The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard
Freedom is on the line. But so are jobs.
Harvard is easy to dislike. It’s rich. It’s elitist. It rejected my application back when I was a high school senior.
But the Trumpist effort to destroy Harvard and other elite universities — for that is clearly their intention — will do vast damage to our nation’s future.
The most important aspect of this campaign of intimidation and disruption is, of course, the attack on freedom of thought. I hope that nobody actually believes the MAGA line that universities are indoctrinating their students in wokeness, DEI, Marxism, whatever. The real complaint, obviously, is that these institutions aren’t indoctrinating their students — that they are exposing young people to a variety of ideas and encouraging them to think for themselves, when they should be preaching right-wing dogma and obedience to whatever The Leader says they should believe.
Given this terrifying reality of the Trumpian war on learning, indeed on scientific thought itself, it may seem crass to examine the economic consequences of the attacks on higher education. Yet it’s important to understand that these consequences will also be disastrous – both for the current economy and for the economy’s long-term future.
Harvard is a major U.S. exporter. The foreign students that the Trump administration is trying to ban usually pay their own tuition — money that shows up as a credit in the US trade balance. But arguably the much larger issue is that Harvard is a crucial element within the Greater Boston economy. This regional economy is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. economy, one of the most important generators of high incomes, specialized knowledge and innovation.
Metropolitan economies are always more than the sum of their parts. Businesses clump together, forming a metropolitan economy, because their positive interactions create an industrial ecology of mutually reinforcing strengths, usually built around some kind of core competence. One famous example is the San Francisco Bay Area, a nexus of global leadership in digital technology. Another is Greater New York, the world’s leading financial center.
What is so special about Greater Boston? The economy of Greater Boston can seem confusing, because its world-beating sectors look quite different from each other on the surface. First, there are the schools: Colleges and universities employ 87,000 people in the Greater Boston area, accounting for a far higher share of employment than they do in America as a whole. Second, there’s a world-class medical complex, treating patients from around the world and also training many of the world’s top doctors. Third, Greater Boston is a leading player in both AI and “tough tech,” which emphasizes how information interacts with the physical world. Fourth, Greater Boston is the world’s leading biotech hub.
What do all these activities have in common? The answer, surely, is that they’re all linked by intellectual curiosity, rigorous thinking, scientific discipline, and an openness to new ideas. All of these qualities engender an openness to the very best talent around the world – students, researchers and entrepreneurs. Moreover, all of the parts are mutually supporting: the intellectual ferment within the universities and medical complex is a prime source of business innovation, and business success brings financial support and acclaim for the schools.
Harvard is by no means the dominant player in this intellectual and economic universe. It may not even be the most important player. At a guess M.I.T. has, in a direct sense, been a larger incubator of new businesses than its neighbor two miles up Massachusetts Ave. But M.I.T. wouldn’t be what it is without Harvard nearby, and vice versa. The same goes for the dozens of other fine universities in the area, and the hundreds — probably thousands — of businesses nearby. The hospitals and the medical research are part of the same ecosystem.
So destroying Harvard, even if the campaign against intellectualism stopped there — which it wouldn’t — would be like pulling a crucial piece out of a Jenga tower. The odds are that the whole structure of the Greater Boston education and innovation ecosystem would collapse. Consequently, America would lose all that Greater Boston does to advance and enrich our nation.
I should also note that Harvard doesn’t just educate many of the children of America’s elite. It also educates the children of elites around the world; that is, if Trump doesn’t prevent them coming to America. One may have mixed feelings about that role, but the reality is that Harvard is an important pillar in the edifice of American soft power.
Do MAGA types understand how much damage their campaign against universities will do to American prosperity and power? Probably not. But I suspect that it wouldn’t matter if they did. From their point of view, making America poorer, weaker and sicker is an acceptable price for keeping the nation suitably ignorant.
MUSICAL CODA
It's not just that they want to keep America ignorant. Now that they have established themselves as the dominant force they don't care if they destroy 90% of the American economy, in fact that is what they are intentionally doing, do that, at the end of the day theu have 100% control over the 10% of the economy that is still existent.
This is what faschist dictators do. They destroy and control.
The existence of Boston as an economic force is a threat to their hegemony.
With funding from a half-dozen Federal agencies, I sent 50 delegations of US scientists abroad to foreign research groups to assess where America stood in science and technology. We learned a lot of things, like China was investing huge amounts in R&D to pass the US in world leadership in science. And succeeding. Now the Trump Gang is accelerating that process by kneecapping American universities, which have been the world's incubator for the best science. Take a look at the posted research group photos of American universities. They all look like the United Nations with researchers from China, India, and many other countries, plus a few from the US. Now the Trump Gang is driving away this talent, which has been critical to America's technology companies. There's only one solution. Elect a Democrat who can clean this mess up, like FDR did for Hoover's debacle.