Dem Rep. Liccardo: ‘May Be Very Fair’ to Say Academia Has Groupthink

On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-CA) said that there is “always fair room for criticism about how universities have engaged in groupthink in recent decades, and that may be very fair,” but “the way that we punish universities that we don’t agree with is we don’t sign up to attend. We choose to go somewhere else. We ensure that there is a fair marketplace of ideas out there and to support other universities.”

Co-host Omar Jimenez asked, “[T]he core of, I guess, the Trump administration’s push here has seemed to mainly stem from the campus protests we saw at a number of schools protesting the war in Gaza and over antisemitism happening on campus. We also saw many Islamophobic incidents as well. But there were also broad complaints, even outside of that, that the groupthink at these schools was swayed too far in a liberal direction. Lawsuit and potential settlement aside, did you think there were areas that needed to improve in the Harvard or elite university culture, and if so, what are they?”

Liccardo answered, “I think there’s always fair room for criticism about how universities have engaged in groupthink in recent decades, and that may be very fair, but that’s part of a[n] active political discourse in our country. And the way that we punish universities that we don’t agree with is we don’t sign up to attend. We choose to go somewhere else. We ensure that there is a fair marketplace of ideas out there and to support other universities. But the approach should not be from the government to decide who wins or who loses in this exchange of ideas.”

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