The American People Spoke. The IOP Can’t Pretend It Didn’t Hear.

“If you think Donald Trump is too crass or cruel or incompetent to be president — if you are disappointed or even astonished that, having tried and failed to subvert the will of the people in the last election, he has come back to win fair and square — you should be asking yourself this question: why, to so many Americans, does the Democratic Party seem worse?”

This was the question James Bennet, a senior editor with The Economist, posed in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s reelection last Tuesday. It is a question that all who care about America’s future must ask themselves.

Yet over in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pratyush Mallick, the student president of Harvard’s esteemed Institute of Politics doesn’t seem interested. Instead, he published an op-ed titled “I’m the IOP’s President. With Trump’s Election, We Can No Longer Be Nonpartisan.”

Mallick’s argument posits that disengagement from Trump-supporting voices defends democratic values. In truth, it would do just the opposite, deepening societal divides and undermining the very ideals it seeks to uphold.

Disengaging from millions of Americans — whose support for Trump is often driven by complex, personal motivations not reducible to mere malice or prejudice — inflames partisan polarization and forecloses the possibility of meaningful dialogue. Engagement with Trump’s movement and its ideas is neither capitulation nor endorsement; it is an essential effort to understand these motivations. This understanding strengthens democracy by encouraging resilience and inclusivity, while retreating into insular discourse weakens societal cohesion and entrenches biases.

Mallick’s position disregards political reality. With Trump and his supporters now commanding power across all branches of government, choosing isolation limits the Institute of Politics’ ability to participate in the national conversation when engagement is most critical. Even from the standpoint of the most fervent Trump critic, this stance deprives students and future leaders of the knowledge necessary to oppose his movement beyond Harvard’s gates.

Moreover, this would-be turn inward risks validating perceptions of elite institutions as disconnected and exclusionary. Public trust in academia has diminished as universities have come to appear increasingly narrow-minded and insular, more intent on upholding orthodoxy than fostering open debate. Mallick’s proposal would only exacerbate this image, reinforcing the view that places like Harvard are out of touch with society.

We need not speculate about the consequences of sidelining dissenting voices. Over the past eight years, marginalization and ostracization has not silenced these perspectives; it has strengthened them. Deplatforming has often pushed such viewpoints into spaces where they grow unchecked, hardening into dogma. Exit polling from the election vividly illustrates the extent of this divide: While college-educated voters swung more Democratic, nearly all other segments of the population shifted further toward Trump.

Limiting dialogue may offer the cheap relief of moral certainty, but it is strategically short-sighted. Engaging only with the like-minded entrenches beliefs without challenging or expanding them — a real failure for an institute dedicated to learning.

If the IOP is to remain true to its mission, it must champion engagement over exclusion and dialogue over isolation. To borrow an image, advocating disengagement is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It may offer a fleeting sense of control, but it does nothing to avert disaster. If America is indeed headed for an iceberg, we must not blind ourselves to its direction.

Ignoring opposing views does not erase them. Indeed, recent history shows it may only strengthen them in spaces some of us prefer not to see.

Isaac R. Mansell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Statistics concentrator in Kirkland House.