In a speech about two and a half years ago, before he became a senator, Ted Cruz , a former Harvard law student, claimed that there were twelve professors there who would say "they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government."

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker reported on Cruz's speech, which she attended at the time, and which took place at a conference hosted by the Koch-funded Tea Party group Americans For Prosperity, called "Defending the American Dream."
Charles Fried, a Solicitor General for Ronald Reagan and a professor at Harvard Law who once taught Cruz, told Mayer: "I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government.'"