Shades of Rodney Dangerfield with this Onion-esque headline. One of so many written this past year, one of so many more which will be written. Of that I have absolutely no question. The idea of Donald Trump as holder of the highest office in our land was always screamingly absurd, but an opinion writer for The Hill has come up with a notion that’s even more preposterous. And that is, that Trumpty Dumpty go sully the ivy-covered halls of academia, Harvard specifically.
While most of the left-of-center professors, administrators and students might walk off the fabled campus en masse, that might be the best thing to happen to Harvard in decades. At least for those who believe the reputation of the school, as well as the quality of its professors and students, is being irreversibly sucked down by the “woke” vortex swirling about its ivy-covered buildings.
If ever an institution needed the skills of a “turnaround expert,” it is Harvard. And no one has been articulating that desperate need more than Harvard alum and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
After the savage Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, Ackman has been on a one-man quest to not only call out the vile antisemitism permeating the Harvard campus, but have its president — Claudine Gay — fired. While the Harvard board of trustees announced they have no intention of getting rid of Gay, Ackman remains undaunted.
If Ackman is looking for a wingman to bolster his attacks on Harvard, he might want to consider reaching out to Trump. Not surprisingly, the former president has long had an opinion on the fraud, waste, abuse and bias tied to these once prestigious institutions of higher learning.
Back during the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton proposed making public college free for middle-class families. Trump proceeded to shred that taxpayer-punishing giveaway. “Universities get massive tax breaks for massive endowments,” Trump rightly pointed out. “These huge multi-billion-dollar endowments are tax free. But too many of these universities don’t use the money to help with tuition and student debt. Instead, these universities use the money to pay their administrators or put donors’ names on buildings or just store the money, keep it, and invest it. In fact, many universities spend more on private equity managers than on tuition programs.”
Right there, with the “private equity managers” mention, Trump and Ackman have a connection. So why not join together and use their superpowers for good?
My best instincts tell me that Trump would deal with Harvard with the same efficiency and acumen that he dealt with infrastructure week, health care, the opioid crisis, and anything else that you can think of off the top of your head. The author of this piece was a writer for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and apparently he’s oblivious to the fact that this idea reads like it’s out of the pages of Mad Magazine or an episode of The Simpsons, “Trump For Harvard President.”
“It would be the political and academic collision of matter vs. antimatter and might set off the largest flash in the history of higher education,” the man says. It would make one of America’s most prestigious universities turn into a flaming joke, worldwide. That said, Trump will be looking for a job this time next year, if not sooner. Might as well start examining options, right?
And here I thought, being the second coming of ‘christ’,(anti-christ); the best president ever, superman, and Einstein, all rolled into a 400 lb diaper, would be enough! Sure. Why not?
Not that Trump would take the offer, but that’s exactly what Harvard needs to pull out of its upside-down leftist DEI (except for Jews) downward spiral. If Harvard ever wants to turn around its now terribly tarnished reputation to prospective new students, employers, and donors, its going to have to take a pretty hard right to compensate.
Your “… Trump will be looking for a job this time next year, if not sooner…” is entertaining as it gets, at the moment. However, in reality what would the malodorous mango do? Don Don, is, amongst other things, is a failure, an incompetent liar, a convicted ezx offender, and indicted; so he possesses the competencies (knowledge, skills, experience) – not formal qualifications – to undertake either a F/T or P/T role, under strict supervision, in a suitably secure institution. A role that lets Don Don act out his dementing illusions, delusions and impulses – a mirrored echo chamber -that has no tangible or negative impacts on the real world that Don Don is incapable of actually acknowledging, existing or rationally functioning in. His future is limited.
Oh Scott, surely ye jest 🙂
Wow! I thought Larry Summers would always hold the record of worst Prez of Harvard in modern times!! Thing 45 might just blow him outta the water!! Fun times!!
I think the felonious fecal fumarole will have a full-time job cleaning urinals in a state or federal prison next year and, in the likely event of bankruptcy, even those meager proceeds will be garnisheed to pay down the many civil judgments he is accumulating in civil courts. On the brighter side, he can look forward to a job for life, free room and board, and the knowledge that for the first time in his life his work is providing tangible benefits to others.
Bonus points for “felonious fecal fumarole”! The only thought I had was that he is odious and odiferous.
Are you talking about the obscene odoriferous ordure or the extreme evil excrement?
The 37 billion dollars endowment of Harvard would buy Trump a lot of Big Macs.
Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t harvard plump up student grades to make itself look good? Call me kooky but adding drumpf to that mess will not help its reputation or anything else for that matter. Still, if it’d meant doofus would spend his time at harvard and NOT in the oval, the nation would be a better place. There is only the school he can f*ck up instead of the entire country.
They can even rename Harvard to “Trump University”.
I understand that the name is now available…
There is a huge difference between antisemitism. and disagreeing vehemently with Netanyahu’s policies. You can love America and ardently dislike a president’s ideology and actions.
I had a,Jewish grandmother I loved dearly. I support Israel’s right to exist. And a great deal.of the situation we see now is caused by the other Arab countries who took in refugees but never made any attempt to integrate them.into their social structure,preferring to.use them as soldiers in their attempts to destroy Israel. It is a long wrangled clash between highly educated Jews building a more high-tech system of farming and irrigation which destroyed a,way of life built around wells,,small villagrs,,and sheep.herds. But affixing blame after all these decades is pointless. We need a two state solution, and both sides have to give. Hamas and Hezbollah need to God’s be so do the ultra orthodox.
I wish we could take all the nut jobs Nazis, antisemites, white supremacists, Muslim extremists, ultraorthodox, etc s–and put them somewhere with a lot of natural predators, a,week’s,worth of food, and pen knives and at best a pistol with a hundred rounds of ammo. And leave them there. Form a blockade so they cannot leave, and let rhem.kill.each other off.