the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jun 9, 2025
On May 27, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) sent a letter to federal agencies, recommending that they terminate their existing contracts with Harvard University. Those contracts are estimated to be worth $100 million, so this is a serious attack by the Trump administration on one of the country’s most famous universities.
The GSA letter accuses Harvard of racial discrimination against white people, claiming that Harvard favors black and Latino people in student admissions as well as hiring. But is Trump really the defender of the rights of working-class white people he claims to be? Well, not really. The letter says that Harvard offers a remedial, “middle-school” math course for incoming freshmen, apparently to “prove” that Harvard admits students who don’t deserve to be there. But the real problem is that working-class students of all races are shut out of a good education in this country’s severely underfunded public schools. And the Trump administration is busy cutting public education funding even more.
The letter also accuses Harvard of allowing anti-Semitic protesters to harass and attack Jewish students on its campus. But when Trump issued an executive order calling for “rooting out anti-Semitism on college campuses,” what he specifically demanded was that universities provide extensive information about all students who had protested Israel’s war on Gaza—even though the majority of the protesters had certainly not harassed or attacked Jewish students, and in fact welcomed Jews among them.
What Trump really wanted was for universities to fall in line behind him and his agenda. Most of them complied, but Harvard did not. So, Trump set out to punish Harvard, systematically aiming his blows at the heart of the university’s financing.
In April, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding for Harvard and also told the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Then, in May, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revoked Harvard’s certification to enroll foreign students—who make up 27% of the university’s enrollment and pay Harvard hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Then came the GSA letter to federal agencies to cancel Harvard’s contracts.
Trump is making an example of Harvard to send a message to all universities—that the chief must be obeyed. Universities are places where people can learn history, science and other subjects, which could then allow them to develop their own views about the world. But that would go against the Trump administration’s attempts to control education and suppress opposition.
Look, for example, at the Trump administration’s orchestrated effort to restrict information children get in school about this country’s history of slavery. It is part of the same old strategy the bosses have used for centuries: to divide the working class along racial lines.
And that’s what workers have to watch out for from Trump, that billionaire boss in the White House.