“There’s no university in the country that could survive the loss of federal money,” a law professor at the University of Chicago told The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller earlier this year, when he was reporting on the atmosphere of crisis surrounding Harvard and American higher education as a whole. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” Gersen, a law professor at Harvard and a contributing writer to this magazine, provides essential analysis of the government’s aims and of the stakes of the fight. In a deeply reported piece in this week’s issue, Emma Green explores how some schools are pivoting from diversity programs to an alternative framework known as pluralism, which “emphasizes everyone’s ability to thrive, with all their differences fully respected.” The pivot on notions of identity and community, however, is happening as “the mood in higher ed has shifted from introspective to panicked”—and it has elicited skepticism from all sides, with some on the right wary that pluralism is just D.E.I.
Author: Ian Crouch
Published at: 2025-04-16 22:00:00
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