Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers ripped the Trump administration for taking away Harvard’s ability to enroll international students Thursday, declaring that the action is not consistent with the way democracies operate: “This is the stuff of tyranny.”
In an interview with “Bloomberg: The China Show,” Summers, a professor and president emeritus at Harvard, said the university has a “clear necessity” to resist the administration’s latest punitive action.
“This is the stuff of tyranny,” he said. “If an institution like Harvard with a $52 billion endowment, with the staggering of network of alumni that we have, if it can’t resist these kinds of movements towards tyranny, I don’t know what other American institutions will be able to do that.”
Summers said the step pursued by the administration was “vicious,” adding that it’s not reflective of how democracies like the U.S. should operate.
“If I had been a member of an administration where such unlawful orders had come from the White House, I would have resigned immediately,” Summers added.
