From Campus Policy to Personal Experience
At a Boston event, conservative podcaster Steven Crowder debated Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy in a “Change My Mind” discussion. The event was billed as the first “Change My Mind” event featuring a professor rather than a student. The topics included DEI hiring pledges, affirmative action, merit, conservative speech on campus, and the Trump administration’s effort to withhold federal funding from Harvard. Then an audience question moved the conversation from policy to personal experience. A woman who identified herself as a research scientist said she worried political views could affect her promotions, how coworkers treated her, and how she was seen at work. The question put the debate’s abstract principles in personal terms.
What the Audience Member Said
She referred to Cambridge as the “People’s Republic of Cambridge” and explained why she was worried. She recalled being about six days into a new job when one of the first questions she heard was, “But you didn’t vote for Trump, right?” She also said she had recently graduated from the University of Southern California, which she described as similar to Harvard in a lot of ways. According to her account, she had to lie on papers to graduate because professors would grade her lower based on her opinions. She connected that experience to friends at Harvard and to a larger system in which private universities influence higher education, while their graduates and professors carry similar experiences into corporate and research work. Her question was pointed: How can institutions praise ideological diversity while conservatives fear consequences for speaking plainly?
Kennedy Condemns Political Bias
Kennedy did not defend grading someone down for political beliefs. He said that if a teacher or professor marked a student down because the student was conservative, voted for Donald Trump, or held similar views, “that was wrong” and “that was bad.” He acknowledged that he believed it happened in her case. He added that such conduct should be condemned and that people should remain on guard against it. When the audience member cut in to say she was not the only one and that friends at Harvard had experienced the same thing, Crowder pointed to her lived experience. Kennedy then repeated that, to the extent such treatment happens, he condemned it.
Watch the exchange:
An audience member asks Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy how he can claim conservatives aren't discriminated against in academia, after she had to lie about her political views on papers to graduate college and fears being passed over for promotions because of her politics. pic.twitter.com/dmsFOJQg2b
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) September 29, 2026
