The idea that the late night comedy shows are just MSNBC with jokes was on full display on Tuesday’s installment of CBS’s The Late Show. Host Stephen Colbert claimed that the Trump Administration’s recent demands on Harvard were “ridiculous,” “insane,” and “dictatorial,” but Colbert never provided any context for why those demands were given.
Colbert began, “In the face of this authoritarian power grab, one institution just stood up to Trump. Lil' backstory: For some weeks now, the administration has been trying to MAGA-fy higher education by imposing demands on private universities. And yesterday, Harvard became the first university to refuse to comply with the administration's requirements.”
More backstory: Harvard, like so many elite colleges in this country, has an anti-Semitism problem. Nevertheless, Colbert was happy with the news, “Boom! Hey, Trump administration, now you're just like the rest of us, because you just got rejected by Harvard.”
Colbert claimed, “The demands the government made of Harvard were ridiculous and included things like immediately shutting down any programming related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Which would mean big changes to Harvard's curriculum. Any students registered for ‘Power to the people: Black power, radical feminism, and gay liberation’ will now find themselves enrolled in ‘Intro to Sudoku: Guess where the numbers go.’"
Meanwhile, at Columbia, the university’s own task force concluded the DEI offices ignored Jewish students’ concerns and contributed to the assumption that Jews fall on the wrong side of DEI’s oppressor-oppressed binary.
However, Colbert continued with the context-free lamentations, “The Trump administration also wanted Harvard to conduct plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members and to report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities.”
If you only got your news from The Late Show, then you probably have no idea who Claudine Gay is or why she is important for the plagiarism part because Colbert told zero jokes about her during her 2023 scandals.
Foreign students who get suspended by their universities for misconduct can have their visas revoked and be deported, so Colbert is, whether he realizes it or not, arguing that foreign students should be able to get away with lawlessness.
Instead, Colbert simply imagined this was about dorm rules, “Oh, great. I mean, dorm RAs were already drunk on power. This would only make it worse. ‘Uh, you guys? You're not allowed to microwave popcorn in the common areas. I could send you all to El Salvador, okay? Unless you guys wanna hang out? No? Okay.’"
He then celebrated, “Harvard's president clapped back to these insane dictatorial demands, ssaying,‘The university will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.’ Huzzah! Huzzah! I say. Egad.”
The demands only seem insane if you strip them of their context, which is precisely what Colbert did.
Here is a transcript for the April 15 show:
CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
4/15/2025
11:43 PM ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: In the face of this authoritarian power grab, one institution just stood up to Trump. Lil' backstory: For some weeks now, the administration has been trying to MAGA-fy higher education by imposing demands on private universities. And yesterday, Harvard became the first university to refuse to comply with the administration's requirements.
Boom! Hey, Trump administration, now you're just like the rest of us, because you just got rejected by Harvard. The demands the government made of Harvard were ridiculous and included things like immediately shutting down any programming related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Which would mean big changes to Harvard's curriculum. Any students registered for "Power to the people: Black power, radical feminism, and gay liberation" will now find themselves enrolled in "Intro to Sudoku: Guess where the numbers go."
The Trump administration also wanted Harvard to conduct plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members and to report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities.
Oh, great. I mean, dorm RAs were already drunk on power. This would only make it worse. "Uh, you guys? You're not allowed to microwave popcorn in the common areas. I could send you all to El Salvador, okay? Unless you guys wanna hang out? No? Okay."
Harvard's president clapped back to these insane dictatorial demands, saying, "The university will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights." Huzzah! Huzzah! I say. Egad.
