President Trump’s moves against Harvard University for discrimination have spread horror among the liberal elite, including those on publicly funded television. Christiane Amanpour, host of Amanpour & Co., talked to Harvard professor Steven Levitsky, coauthor of How Democracies Die. (Hint: He means Trump.)
A full 21 minutes of the Friday show was devoted to both host and left-wing guest defending Harvard by attacking Trump as a resurrected Joe McCarthy, rantings that Amanpour infused with self-congratulation, even airing a segment of her own recent self-righteous graduation speech in which she regaled a captive audience at Harvard with similar comparisons.
As caught by NewsBusters’ commencement-speech connoisseur Alex Christy, on Wednesday Amanpour went on an anti-Trump rant under the guise of an address to graduates of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, even quoting Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as well as Mr. “Red Scare.”
She noted Trump pulling federal grants and banning international students from Harvard. [Click “Expand.”)
AMANPOUR: I want to play something that Trump said yesterday. I mean, we know that the administration claims that all this is about antisemitism, combating antisemitism. We also know that Harvard, even, you know, last year and beyond, have taken measures against antisemitism and apparently DEI. Trump has also pulled, as we’ve talked about, billions in federal grants and the latest he’s doing with international students. Do you believe that is what this is all about? And then I’m going to play a little soundbite of Trump.
LEVITSKY: Absolutely I do not believe that. This is not about antisemitism. It’s not about DEI. These are pretexts authoritarian governments. We need to be very clear. This is an authoritarian government that is using the machinery of government, the state as a weapon to punish, to bully, to silence business, media law firms, universities and other elements of civil society….there are more anti-Semites in the Trump administration than there are at Harvard.
For the record, Harvard is apparently crawling with anti-Semites, as proven in a damning recent report issued by Harvard that does not get referenced. Amanpour also ignored the anti-Israel activists perversely honored at various Harvard graduation ceremonies, right under her nose.
AMANPOUR: ….I just wonder what you make of the philosophy coming from President Trump or his administration. Do you think there’s a concerted — I mean, is it a plan that will work? How do you characterize what they’re doing?
LEVITSKY: I think it needs to be understood as a combination of authoritarianism and ineptitude. So, I don’t know if you discerned a philosophy there in the vomiting that we just heard….What I see is an effort to attack, punish, and weaken institute — civic institutions that the Trump administration views as opposition or as they view as enemies of the government. Again, that’s what autocrats do.
Amanpour then turned the spotlight on herself.
AMANPOUR: Professor, I’m not an entirely disinterested party. I was a foreign student in the United States 45 years ago, and I actually gave the graduation speech just yesterday to the Harvard Kennedy School of Graduates [sic]more than half of whom are, as you say, internationals. But I spoke about something, which I know that you’ve spoken about and even a former Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has just written about, the apparent lack of resistance, not just — not at Harvard but around the country to this assault that you’ve been discussing. I just want to play a little bit of what I said and get you to comment on how you feel about it. And I was quoting basically the patron saint of broadcast journalists, Edward R. Murrow, who after his distinguished World War II. Korea as a foreign correspondent took on McCarthyism and the Red Scare at home. This is what I said.
Sure enough, up popped Amanpour speaking to Harvard Kennedy School grads, self-righteously spouting “always remember, as Edward R. Murrow said, that dissent is not disloyalty.”
AMANPOUR: Professor Levitsky, I wonder what you think about that quote from Morrow, that, you know, it seems that everybody’s terrorized in the United States, or am I wrong?
LEVITSKY….it’s a shame that Morrow’s words are so relevant, so pertinent today, but I think you were right to raise them. My sense — I share the view that Americans have been very slow to react to Trump’s authoritarianism….
There was only a mild interjection near the end, so vaguely expressed it could have been misunderstood, that perhaps Harvard had become an echo chamber of leftism:
AMANPOUR: And finally, do you think there is any room at a place like Harvard or elsewhere to diversify? I don’t even know what real word to use, but that it’s not just one echo chamber of one type of thought. I’m not talking about, you know, raising lies to the level of truths, but just diverse opinions and diverse ideological views.
Predictably, Levitsky dismissed the criticism.
LEVITSKY: You know, I think that these issues of ideological diversity have been somewhat overstated….
Amanpour then spoke with Harvard’s Dr. Kari Nadeau, who worried about canceled government contracts for health research. Nadeau whined, “When you degrade science, you also degrade the health of the American people in the globe.”
