Harvard Law Professor J Mark Ramseyer in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. (©Kenji Yoshida)
It has been months since President Donald Trump and his team launched a relentless campaign against America's elite universities, with Harvard squarely in the crosshairs.
What some described as a culture war has since unveiled the deep ideological rifts and rigid orthodoxies that now dominate many of the nation's most prestigious academic institutions.
As Harvard weighs a possible settlement, J Mark Ramseyer, a Harvard Law professor and longtime member of its admissions committee, says the chronic institutional malaise will likely persist regardless.
In an interview with JAPAN Forward, Ramseyer offered an insider's account of the battles shaping America's oldest university and the far-reaching consequences that extend beyond the ivory tower.
Excerpts of the interview follow.
What role did the 2024 election play in highlighting academic divides?
The 2024 US presidential election was about many things, but one central theme was the elite and non-elite division. Trump latched onto the populist resentment of eight years of Obama-era elitist politics. And of course, if you're going to take on elites, then taking on Harvard fits perfectly.
That said, Harvard is not significantly more left-wing than other top-tier and second-tier American universities. They vary by department. The faculties at business and law schools are quite liberal, but the students are somewhat diverse. In medical schools and sciences, the political leaning is closer to the American average. The main issue is the humanities department, which is almost entirely Democratic but also tends to be on the fringe.
Are scientists paying the price for the extremes of the humanities?
These fringe people are the ones who, after Hamas invaded Israel, had 30-some groups come together to declare the attack wonderful and blame Israel for it. Unlike the sciences, they don't rely heavily on federal funding.
So when Trump cuts funding to Harvard, it's the doctors and scientists — many of them Republicans — who are punished for the sins of the radicals. But the scientists saw the growing intolerance in the humanities and chose not to intervene, so my sympathy is somewhat muted.
What is the future of affirmative action at Harvard?
Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled such discrimination unconstitutional, and schools are now required to comply. Yet many Harvard admissions and professors would rather pretend they're not factoring race into admissions, while continuing to do just that. For the past 20 years, they have denied engaging in racial discrimination, but the reality is they've done so on a large scale.
However, it's not just about student admissions. The same issues extend to faculty hiring and promotion, like tenure decisions and honorary appointments.
Take, for instance, Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard. She's someone who did not merit tenure, yet not only was she granted it, she was promoted well beyond her capabilities, to the point of clear incompetence.
When it comes to race, you could technically evaluate merit using objective measures like citation counts, test scores, and other standardized metrics. Yet political bias is harder to address. Because trying to assess or act on someone's political leanings risks infringing on their free speech rights.
Why is political diversity so challenging in certain fields?
Suppose Harvard decides to hire Republican faculty for its anthropology department. Where would they even find one? Practically none exist. A PhD in anthropology prepares you for one job: to become a professor in the field.
But since nearly all anthropologists are on the far left, they're unlikely to ever hire someone who doesn't share their views. If you are a conservative college student, you're not going to pursue a PhD in anthropology, because there's no future for you in the discipline.
How does the comfort women controversy reflect the decline in humanities scholarship?
The backlash I faced after publishing my paper on comfort women four years ago is not entirely unrelated to the declining quality of the humanities department. The subpar faculty standards and the deterioration of educational quality have real consequences.
If you read the primary sources and secondary research on the comfort women issue in Japanese, the full history of the dispute is laid out clearly. But most of that material hasn't been translated into English. So academics, especially American scholars of Japan, have remained surprisingly unaware of this history.
Most American scholars learn Japanese in college, and it takes years before they can sit down with a dictionary and work through something like a newspaper article. That's typically considered fourth-year Japanese, roughly equivalent to a fourth-grade reading level. And for the most part, that's as far as most American academics ever get.
If you don't actively use Japanese, you lose it. By the time many faculty members reach their 40s, they're likely no longer truly literate in the language. Of course, they won't admit that openly. There's an unspoken norm among Japanese studies scholars in the US to avoid speaking Japanese with one another to not embarrass themselves.
Does it have any links to the spread of comfort women statues abroad?
The same problem is observed behind the proliferation of comfort women statues overseas. Take, for example, the recent exhibition at Britain's Imperial War Museums on the history of the comfort women. Someone connected to the comfort women movement or South Korea's Korean Council was likely involved.
These museums claim to have conducted thorough research, but that usually means they only read what's available in English, which overwhelmingly reflects the Korean narrative. They probably reviewed three or four articles, thought "this sounds about right," and left it at that.
RELATED:
- Trump vs Harvard: The Battle Beyond the Headlines
- INTERVIEW | J Mark Ramseyer and Jason Morgan Discuss Comfort Women Research and Academic Fortitude
- Great Minds Don't Always Think Alike: What Happens When a Harvard Professor Challenges the Status Quo
Author: Kenji Yoshida
