Trump’s war on Harvard puts academic freedom at risk, but it’s the predictable right-wing overreaction to left-wing overreach, writes Lewis Liu

I was born in rural Hubei Province, China, shortly before my father left for Belgium on a scholarship funded by what is now the European Union. After earning his master’s degree there, he received a PhD scholarship to the United States to study financial economics. That’s how we ended up in New York. None of this would have been possible without his place in China’s elite “Class of 1977”, the first university cohort admitted after the Cultural Revolution, when ten years’ worth of students competed for a narrow window of opportunity as higher education reopened.

Growing up as first-generation Chinese immigrants in America, we understood the transformative power of education – not just for our family, but for society at large. I am a product of both the American Dream (Harvard, New York) and Global Britain (Oxford, London), with Harvard being the most formative part of my path into adulthood.

Growing up hearing stories of the Cultural Revolution, I’m now afraid for the future of the American university. The current White House administration’s demands to Harvard are a gross violation of the Constitution, an extraordinary attempt to dictate what gets taught and how. The administration has demanded the university screen international students for those “hostile to the American values”, end DEI programmes and agree to government-approved external audits of the university’s curriculum. I’m proud that Harvard became the first major university to push back, after other Ivy League institutions caved. As I read Harvard’s response

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