In April 2025, Jake Sullivan, former US National Security Advisor to Biden, assumed the inaugural Henry Kissinger Professorship in the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at Harvard Kennedy School. This appointment comes amid escalating attacks on Harvard by the Trump administration, which has threatened to slash $9 billion in funding. Trump’s actions, alongside broader assaults on American universities and their students, signal a drift toward authoritarianism. Yet Sullivan’s hiring exposes deeper, long-standing issues within the Ivy League and academia — problems that predate Trump and the smear campaign around him.
Contrary to right-wing claims of a radical left-wing takeover of academic institutions, the reality points to a new era of administrative and judicial persecution in the US. Anti-imperialist, anti-war, and leftist professors — serious, principled scholars — are blacklisted and barred from teaching courses on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, conservatives, émigrés from behind the so-called Iron Curtain, and foreign policy experts — some tainted by involvement in war crimes — are handed prestigious tenured positions. Sullivan’s appointment epitomizes this trend. The title of his new post is fitting: Sullivan and Kissinger share much in common, both being staunch advocates of war and American imperialism. In a 2023 speech at the Brookings Institution, Sullivan emphasized the need for state investment to secure US global technological dominance.
Moreover, Sullivan actively champions expanding sanctions against China — viewed as the primary threat to US hegemony — and other measures to deny China access to critical technologies and international partnerships. He also calls for encircling China with military bases and aggressive alliances.