Less than two weeks after winning back the White House, President-elect Donald Trump has nominated several Harvard affiliates to cabinet-level positions in his next administration.
Some of Trump’s most controversial picks have ties to Harvard, including Peter B. Hegseth, a Harvard Kennedy School alumnus picked to lead the Department of Defense, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ’76, a vaccine skeptic tasked with helming the Department of Health and Human Services.
Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 has been tapped to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — a top foreign policy post — and Vivek G. Ramaswamy ’07 was nominated to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a yet to be established advisory body tasked with reducing bureaucracy in the federal government.
Despite the large number of alumni nominated to serve in Trump’s administration, some Harvard professors expressed concern about the appointees, questioning their experience and Trump’s rationale for nominating them.
Government professor Jennifer L. Hochschild wrote in an email that “Mr. Trump is proposing two types of inappropriate Cabinet-level officials.”
“Those with views who have no knowledge of what they are talking about (Hegseth, Gabbard etc), and those with views who have incorrect knowledge about much of what they are talking about (RFK Jr., Burgum etc.),” Hochschild added. “I am not sure which is more dangerous, and more disrespectful to the nation at large — his supporters as well as his opponents.”
A Trump spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Kennedy’s nomination comes after his failed 2024 presidential bid, which was run under the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.” Before dropping out of the race, Kennedy agreed to endorse Trump in exchange for a prominent role in his administration.
The son of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy ’48 who was assassinated while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, Kennedy was denounced by four of his siblings after launching a third-party bid for the White House in April 2023.
