Fox News host Pete Hegseth mailed his graduate degree back to Harvard out of disgust with the school’s far-left bent, but it turns out he was just getting started.
Mr. Hegseth hosts “Poison Ivy,” a newly released documentary now streaming on Fox Nation that examines the decline of the Ivy League, the eight prestigious East Coast universities at the center of the backlash over rising campus antisemitism.
The program includes hot takes from conservative pundits but digs deeper, tracing academia’s leftward march back more than 100 years to progressive educator John Dewey and the Frankfurt School, a collective of Marxist intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany and set up shop at Columbia University.
“Obviously people have known for a long time that our so-called elite universities are left of center, and certainly Oct. 7 laid bare the depth of the ideological depravity of these universities, but I think the first step to recovery is understanding the depth of problem,” Mr. Hegseth told The Washington Times.
“I really wanted viewers to understand this is not some recent fad where just a couple more conservative professors can change the trajectory of the institution,” he said. “These are deeply poisoned entities.”
The special features interviews with two prominent University of Pennsylvania donors — Vahan Gureghian and David Magerman — who pulled their support over antisemitism concerns. Penn’s president and board chairman have since resigned.
Alas, Fox tried but was unable to nab an interview with Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge-fund manager leading the charge against Harvard. Claudine Gay stepped down last month as Harvard president a few weeks after the Penn resignations.
“Talk about a guy whose switch flipped,” Mr. Hegseth said about Mr. Ackman. “He wrote that wonderful op-ed about DEI and what he’s seen, looking under the hood, and that’s phenomenal, I loved that. I just wish there would have been more scrutiny earlier as these institutions went down the rabbit hole.”
.@varneyco has spoken– you need to watch @petehegseth’s new show #PoisonIvy on the decline of our most elite universities.
— Fox Nation (@foxnation) January 26, 2024
Watch it now on Fox Nation: https://t.co/jWLjB57fq9 pic.twitter.com/0UO6ddM0HQ
The 43-year-old “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host may be uniquely qualified to helm the program. He earned both graduate and undergraduate degrees from Ivy League institutions, yet managed to emerge with his conservative principles intact.
“Part of it is: I lived it. I lived the evolution myself, I saw it, and I was staggered when I was an undergraduate by how left-wing it was, but it was still mostly open discourse,” he said. “There’s been a fast forward even since then.”
After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, university campuses were rocked by pro-Palestinian and even pro-Hamas protests, the culmination of decades of anti-Israel boycott resolutions, annual Israeli Apartheid Week protests, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives labeling Israelis as “White” oppressors.
“Okay, so we knew there was bias, and we knew it was left-wing, and we knew God was rejected, but advocating for terrorists?” said Mr. Hegseth. “That seems like next-level stuff.”
One theme running through the special centers on whether the Ivy League and other elite universities can be reformed.
Making the case for redeeming the institutions is Princeton professor Robert George, director of the James Madison Program, a bastion of classical liberalism and constitutional thought.
“He’s created a beachhead at Princeton with the James Madison Program where there are now 25 more or less outed conservative professors at Princeton, which is not the case at any other Ivy League school. There’s barely one,” Mr. Hegseth said. “He’s kind of laid the template for how you can start to at least provide balance and rationality.”
In 2022, Mr. Hegseth created an on-air splash by pulling his M.P.P. from the Harvard Kennedy School out of its frame; writing “Return to Sender” on it, and later mailing the document back to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
What tipped the balance for him was when the Harvard Chaplains elected an atheist and “humanist rabbi” as their president in August 2021.
“I just thought, that’s the last straw for me,” Mr. Hegseth said. “I hope it helped people understand how we need to stop holding these institutions up as the gatekeepers of excellence or leadership. When you see someone who graduated from Harvard, you should be more skeptical than you should be impressed.”
Mr. Hegseth also holds a B.A. from Princeton. So far he hasn’t returned that degree, crediting the James Madison Program.
“I did not mail back my Princeton degree only because of Robby George,” said Mr. Hegseth. “He’s giving me a little bit of hope. I’ve held out on that for now.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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