Rep. Nancy Mace Mocks Harvard Students. And She Can’t Wait To Talk With Them.

One day before Rep. Nancy R. Mace’s planned talk at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, the firebrand South Carolina Republican was still lacing into the University online and in an interview with The Crimson.

Mace claimed in the Wednesday evening interview that Harvard failed to tamp down on campus antisemitism in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and harbored pro-Hamas student groups.

And on her personal X account, Mace adopted a mocking tone for her nearly half a million followers, deriding the students she was preparing to visit.

“I’m talking to Harvard students tomorrow night,” she wrote Wednesday evening. “Some of them wouldn’t last two seconds with Hamas. They would get their heads chopped off before they could even say their pronouns.”

Mace told The Crimson she was hoping for “civilized discussion, civilized debate.” She wanted to hear what Ivy League students thought about “the current environment, politically,” she said.

And she said she was eager to talk with students about “all the hot button issues” — though, she said, she doesn’t script her speeches in advance.

“I’ll probably talk about Israel a little bit,” she said. “I’ll probably touch on immigration, for example. I’ll touch on the Middle East. I’ll touch on antisemitism. I’ll touch on women’s issues.”

Mace will appear at an IOP study group Thursday to speak with students at an undisclosed location. She was invited to join the off-the-record talk with IOP spring resident fellow Joe Mitchell, who co-founded a nonprofit to mentor up-and-coming conservative leaders.

Mace made her political name with a keen eye for capitalizing on media attention. In 2023, The New York Times described her as a “fiscal conservative” who “leans toward the center on some social issues.” Until last year, she was perhaps most famous for her feud with then-House Speaker Kevin O. McCarthy, whom she voted to oust from his role.

But Mace, a self-styled “maverick,” has made a home for herself within the hard right. She has sought to bar transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the Capitol and slung anti-trans slurs during a House committee meeting. And while she once condemned President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attacks, she has transformed into an ardent defender of his presidency.

Mace’s public statements did not endear her to Harvard’s largely liberal student body. Students floated plans on social media platforms to boycott her upcoming appearance at the IOP. Some suggested attending a concurrently scheduled event with Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). Many warned against protesting, arguing that disruptions would give Mace exactly what she wanted.

In her interview with The Crimson, Mace said she accepted the invitation because Harvard was an “Ivy League school with a lot of smart students and a well-known political center.”

Though Mace did not say she was hoping for a face-off with disgruntled students, she has seized opportunities for confrontation. Hours before her Wednesday interview, she bombarded Boston mayor Michelle Wu ’07 with a series of yes-or-no questions on Boston’s sanctuary city status.

And in her interview with The Crimson, she laid out a laundry list of grievances with Harvard and higher education.

She accused American colleges of fostering “disgusting” antisemitism, comparing pro-Palestine student protests to Nazi Germany.

“There have been groups on college campuses like Harvard that have promoted the ideology of Hamas, that have prevented Jews from going to class,” she said. “This is not 1942 Germany. That will not stand in Donald Trump’s America.”

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.

Mace backed Trump’s plan to revoke visas for international students who are “Hamas sympathizers” or “pro-jihadist.”

“I want to see them deported from every single college campus across America,” Mace said. “We need to have people that are going to be safe.”

Mace also doubled down on her anti-trans statements, saying cisgender women were being pushed out of college life by trans classmates. Harvard is currently facing a lawsuit over the participation of a trans woman swimmer in a 2022 championship tournament held on its campus.

“Men should not be hijacking women’s sports,” she said. “Men shouldn’t be hijacking the achievements of women and girls that are coming through academia.”

After Trump signed a Feb. 5 executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports, Harvard Athletics removed its Transgender Inclusion Policy.

Mace issued across-the-board endorsements of Trump’s slew of executive orders targeting higher education and stripping down the administrative state.

“We should defund DEI, we should defund USAID,” Mace said. “We should defund all foreign aid except to Israel.”

Before her visit to Harvard on Thursday, Mace embraced the prospect of some verbal sparring: “I love tough questions. I love feedback. I love criticism. I welcome any question that anyone has from any side of the aisle.”

“You can ask me anything,” she added.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.