Education Secretary Linda McMahon Urges Harvard To ‘Take the Yale Example’ in Congressional Testimony

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon urged Harvard to follow Yale University’s example and undertake a sweeping review of its academic practices and campus culture at a congressional hearing last month.

In a brief exchange with Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06, McMahon — who has played a leading role in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Harvard — praised Yale for a wide-ranging April report that scrutinized the university’s admissions policies, grading standards, academic culture, and commitment to free speech.

That 58-page report, produced by a Yale presidential task force, argued that high tuition, opaque admissions, grade inflation, and constraints on open discourse had helped erode public trust in elite higher education. The authors proposed a series of reforms, including curbing special admissions preferences, adopting a 3.0 mean GPA or another schoolwide grading standard, and revising Yale’s mission statement.

McMahon called on Harvard to produce a similar self-indictment.

“I’d like Harvard to take the Yale example of really doing the research and doing the surveys and understanding what is going on in their community and taking actions on their own,” McMahon said in her testimony.

McMahon said she had discussed the report with Yale President Maurie D. McInnis praised McInnis for moving to implement some of its recommendations. She said the reforms had been met with “such great response” on Yale’s campus.

Asked about the status of negotiations with Harvard, McMahon said the White House was “certainly continuing their conversations” with the University, while also pointing to active litigation against Harvard.

The tête-à-tête between Harvard and the Trump administration appeared to sour earlier this year when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the University to pay $1 billion in a Truth Social post.

In the months since, the Department of Justice has launched two lawsuits against Harvard — one over its compliance with admissions investigations and another over alleged campus antisemitism. The Department of Education is also investigating the University on similar grounds.

Though McMahon called for more decisive action from Harvard’s leadership, she said she was “delighted” by a late April staff editorial in The Crimson that argued the University had “strayed” from its academic mission.

“This are the kids at The Crimson who are calling their own university to task,” McMahon said. “And there are other examples through this article that are exactly saying the things we’ve been talking about.”

“Universities ought to be for open debate,” she added. “They ought to teach what is both sides of the coin.”

McMahon also criticized the lack of conservative faculty on Harvard’s campus. She cited The Crimson’s 2023 Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey, which found that only three percent of faculty respondents identified as conservative.

That figure has increased in more recent iterations of the survey. In 2025, roughly 10 percent identified as either “somewhat” or “very” conservative.

It was not the first time McMahon has sung Yale’s praises. Before an April event hosted by the Buckley Institute, McMahon also said she met with McInnis to discuss grade inflation at Yale, calling the conversation “very beneficial.”

Harvard’s faculty voted last month to sharply curtail the share of A grades awarded to undergraduates. Yale has not imposed a similar restriction.

“I would just encourage more and more of our universities to be looking, again, at what they were set up and designed to do,” McMahon said. “They have so much to offer but we really have strayed — as this student said — we have strayed from where our universities need to be from their founding mission.”

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.