Independence and Its Enemies: Harvard, Trump, and the Spirit of 1776

🔥 A Fourth of July Like No Other, the Morning After

On Independence Day’s night yesterday, the fireworks lit up the sky, just as they always do. But today, as a country, we are in a different place that is unfamiliar and ominous.

There was nothing to celebrate—so much more to contemplate. Our country’s ideals of equality and liberty are being betrayed, and so many of our fellow citizens just do not know how to process what is taking place.

Yet many Americans now feel that the words of the Declaration of Independence have taken on a new and poignant significance, as the rights and values it proclaims—liberty, equality, self-governance—are under sustained assault on multiple fronts.

I invite you to listen to Judge J. Michael Luttig, the revered conservative legal icon, as he denounces former President Trump and reflects—pointedly and painfully—on his “disappointment” with his longtime friend, Chief Justice John Roberts, in an exclusive interview on the Legal AF YouTube channel:

[1]

In December 2020 and January 2021, Judge Luttig provided urgent constitutional guidance to then-Vice President Mike Pence, advising unequivocally that the Vice President possessed no constitutional authority to reject or alter the certified electoral votes of the states. His role, Luttig emphasized, was strictly ministerial: to count the votes, not to question them. Any deviation, Luttig warned, would plunge the nation into “a revolution within a constitutional crisis.

To strengthen Pence’s hand, he issued a public statement on January 5, 2021, reinforcing this interpretation of the Constitution. Pence followed that advice, citing Judge Luttig by name in his January 6 letter to Congress—explicitly rejecting the false narrative pushed by Trump’s legal team and invoking the Constitution rather than the cult of personality. [2]

The Unfortunate and Distressing Case of the Trump Administration vs. Harvard

The Trump Administration, purporting to act on behalf of the United States, has carried out a sustained and misguided campaign against Harvard. It has threatened to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status, pressured federal agencies to cancel contracts worth about $100 million, frozen over $2.6 billion in federal research grants, and sought to block the enrollment of international students under the pretext of "national security" and combating antisemitism. [3]

Yet this rationale collapses under the weight of its contradictions.

Harvard’s Jewish faculty, donors, and students have repeatedly spoken out against these attacks, not because they deny the presence of antisemitism, but because they recognize authoritarian overreach when they see it. The administration’s posture betrays a deeper agenda: the desire to recast elite universities in its own image or to destroy their credibility altogether. By conflating criticism of Israeli government policies with antisemitism, Trump and his allies turn a real issue into a political weapon. [4].

In early June, a tongue-in-cheek petition circulated in Cambridge proposing that Massachusetts consider joining Canada to preserve academic freedom and pluralist governance. Though launched on Change.org with satirical flair, the petition captured a deeper unease beneath the humor: the sense that the foundational norms of American democracy—including institutional independence and reasoned dissent—are under siege. [5]

After all, the American colonies themselves once declared independence not in pursuit of romantic revolution, but to defend long-eroded rights, liberties, and civic institutions. Then as now, the purpose was not to overthrow order but to salvage it from those who wielded power without legitimacy.

Harvard, founded in 1636, predates the United States by more than a century. For 140 years before the Declaration of Independence, it stood as a beacon of learning, inquiry, and relative autonomy. Its authority does not derive from Washington; rather, it is one of the institutions from which the American experiment itself drew inspiration. If present trends continue, Harvard’s intellectual lineage may yet outlast the republic that followed it.

The Weaponization of Antisemitism

Among the most dangerous tactics deployed in this campaign is the weaponization of antisemitism. The Trump Administration has portrayed elite universities as hotbeds of Jew-hatred, while ignoring the actual rise in antisemitic incidents across Trump-aligned political rallies, online communities, and even government buildings. It has painted university protests—many of them peaceful, diverse, and driven by legitimate concern for Palestinian rights—as inherently hateful.

This framing is cynical. It does not protect Jewish Americans; it instrumentalizes their trauma. By turning a matter of civil rights into a culture war cudgel, the administration risks undermining the very seriousness of the issue it claims to champion.

Academic Independence as a Constitutional Principle

The Founders did not invent the concept of institutional autonomy; they inherited it. Magna Carta, in 1215, guaranteed the "freedom of the English Church." The concept expanded over time to encompass guilds, cities, and universities. Carl Degler, in Out of Our Past, reminds us that the American Revolution was not a rejection of British principles but an attempt to reclaim them when the Crown had gone astray. [6]

Today, when a government targets a university for political reprisal, it does more than violate norms—it threatens constitutional heritage. The Trump Administration’s interference with university governance recalls the Crown’s dissolution of colonial legislatures. It is not enough to say, “We will fight this in court.” The deeper question is: will we remember what we are fighting for?

The Long Shadow of Arbitrariness: From King George III to President Trump

In the 18th century, the face of British colonial repression in North America was Thomas Hutchinson, the Loyalist governor of Massachusetts and staunch defender of royal prerogative. Hutchinson enforced Crown policies such as the Stamp Act and fiercely opposed colonial demands for self-rule. He was, in effect, an early bureaucratic ideologue—not unlike Stephen Miller or Thomas Homan in the Trump era, who rationalized mass deportations, family separation, and the weaponization of immigration enforcement in the name of national order. Hutchinson's private letters, later intercepted and published by Benjamin Franklin, revealed a chilling belief that colonial liberties must be “abridged” to preserve imperial control. [7]

That single word—abridged—would cement his legacy as the poster child of bureaucratic arrogance in an age that was fast outgrowing it.

And yet, what seemed intolerable to the residents of Massachusetts in 1776—minor taxes, unspecific search warrants, the quartering of soldiers—might now appear almost quaint. The Crown lacked the tools of surveillance or enforcement that modern governments wield so easily. There were no ICE raids powered by facial recognition software, no dragnet data sweeps, no automated visa revocations via predictive analytics. Nor had Hannah Arendt yet entered the scene to name the totalitarian impulse and dissect its methods. [8]

The patriots of 1776 believed they were defending ancient liberties from a monarch who had abdicated his duty to the law. Today, we face not a monarch, but a movement—and a quieter, more insidious betrayal: not only of liberty itself, but of the constitutional scaffolding that gives liberty its meaning.

Adams, Adams, and Autonomy

If John and Samuel Adams were alive today, they would view the administration’s assault on Harvard with a mix of horror and grim familiarity. They were Harvard men, after all—graduates of a college that had, by 1776, already existed for not yet 250 years. For them, education was not just a personal privilege but a civic necessity. The idea that a federal executive might punish a university for its perceived ideological orientation would have smacked of the same abuses they once charged against George III: interference with local institutions, suppression of free thought, and arrogation of power beyond constitutional bounds. [9]

John Adams, a lawyer steeped in Enlightenment philosophy, revered the idea of independent institutions as bulwarks against tyranny. Samuel Adams, the radical organizer, understood the mobilizing power of civic education. Today, both would see in the Trump Administration’s crusade against Harvard a threat not just to a university, but to the American experiment itself.

Fighting for One’s Rights as Englishmen or Higher Concepts of Civil Liberty

In 1776, the acts of repression carried out by British authorities in the name of the Crown and constitutional order—though clear violations of traditional legal norms—were, in many respects, less severe than some of the abuses observable in the United States today. They pale in comparison to the tactics employed by ICE and other federal agencies: masked men conducting extrajudicial arrests, sweeping individuals off the streets, raiding homes and workplaces, even detaining people in government buildings without due process.

The British did not dispatch covert agents into colonial cities to carry out mass abductions. And yet, a third of American colonists ultimately took up arms against the Crown. One is left to wonder why, in the face of more pervasive surveillance, harsher detentions, and state power unmoored from moral or constitutional limits, the level of public outrage today remains muted. Of course, the Trump 2.0 has held power for less than six months, but our weariness makes it feel longer.

The Magna Carta of 1215, though born of feudal conflict, has long stood as a touchstone for the Anglo-American legal tradition. What began as a compact to restrain a single monarch evolved over centuries into a symbol of constitutional government, a cornerstone of liberty, and a safeguard against arbitrary authority. Perhaps its most enduring legacy lies in a deceptively simple principle: “no free man shall be seized or imprisoned… except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land”—an early articulation of habeas corpus, due process, and the primacy of law over sovereign whim. [10]

By the mid-eighteenth century, American colonists regarded themselves as heirs to that tradition. Yet they watched with growing alarm as the British Crown violated its precepts. In Massachusetts and beyond, civilians were forced to quarter troops in their homes without consent, undermining both privacy and autonomy. Local legislatures were summarily dissolved after the Boston Tea Party, extinguishing representative government.

Dissenters were detained without trial, and royal agents employed “general warrants”—vague, open-ended search authorizations that ignored specificity and judicial oversight. These abuses were not just provocations; they were breaches of deeply held legal expectations. It was no accident that the Declaration of Independence accused George III of having “transported us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses”—a direct affront to “the law of the land.” [11]

Fast-forward two and a half centuries, and the echoes are unmistakable. Under President Donald Trump, particularly through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the U.S. government adopted tactics that would have struck the Founders as hauntingly familiar.

The Spirit of ’76 Requires More Than Fireworks

To defend Harvard is to defend a principle: that knowledge, however inconvenient, is essential for an engaged and informed public to stand up against the autocracy. That truth, however complex, is not the enemy of patriotism. That universities, like courts and legislature, must be protected from executive fiat.

Fortunately, this past Fourth of July, there was no need for mass student protests like those in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square (1989), Istanbul’s Gezi Park (2013), or Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square (2016–2017). The Trump Administration, in a rare moment of restraint, did not dispatch ICE agents or armored vehicles into Harvard Yard to shield the university from alleged leftists, communists, radical extremists, who hate America (and Trump).

When the British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, their military band played “The World Turned Upside Down.” One wonders: what song should today’s protestors at Indivisible rallies be playing? [12]

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Endnotes

[1] For some context, see e.g., “Trump Thanked John Roberts: The conservative justices are frequently accomplices to Trump’s assault on democracy.” The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, March 5, 2025 at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/congressional-address-supreme-court/681926.

[2] “The Conservative Stalwart Challenging the Far‑Right Legal Theory That Could Subvert American Democracy,” Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, October 19, 2022, at
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-conservative-stalwart-challenging-the-far-right-legal-theory-that-could-subvert-american-democracy.

[3] Harvard University Website, Upholding Our Values, Defending Our University, Setting out details of all ongoing litigation with the Trump Administration, at https://www.harvard.edu/federal-lawsuits, and Harvard, Magazine, “Harvard in the Headlines: News and commentary related to Harvard curated by our editors, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/harvard-headlines (Both Last Visited July 5, 2025).

[4] Ethan S. Burger, "Seizing the Moral High Road When Discussing the Resolution of the Trump Administration's Assault Against Harvard," June 25, 2025, at https://ethansburger.substack.com/p/taking-the-moral-high-road-when-discussing.

[5] Change.org, "A Call for Unity: Annexation of the Six States of New England and New York to Canada," June 2025, at https://www.change.org/p/annex-new-england-to-canada.

[6] Carl N. Degler, Out of Our Past, Princeton University Press, 1984, at https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691001991/out-of-our-past.

[7] Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Harvard University Press, 1974; see also Hutchinson, Letters to London, 1768–1769, at https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674641617.

[8] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Harcourt, 1951, https://archive.org/details/originsoftotalit00aren.

[9] John Adams, Thoughts on Government (1776), at https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/john-adams-thoughts-on-government-1776.

[10] Magna Carta (1215), British Library: https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-an-introduction.

[11] Declaration of Independence (1776), U.S. Archives, at https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.

[12] Library of Congress, "The World Turned Upside Down," https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000982.