Mike Steger argued that Harvard University’s problems extend far beyond recent disputes over diversity programs, tracing what he described as the institution’s long-running opposition to the American System while pointing to Trump administration initiatives intended to expand skilled trades, manufacturing and mission-oriented education.
“This isn’t a story about DEI, woke professors, or a diversity office that changed its name three times to dodge a lawsuit,” Steger said.
“It’s a story of treason that started 300 years ago, and how it’s finally being confronted.”
Steger said the administration’s latest challenge to higher education involves proposed Treasury Department and IRS regulations affecting the tax-exempt status of private educational institutions that use race-based preferences.
Treasury says the proposed rules could affect as many as 18,000 institutions.
“This week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent proposed a rule that would strip any private university of its tax-exempt status if it’s still running race-based preferences, even if they’ve renamed the program,” Steger said.
Steger placed the current dispute within a much longer historical argument about Harvard, beginning with Massachusetts losing its independent charter in the 17th century.
He cited Harvard historian Sam Morison’s description of John Leverett as establishing the university’s liberal tradition and pointed to the conflict between Harvard and revivalist preacher George Whitefield.
According to Steger, Whitefield’s influence extended across the colonies and helped establish the cultural foundations that preceded the American Revolution.
Steger said Benjamin Franklin published Whitefield’s sermons, became his friend and traveled with him to London to defend the American cause.
“This was an elite, liberal, and secular institution declaring war on the very movement that shaped our independence,” Steger said.
He also pointed to Harvard graduates among Crown loyalists banished from Massachusetts in 1778 and later connected Harvard’s establishment with fortunes made through the opium trade with China.
Steger then turned to economic policy, arguing that Harvard helped replace the American System of protective tariffs with free-trade economics.
He focused on Harvard economist Frank Taussig, who led the university’s political economy program for decades and chaired the U.S. Tariff Commission.
“He promoted the same British free trade system that our revolution had been fought against,” Steger said.
“He gutted the American system not just from the halls of government, but even from the intellectual life of our nation.”
Steger used economist Jeffrey Sachs as a modern example of the policies he opposes.
He cited Sachs’ work in Bolivia beginning in 1985 and later in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, criticizing the rapid economic reforms commonly described as “shock therapy.”
“In 1985, Sachs got his first shot at making a nation in Harvard’s image,” Steger said.
“He was given Bolivia for his experiment. He tore through the economy with what he proudly branded shock therapy: instant price hikes, gutted subsidies, an economy stripped bare overnight.”
Steger said Sachs later went to Moscow through the Harvard Institute for International Development and blamed similar policies for severe economic and social consequences in post-Soviet Russia.
He connected those policies to the broader free-trade era in the United States, including NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.
“Now think about this: soon after Russia was destroyed, these same policies were turned on whom? On the United States: NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and our total deindustrialization,” Steger said.
His argument then shifted from universities and economic theory to shortages of skilled American workers.
Steger cited labor needs involving naval shipbuilding, welding, mechanics, electricians, construction, semiconductors and manufacturing.
“This isn’t a labor shortage,” Steger said.
“It’s a kind of extinction event for American know-how, the kind of knowledge that doesn’t live in a book. It lives in a man’s hands and in his experience, passed down from one generation to the next.”
Steger contrasted what he described as an academic emphasis on credentials with earlier American efforts to expand practical education.
He pointed to Abraham Lincoln’s creation of land-grant colleges in 1862 and Douglas MacArthur’s later reforms at West Point as examples of education organized around national needs.
“Lincoln didn’t wait for the war to end to invest in the American worker,” Steger said.
“He did it in the middle of the fight because he understood that winning the war and rebuilding the nation were the same mission.”
Steger said the Trump administration is pursuing a modern version of that approach through the Foundry School and the newly created U.S. Space Academy.
Trump signed an executive order establishing the Space Academy on Aug. 28.
“President Trump just launched the Foundry School,” Steger said.
“It’s a real curriculum built with Stanford and seven other universities, training the next generation of industrial founders, working with company and company leaders today in the advanced entrepreneurial skills this country desperately needs.”
Steger also highlighted the administration’s July report, “Science: A New Golden Age,” which calls for changes to the federal research system and greater emphasis on advanced manufacturing, skilled trades and practical knowledge outside traditional academic pipelines.
“This is the same fight Lincoln and MacArthur fought: reach every American with real talent, real skill, and a real sense of mission, and give them something greater to build than a resume of credentialed merit badges,” Steger said.
He concluded by describing those initiatives as part of an effort to revive the American System and redirect young Americans toward manufacturing, science, skilled trades and national projects.
“Recruit this country’s talent into the greatest mission America has ever had: to build a nation conscious, once again, of its own heritage, and to use that heritage, the power of the American system, to advance the very cause of civilization itself,” Steger said.
“Not Harvard’s tiny yard, but the great horizon of the American mile.”
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