Scooping the Crimson, the Globe reports that Drew Faust has endorsed federal legislation known as the Dream Act, which would create a pathway to citizenship for students who are also illegal immigrants.

She acknowledged that students with “immigration status issues” attend Harvard, and said the bill would be a “lifeline” to such students.

…Harvard students said they have been lobbying Faust for months on the issue. They held a rally and submitted a petition with 120 signatures, said Harvard junior Kyle de Beausset, one of the organizers….

But Bob Dane, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said Harvard should not admit illegal immigrants because they displace students here legally.

“Maybe the elites at Harvard should come down from their ivory tower and get some ground perspective on what kind of cost and competition that legal US residents are actually incurring these days,” said Dane.

Dane’s argument would be more compelling if it were coherent. What does that mean—”what kind of cost and competition….legal US residents are incurring”? One hardly worries that hordes of illegal immigrants are stealing places at Harvard from more deserving US citizens. Besides, they’re here anyway—it’s not like they’re sneaking across the border to take the SATs. Better to have an educated illegal immigrant contributing to the economy than a poor one taking services from it.

Still, here’s something I don’t understand. 

Faust, who declined to be interviewed….

So the president of a publicly supported university takes a position on a matter of public importance and then refuses to speak to the press about it? 

As a matter of principle, that’s dingy. As a matter of public relations, such reticence makes Faust look weak—oh, sure, she’ll take a stand in a letter to a friendly senator, but talk to a reporter who may ask her to go off-script? Nuh-uh. 

(Which, of course, makes it look like there’s a puppet behind Faust, a Karl Rove figure with liberal ideas—someone who said, you should do this, I’ll write the letter, you don’t have to say anything—kind of like the people behind Caroline Kennedy’s absurd Senate campaign.)

Harvard pays so many presidential advisers and PR people so much money, and yet they fail to realize that, in obsessively trying to protect Drew Faust, they simply make her look like she needs to be protected. They also create the appearance of a university president who is more interested in doing business behind closed doors and without accountability than in exposing her actions to public debate and possible criticism. Which may be true, but isn’t the kind of image they should be promoting for Faust.