On Tuesday night, Chris Hayes found himself more closely resembling a conspiracy theorist than a journalist during his show, All In with Chris Hayes. Hayes, leaving out critical context around the federal decision to stop government funding from Harvard University, compared Trump to a communist Apparatchik, that is, someone who was blindly devoted to political ideologies– like a Soviet politician.
Of course, this rhetoric was only used to further highlight the presupposition that Trump was a dictator and autocrat, a view widely held by those on the left, like Hayes. The irony, however, is that if anyone is blinded from the truth by their own political ideologies, it was Hayes.
“The Trump administration is trying to put Harvard University, the nation's oldest college, out of business,” he whined near the top of the show. Further bloviating about how the was “one area of just genuine American exceptionalism.”
In the segment, Hayes said that the real reason behind the federal funding being pulled was because Trump wanted to “control what your ideology is.” According to Hayes:
They want to rewrite the school's curriculum in a way that is favorable and deferential to Trump and his worldview. Donald Trump wants the most powerful and legendary institution in higher education in this country, arguably in the world, to bend the knee to his whims and become a kind of controlled asset of MAGA. That is the goal here.
The original letter from the U.S. Department of Education that Hayes referenced throughout his monologue laid 10 reforms they would like to see implemented at Harvard, all of which should not be controversial:
- Governance reform among deans and professors.
- Merit based hiring practices (that is, not hiring based off of race, sex, religion, color, etc.).
- Merit based admission practices.
- International admissions reforms, and conducting a thorough screening process for applicants from countries that are hostile toward the U.S.).
- Third party auditing of the university to ensure that curriculum being taught to students is unbiased, and that there is diversity amongst the viewpoints being taught to students.
- Reforming programs with an “egregious” record of anti-Semitism to ensure equality for Jewish students.
- Stop the use of DEI practices.
- Student discipline transparency.
- Protections for those at the university who might discover that any of the outlined reformed programs are violated.
- Full transparency and accountability between the University, faculty, and students.
These proposed reforms undoubtedly had stemmed from the recent pro-Palestinian protests at Harvard, which reached a fever pitch last year when students created encampments, even inside of buildings, and harassed Jewish students. While the Harvard campus administration did discipline these students for their actions, the university also released a 331-page anti-Semitism report in April that stated 60 percent of Jewish students on campus had experienced discrimination, negative bias, and stereotyping.
The university had largely downplayed the obvious anti-Semitism on campus, something the White House was trying to fix by issuing a letter to Harvard’s administration. When Harvard refused the reforms, the White House followed through on their end of the deal and pulled federal funding.
Hayes touted the conspiracy theory that the actual reason the Trump administration has done this was because Trump wants to make Americans “more amenable to political domination.”
It seems, according to Hayes, that cracking down on anti-Semitism is a form of political domination, and comparable to actions of Communist Party members.
The full transcript is below. Click "expand" to read.
MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes
May 27, 2025
8:01:27 PM ESTCHRIS HAYES: The Trump administration is trying to put Harvard University, the nation's oldest college, out of business. Today, we learned the White House is set to pull all the remaining federal funding that flows through the school, that's about $100 million, according to estimates. That is, in addition to the billions of dollars in research funding, including extremely crucial biomedical research the administration has already frozen at the university. And, of course, last week, the White House halted Harvard's ability to enroll international students, which, The New York Times reports, could impact about 25 percent of the student body.
Here's the thing: people all over the world desperately want to come to the U.S. to study, because this country has, for decades now, offered the gold standard in terms of higher education globally. It's one area of just genuine American exceptionalism, and so international students are a huge boon to American universities and to the American students at those universities, and all the economic activity around it.
One study showed that about a million international students at American colleges and universities contributed more than $43 billion to the U.S. economy during the 2023 and 2024 academic year. You know all those complaints you hear from Donald Trump and lots of people about our trade deficit with China, right? We buy everything from us. They buy nothing from us. We buy everything from them. They buy nothing from us.
Well, one place that we have an enormous trade surplus with the rest of the world, is in higher ed. But no one in the Trump administration actually cares about that or any of this. This is all just punishment against the university after it rejected the White House's demand to install third party auditors.
Kind of ideological, like, party apparatchik minders, to, quote,” audit those programs and departments that most fuel anti-Semitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” Think about that phrase.
Now, to be clear, anti-Semitism is a real and pernicious problem in America. But by now, it is painfully obvious that it is just a convenient rhetorical weapon for Trump and his allies to gain full control of universities. I mean, think about that phrase: ideological capture. That can mean anything. We want to control what your ideology is. They want to rewrite the school's curriculum in a way that is favorable and deferential to Trump and his worldview.
