GOP’s Stefanik Keeps Heat on Harvard After Helping to Topple President

(Bloomberg) -- Harvard University thought it was done with former student Elise Stefanik when it removed the congresswoman from an advisory board after she made comments supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

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But Stefanik wasn’t done with Harvard University.

On Tuesday, the 39-year-old Republican from upstate New York took a victory lap after President Claudine Gay announced her resignation. Stefanik’s grilling at a congressional hearing of Gay and two other university leaders over campus antisemitism was a flashpoint in the Harvard president’s downfall.

It was also the latest example of Stefanik’s ability to capitalize on a viral moment and turn it to her political advantage. Her widely viewed performance at the House hearing earned praise even from some Democrats who disagree with her on just about everything.

“She can cash this in with the GOP base as a big win against elites,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Gay’s resignation followed months of turmoil over allegations of plagiarism and her disastrous responses at the Dec. 5 hearing to questions from Stefanik about whether calls for the genocide of Jews was against school policy.

Stefanik said Tuesday she would continue the probe of her alma mater. She pledged to root out “deep institutional rot” and “uncover what will be the greatest scandal in higher education,” in an interview with Fox News. The lawmaker accused Harvard’s governing body of a conspiracy to cover up Gay’s alleged plagiarism, and of failing to “protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of campus protests over Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas.

Stefanik’s questioning of the college presidents had already taken down University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, who resigned a few days after the hearing. On Tuesday, Stefanik called for MIT to oust President Sally Kornbluth, who also testified at the hearing. Kornbluth had said at the hearing that calls for genocide of Jewish students would be investigated as harassment “if pervasive and severe.”

Kornbluth released a statement Wednesday reaffirming her commitment to addressing tensions on the MIT campus. She announced several new measures, including reviewing the student disciplinary process, forming a new committee to examine free speech policies and planning to name a new vice president to oversee equity and inclusion programs.

Read more: Harvard Chief’s Shock Exit Exposes Decade-Spanning Fractures

Stefanik’s ability to seize on the political zeitgeist is a skill she’s refined in her nine years in Congress. In office, she pivoted from being a bipartisan lawmaker representing a rural district stretching from the Canadian border to the Albany area, to a die-hard MAGA loyalist and star in a Republican Party reshaped by Trump.

Some political analysts suggest Stefanik’s role in the college presidents’ flap could deliver dividends to any political aspirations she might hold outside of Congress, either nationally or in New York.

“Whether the goal is to rise up the House leadership ladder or get picked to be part of the Republican presidential ticket, it can’t hurt Stefanik to get known for taking on academia,” said Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of Inside Elections.

A spokesman for Stefanik didn’t respond to a request for an interview.

Record Win

Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006 and has spoken publicly in the past about how much she loved the school and her time there. She concentrated in government, and wrote for the student newspaper, the Crimson, writing op-eds on national politics and the nature of love. She taught civics to public school students in Boston and Cambridge, and helped run a study group for famous liberal Ted Sorensen, who wrote speeches for former President Kennedy.

After college she worked as a staffer to George W. Bush and developed a reputation for working across the aisle with Democrats.

At age 30, Stefanik became the youngest woman elected to Congress when she first won election in New York’s 21st district in 2014. (That distinction now belongs to Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who beat Stefanik’s record when she won election to a Queens congressional seat in 2018 at age 29).

Before Harvard, Stefanik had attended a tony all-girls prep school in Albany, where she was friends with Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.

During the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s early years in office, Stefanik criticized the president’s position on building the border wall and his rhetoric on women and Muslims. She also voted against his 2017 tax-cut legislation and joined a bipartisan chorus of people calling on him to release his tax returns.

But her breakout performance came in 2019, when she made a very public sharp rightward turn from her moderate politics to become what she later called “ultra-MAGA” during the former Republican president’s first impeachment hearings. The Democratic-led House accused Trump of withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure its leaders into investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump Defense

Her defense of the president delighted Trump, earning her airtime on Fox News and plaudits in Trump-friendly media like the New York Post. Bolstered by Trump supporters and her newly high-profile role in the president’s orbit, she raised more than $13.2 million for her 2020 reelection effort, more than four times her haul in the previous election cycle.

Stefanik’s temperamental and political shift appalled others, who saw her defense of the former president as a cynical power play. In her 2023 memoir, DeRosa, the former Cuomo aide, described Stefanik’s embrace of Trump as a fame-seeking attempt to become “the AOC of the right.”

By spring 2021, with the ouster of Liz Cheney, Stefanik had, with Trump’s blessing, risen to become House Republican Conference chair — the No. 3 elected party leader at the time. Trump has hosted fundraisers for Stefanik at his Westchester and Bedminster, New Jersey, golf courses. As recently as last month, it was Stefanik who filed a complaint alleging judicial misconduct by a federal judge who has overseen cases related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

Speculation about Stefanik’s political future has included various scenarios. But she was notably not among other sitting House Republican leaders to make bids to succeed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. There has been talk she is is eyeing the chairmanship of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

But last year, rumors circulated that Stefanik might be aiming for something much bigger, especially if Trump wins the Republican nomination. Her viral moment on Capitol Hill can only help.

“It might launch her VP dreams,” the pollster Miringoff said.

--With assistance from Simone Foxman.

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