Mansfield Calls for “A Certain Coercion” to Bring Conservatives to Harvard

Harvey Mansfield, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Government emeritus, taught at Harvard for more than six decades, and on September 17th, he returned to the University to say on the record what few professors would: the University needs “a kind of affirmative action” for conservatives.

More specifically, Mansfield affirmed, “a certain coercion needs to be put to the faculty until this happens.” To this end, while he believes that President Trump’s campaign against the University was “in a way, outrageous,” he argued the lawsuits still deserve credit: “I don’t think that the universities would have changed without his intervention, and especially without depriving the universities of large sums of money.”

Mansfield made these remarks at a lunch talk on viewpoint diversity hosted by the Society for the Rule of Law at Harvard Law School, a group of largely conservative and center-right lawyers. Alan Raul — a Harvard Law professor, Reagan-era White House staffer, and the Society’s board president — moderated. The audience was primarily law students, graduate students, faculty, and other affiliates. Indeed, there was a lack of undergraduates in the audience.