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Kellyanne E. Conway, a former top adviser to Donald Trump, slammed a recent op-ed authored by Harvard Institute of Politics President Pratyush Mallick ’25 that called for the organization to drop its nonpartisan mandate during an IOP forum on Tuesday.
Conway — who is affiliated with the IOP’s Conservative Coalition — called the proposal a “terrible idea,” saying it reflected the type of rhetoric that contributed to the Democrats’ resounding loss in the 2024 presidential election.
“De-platforming MAGA people — oh, that’s going to really help wash away the 76 million votes Donald Trump just got,” Conway said.
“You have every right to speak up and stand up,” she added. “But there’s a way to do that without taking the voice box out of other students and telling them that they’re somehow less than the Democratic Party.”
Mallick did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Conway also revealed at the forum that she received a call from IOP Director Setti D. Warren to discuss the organization’s stance on nonpartisanship shortly after the op-ed was published. Warren, and nearly a dozen current and former IOP student leaders, rebuked the op-ed last week, saying it was not reflective of the IOP’s values.
Conway’s comments came during a tense talk at the Kennedy School where she discussed President-elect Donald Trump’s successful campaign to return to the White House. During the talk, Conway sparred with several students who asked pointed questions about her political views, demanding that they define the terms they used.
In one instance, when a student posed a question that referenced “alternative facts” — a phrase Conway coined in 2017 to describe perceived misinformation spread in the media — Conway asked the student to explain the concept.
“Alternative facts, I’m assuming, means,” the student started before Conway interjected.
“Oh, you’re assuming?” Conway shot back. “Go ahead.”
In 2016, the last time Conway came to the IOP, she had a similarly tense interaction with Robby Mook, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016.
In an interview with The Crimson after the event, Conway did not answer a question about whether the House should release its allegedly damaging report into sexual assault allegations against former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
“The Senate confirmation process is an open forum — there’ll be public hearings for every single nominee,” she said. “In this case, think the Senate will make a request for the House report, and then I guess it's up to the House to release it.”
Conway also criticized Harvard’s response to pro-Palestine protests in the interview, saying the University and other higher education institutions should do more to combat antisemitism on their campuses.
“The way many of the Jewish students feel — they don’t feel safe, they don’t feel heard, they don’t feel included,” she said.
A Harvard spokesperson wrote in a past statement to The Crimson that “antisemitism has no place on our campus, and across the University we have intensified our efforts to listen to, learn from, support, and uplift our Jewish community, affirming their vital place at Harvard.”
Conway also discussed Harris’ loss in the election, saying she could have performed better had she distanced herself more from President Joe Biden and distinguished how she would govern differently from Biden.
“She could have said ‘Listen, I was there, but my hand wasn’t on the tiller. My hand wasn't on the wheel,’” Conway said. “She had a lot of opportunity to do that, and really just couldn’t engage more with the people.”
During the talk, Conway attributed Trump’s victory to a shift in Republican strategy that prioritized door-knocking and other on-the-ground campaigning efforts over expensive television ads.
“These folks invested real dollars in what I call the grunt work, the drudgery of politics, which is so easy to overlook,” Conway said. “Because who wants to do that when you could just run TV ads?”
Conway added that Harris’s decision to listen to her younger staffers who reportedly persuaded her away from speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience — a podcast that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance had appeared on five days before the election — was a costly mistake.
“If you want to become the president, she should be able to pull those shots,” she said.
Trump also benefited this year from his decision to endorse early voting and distribute informational materials explaining how Americans could vote — a move Republicans “had never done before,” according to Conway.
“The Republicans, beginning with President Trump and his brilliant campaign team and the RNC, did something Republicans had never done well, which is invest in what I call the non-sexy parts of politics,” she said. “The ground game, the early vote, telling people where to vote, when to vote, and how.”
Conway said that despite Democrats’ efforts to portray Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the joyful candidates in the race, voters found Trump and Vance to be the more optimistic picks in this year’s elections.
“Go to Coachella, go to Madison Square Garden, go to McDonald’s, try the garbage truck,” she said in reference to several of Trump’s campaign stops. “He’s just having a good time.”
“For all the talk about joy, he clearly had it — and people followed suit,” Conway added.
Conway suggested that Democrats should refocus their future campaigns on improving public education in America — a topic she called “a big sleeper issue.”
“You have a lot of parents and grandparents — Hispanic American, African American, Asian American, single moms voting for Trump this time — who are all about educational freedom, school choice, charter schools,” she said.
“If I were a Democrat sitting here, I would get on that tomorrow,” Conway added.
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
