Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in the latest “Pod Force One” episode, warned Harvard administrators that she could drop the “hammer” on the Ivy League university should it continue quietly pursuing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that run afoul of federal law.
President Trump issued executive actions seeking to eliminate DEI at Harvard and other universities shortly after taking office in January 2025; the Department of Education also launched investigations into the Cambridge, Mass., school over alleged anti-semitism on campus and race-based admissions policies; and the DOJ sued Harvard for allegedly withholding data about those admissions.
But that isn’t stopping McMahon from threatening further probes to hold the Ivy League school accountable.
“Having always the hammer, if you will, of investigation, of losing federal funding for research and programs, as well as having lawsuits potentially brought by the Department of Justice are certainly things that they bear in mind as well,” she told The Post’s Miranda Devine on the podcast episode, out Wednesday.
McMahon, the former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has shown in the past that she doesn’t back off from conflict either, having been hit with a “tombstone piledriver” on TV from pro wrestler Kane on “Monday Night Raw” in 2003.
“I’ve actually not been turned upside down and made to look as though I landed on my head yet, but there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, that is for sure,” she joked of her new position in the Trump administration. She previously served as the head of the Small Business Administration during the 45th president’s first term.
“My performances were few and far between, and I really played myself. And as I watched some of those segments, I said, ‘Yeah, you better stick to your day job, because you’re really not very good at this,’” she said.
But McMahon still holds a special place in her heart for the performers who competed in the ring.
“Andre the Giant was a big favorite of mine, because he literally was a giant, but just an incredible personality to get to know,” she recalled of the 7’4” and around 500-pound behemoth who dominated matches in the 1970s and 1980s.
“Stone Cold Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan, all of the greats, you can’t say you ever have one favorite,” she added, “because they were all a necessary part of a story plot line, because it always takes a protagonist and an antagonist to tell the story in the ring, which really was the culmination of some injustice that was going to have to be rectified through that match.”
The Trump administration’s focus on curbing liberal influence in higher education has centered on Harvard.
Health and Human Services (HHS) officials yanked $2.2 billion in federal grants from Harvard in May 2025, alleging that the university wasn’t complying with federal non-discrimination laws. That prompted a court battle that ended in September 2025 with a judge ordering that the funding be restored, which the administration appealed.
“It is not the goal or the desire of the federal government to take away that funding, because our research universities provide unbelievable amount of very effective and good research and invention for the country,” McMahon said.
“So we want to make sure that that research can continue, but they just need to know that they’re going to have to operate within the confines of the law to do that.”
Conservative legal groups have also filed complaints with the DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights that the school is still running tens of millions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded DEI programming.
Trump and McMahon had both expressed hopes that Harvard would enter into an agreement with the administration as Columbia University did when administrators settled for $220 million and scrapped policies that violated Jewish students’ civil rights, in addition to other discriminatory practices.
Other schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shut down their DEI offices to demonstrate good faith that administrators were overseeing only merit-based programs.
“It is my sincere hope that many of them have seen the error in doing that,” McMahon said of the DEI programming that had previously existed on top US universities’ campuses. “What we have seen as a result of a lot of the action that we have taken is there have been civics institutes set up on many of the campuses where civics is taught, history of our country is taught, and less of the ideology.”
“However, if I’m looking at it objectively, I would bet that there are many who have just changed the name and maybe given it enough window dressing that it’s passed muster for the time being,” she added.
