'Zombie apocalypse': Morning Joe panel rips 'affirmative action for conservatives'

President Donald Trump and his allies, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, have been attacking Harvard University relentlessly — mostly recently, with a push to prevent the Ivy League institution from being able to enroll foreign students.

Many liberals and progressives are defending Harvard, but the university also has some defenders on the right — including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, who believes that more conservative voices are needed on college campuses but is vehemently critical of the way the Trump Administration is attacking Harvard.

During a Wednesday, May 28 broadcast, "Morning Joe" hosts Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and their colleague Willie Geist interviewed Arthur C. Brooks — a conservative Harvard professor.

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Scarborough and Brooks agreed that college campuses need to do a better job featuring conservative viewpoints, but they characterized Trump's attacks on Harvard and other "elite institutions" as a mean-spirited vendetta.

Brooks told the "Morning Joe" hosts, "There is going to come to some resolution. It's not going to be the zombie apocalypse. But in the meantime, there's a lot of damage that's actually going on right now. And it's creating a lot of fear…. I don't like what the (Trump) Administration is doing, but I trust our administration at the university."

Brooks and Scarborough argued that liberalism is not well-served when conservative ideas are discouraged on college campuses.

Brooks told the panel, "You go to college to have your ideas challenged, to have your mind opened…. That's what we need to get back to."

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Scarborough agreed, telling the Harvard professor, "Arthur, I'm deeply concerned. Two things can be true at once. As we always say, I'm deeply concerned about what's happening not only to Harvard, but also, at other institutions of higher learning. And I will say, at the same time… the reason why there's maybe not more of an uproar, and I've said this on the show for the past five years: Every time we have parents of college students over for dinner at our house, friends of ours who have children and colleagues, what they've been telling us for the past five, six, seven, eight years is…. their children are afraid to raise their hand and have the type of talk, the communication, the back-and-forth that you were just talking about."

The "Morning Joe" host added, "The great thing is, when you and I were in college, you could say something extraordinarily stupid, right?.... Now, people are frozen in their seats…. You don't have conservative professors, certainly not in the arts and sciences."

Brooks told the "Morning Joe" hosts, "Look, I'm a conservative….. I ran the American Enterprise Institute, for Pete's sake…. We don't need affirmative action for conservatives, but when your liberal ideas are not challenged, your education is mediocre."

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Watch the full video below or at this link.