Matthew Yglesias is an American journalist who writes primarily about politics, economics, education, and housing policy. After beginning his career at The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Slate, Yglesias co-founded Vox in 2014. In 2020, he left Vox to publish “Slow Boring,” a daily newsletter on Substack. The Harvard Political Review sat down with Yglesias in March 2024 to discuss campus politics at Harvard and the 2024 presidential election.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Harvard Political Review: You’ve written about the national scrutiny Harvard has been under amid controversy surrounding the resignation of Claudine Gay. As a Harvard alumnus yourself, do you think there is any historical precedent for this level of scrutiny on the university?
Matthew Yglesias: So much was different about the media then. There was just less stuff happening. I do recall a decent amount of scrutiny. Larry Summers was president of the university for some of my time while I was there. He was obviously a very well-known national figure. He has real academic credentials, but he’s known as a political heavyweight and outspoken person. So what was different was it felt like Harvard’s governing institutions were seeking attention, in a way, by appointing him. Part of the idea of appointing him was to return to the idea of an older model of the university president as a public figure. I mean, he’s not a guy you turn to because you want a really diligent academic administrator, right? They were trying to play a kind of public role. And he took, you know, assertive public stances deliberately in a way that I do think is different from the Claudine Gay situation where, for better or worse, I think she was trying to manage the university. And then external actors got very interested in what was happening.
HPR: Do you think what happened to Claudine Gay was justified?
MY: It seemed like people went around looking for dirt for their own reasons. But it’s kind of an adversarial epistemic process. They got the goods, and that’s what happens. Most of the time, when damaging information about a public figure comes to light, it’s because somebody had some kind of grudge against them. And we have to ask the question: Is the information true? Not “did the person who brought the information to light act in perfect good faith and with totally pure motives?”
HPR: Would Harvard be wise in adopting a stance of institutional neutrality, as many have suggested?
MY: I think that’s probably for the best. Stepping back, I think an interesting thing about American higher education is how similar all of the institutions are. I don’t think there would be anything wrong with a world in which some schools are outspokenly progressive, others have different values, and some adhere to a stance of neutrality. But if they’re all going to be similar, I think that principle of neutrality would be the best one to land on.
HPR: Pivoting to the domestic arena, it appears as though a second consecutive Trump defeat would invoke some kind of ideological crisis within the Republican party. Is that something you anticipate?
MY: It’s hard to say. It does seem like if Trump were to lose, that should provoke some kind of reckoning inside Republican circles. But it’s also hard to know what that would look like. Trump’s command of the Republican Party is higher than it’s ever been, stronger than it was when he was president. Whereas with Biden, it’s very much the opposite, where he has never been seen by his party in the same way. They’re both old, obviously, but I think almost everyone in Republican politics thinks that the future of the GOP is in some sense Trump-like. Like, that they are trying to learn the lessons of Trump and improve upon or refine Trumpism. And Democrats have never felt that way about Biden. You know, there’s not a lot of positioning among younger Democrats to be the next Joe Biden.
There’s a lack of confidence inside the Democratic Party about the kind of politics that Biden practices. With Trump, it’s like, this guy is old, but he points the way to the future. With Biden, Democrats feel like he’s the past, and that the next thing is going to be different and much more left wing. And I really question the accuracy of that. I think that everything that’s occurred since Biden became president should be causing progressives to reevaluate their confidence that they’re on the right side of, like, the broad arc of history, rather than just that Trump was very unpopular.
HPR: In your opinion, have people neglected Biden’s successes as president, particularly with regard to the economy?
MY: I mean, I think Massachusetts is very informative for understanding the reality of American politics.
HPR: You think?
MY: Yeah. Public opinion in Massachusetts is more liberal than in America as a whole. And Massachusetts is reasonably well governed and not usually blown up with huge corporate scandals. But when Charlie Baker was governor, and he was challenged by a progressive Democrat who said stuff like, “We need to get rid of this moderate Republican,” Baker crushed him. And then when Baker left the scene, of course, a kind of normie Democrat was able to win. It’s a very blue state. But there isn’t an appetite in a liberal state for really transformational progressive policy. And that tells you something about the state of the nation. It’s a little bit sobering to think about, but it’s the reality.
