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The Trump administration’s “unprecedented” attack on Harvard will harm the school’s global contributions and fail to achieve the goal of combatting antisemitism on campus, PSP Partners founder and former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said Thursday at Semafor’s World Economy Summit in Washington, DC.
Pritzker is the lead member of the Harvard Corporation, one of two boards of governors at the university.
“Attacking research, attacking who you’re going to hire on campus, attacking lifesaving medical therapies — I don’t see how that’s related to fighting antisemitism,” Pritzker told Semafor’s Liz Hoffman.
Harvard is the richest university in the world, with a $64 billion endowment. The Trump administration cut off $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts earlier this month after Harvard rejected the administration’s demands to oversee its enrollment, hiring, governance, and other practices — changes the White House said were aimed at combating antisemitism. The administration has also floated revoking the school’s tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll foreign students. Harvard doubled down and sued the administration on Monday.
Pritzker said the support for the university indicated that “in general, cross-country, people don’t want our federal government running our universities and our colleges.”
“The demands placed on the university were just really so unprecedented and so beyond what anyone could have expected,” Pritzker said, adding that Harvard’s objection to Trump’s demands should not be interpreted as “a lack of commitment to change.”
Harvard is dedicated to combating antisemitism, she said, adding that the school is “strengthened by viewpoint diversity, that’s free from hate and harassment.”
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Pritzker was one of two people to whom US President Donald Trump addressed his Harvard demands — which some news outlets suggested may be tied to a long-running feud between Trump and Pritzker’s family over a real estate deal gone bad.
Pritzker also took aim at Trump’s approach to tariffs, saying they made no sense.
“Honestly, I don’t really get it,” she told Semafor. If China is the real issue, Pritzker said, then it is unclear why Trump would alienate Washington’s allies.
“Why aren’t we strengthening the American platform with Canada and with Mexico and then really saying to the Chinese, ‘Hey, you need to change,’” she said, adding that all the senior leaders she’s discussed the situation with are “really struggling” with how to manage it.
“This chaotic approach is really disconcerting.”
The Semafor View
European markets have suffered from a lack of competitiveness with the US and China, with just a handful of tech startups to come out of the continent. But countries everywhere are facing similar business challenges as they transition to cleaner energy and chase technological dominance.