'We will crush you': NYT columnist warns Trump sent these institutions a clear message

President Donald Trump is trying to "crush" colleges and universities around the country, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof warned Monday on CNN — and the war he's waging against Harvard is about much more than just Harvard.

"I want to talk about this spat between the university and the administration," said anchor Boris Sanchez, noting that both Kristof and his wife have at various points served as members of Harvard's board of overseers. "Why do you think the Trump administration is going after Harvard?"

"I think the Trump administration is going after Harvard for the same reason that Vladimir Putin went after universities in Russia, that Xi Jinping went after universities in China, that Viktor Orban went after Universities in Hungary: authoritarians don't want alternative sources of information, of moral judgment, of alternative ideas. They want full control," said Kristof. "The idea that this is about antisemitism, when the Trump administration itself is defending neo-Nazis in Charlottesville or hanging out with descendants of Nazis in terms of AfD in Germany is just ludicrous ... and the idea that somehow he's going to, you know, address antisemitism by reducing cancer research at Harvard Medical School, or heart disease research, or, you know, research on Lou Gehrig's Disease is just ludicrous."

ALSO READ: 'Alarming': Small colleges bullied into silence as Trump poses 'existential threat'

Kristof added that "elite universities" have made themselves "vulnerable" to right-wing attacks by being unfairly exclusive, and by looking the other way on antisemitic strains in the Israel protests last year. However, he added, revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status or freezing funding for cancer research in retaliation makes no sense, and has a much darker motive.

"I quickly want to touch on what the impact would be of Harvard losing that tax-exempt status and the $2.2 billion in federal grants," said Sanchez. "It does have a 50-plus billion dollar endowment, so do you think something is going to change in terms of the quality of education, the quality of research that it does based on this pressure from the administration?"

"Look, Harvard will be just fine, but what this is about is an administration trying to crush higher education in general, at a time when there are plenty of universities that are really fighting for their business model," said Kristof. "One of the universities in the 50 that the administration named is Portland State University here in Oregon, where my parents taught for many years, which doesn't have that kind of cushion, and, you know, just as President Trump tried to send a signal to law firms that we will crush you if you resist, he's now trying to send that message to universities around the country and to other institutions."

"That's why it's so important that universities do what law firms like Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps did not, which is to fight for credibility, for their integrity, and for the well-being of their stakeholders," Kristof added.

Watch the video below or at the link here.

- YouTube www.youtube.com