $500 million and $1 billion.
Harvard is considering starting a program for conservative studies — but some on the right argue such a program would be insufficient to increase ideological diversity on campus.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Harvard’s leadership has discussed launching an initiative described as a center for conservative scholarship, possibly modeled on the Hoover Institution at Stanford. The Ivy League university has discussed the idea with donors and estimates that the cost for establishing it would be between $500 million and $1 billion.
Harvard has faced increased criticism from conservatives since anti-Israel protests became prominent in 2023. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, the university has faced multiple investigations due to alleged discrimination and its handling of antisemitic incidents on campus. Harvard is currently suing the federal government over the freeze on research funding and threats to its ability to enroll international students.
A Harvard spokeswoman told NR, “As President Garber stated to the Harvard community on April 29, the University will ‘speed the establishment of a University-wide initiative to promote and support viewpoint diversity.’ Since that announcement, University leaders have engaged in conversations to support and accelerate this commitment.”
“The initiative will ensure exposure to the broadest ranges of perspectives on issues, and will not be partisan, but rather will model the use of evidence-based, rigorous logic and a willingness to engage with opposing views,” she added.
Less than 3 percent of Harvard’s faculty identify as conservative, while more than three-quarters identify as liberal or very liberal.
“I have been appalled by the university’s attempts to silence students or faculty who express conservative values,” House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) told NR. “While I do believe Harvard has its work cut out for itself, I am heartened to see them taking a small step in the right direction by creating this center to promote more ideological diversity on campus. We will see if Harvard’s implementation of this center lives up to its promise.”
Richard Avramenko, the director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University, said the effectiveness of Harvard’s plans depends on their approach. At ASU, its civics school has been able to “provide real classes, unapologetically, on topics that have been banished from traditional departments — like the American Founding, the U.S. Constitution, and free market economics.” Moreover, it provides faculty “with alternative viewpoints to serve on college- and university-level committees.” Similar civics schools have been launched at Florida State University, the University of Florida, the Ohio State University, and the University of Tennessee.
However, if Harvard’s center for conservative scholarship does not have original curricula or tenured faculty, its “ability to affect institutional change will be limited” because it would be largely limited to guest speakers and visiting professors. “I worry that such new centers will simply provide cover for no real change—i.e., a place where conservative donors, who have otherwise withdrawn their love, will be pointed,” Avramenko said.
Jay Greene, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Education Policy of the Heritage Foundation, was similarly skeptical that the proposed center would do much to increase ideological diversity on campus. “Viewpoint diversity cannot be restored by creating a separate unit on campus that is welcoming to different perspectives. Viewpoint diversity has to be diffused across the institution,” he said.
“Creating a separate unit for diverse perspectives would give license to the rest of the university to remain unchanged or become even more extreme. Since all of the other units educate almost all of the students and control almost all of the resources, a separate unit would be a scam to trick potential donors and critical policymakers into thinking that Harvard was really doing something when they would not be.”
Greene told NR, “Senior administrators and boards of trustees have to create independent bodies populated with diverse perspectives to control future hiring and tenure decisions. The faculty will almost certainly hate this because they feel entitled to run their own universities as if they were some kind of giant commune. But universities are not communes and faculty are only employees.”