Harvard Refuses To Surrender Independence After Trump Threat

Harvard University refused to accept a deal with the Trump administration two weeks after the US government threatened to halt $9 billion in funding, vowing it won’t “surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.”

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” the school’s lawyers — Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and King & Spalding — wrote in a letter Monday to US agencies including the Department of Education.  

Harvard president Alan Garber said in a post on the school’s website that the administration demanded new terms late Friday that went beyond prior requests in exchange for maintaining federal funding. These included reforming its governance, ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs, changes to its admissions and hiring and curbing the “power” of certain students, faculty and administrators because of their ideological views. 

The oldest and richest US university —with a $53 billion endowment — had emerged as a target as the government sought changes at the nation’s top colleges, which were roiled by pro-Palestinian student protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza. Garber, who had said repeatedly he would work with the administration, challenged the idea that the government was focused solely on antisemitism. 

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” Garber wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

The White House campaign to force changes at elite universities has fueled concern among faculty and students that they’re violating free speech and damaging scientific research. A group of Harvard professors suing the administration has accused it of exploiting Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to “coerce universities into undermining free speech and academic inquiry in service of the government’s political or policy preferences.” 

The Cambridge City Council unanimously passed a resolution last week calling on Harvard to rebuff the Trump administration’s demands, a rare comment by the university’s home town on its policies. Elected officials, including Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons, joined a protest over the weekend on campus that also drew alumni and current students.

The Trump administration has already canceled $400 million in federal money to Columbia University in March, and has frozen dozens of research contracts at Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities. It also suspended $175 million at the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender athlete to compete on its women’s swim team several years ago.

Garber has acknowledged the need to tackle antisemitism, noting that he’s experienced it directly while serving as the university’s leader, and said Harvard is committed to working with the administration. The law firms, responding to the government agencies, also said the school has made “lasting and robust” changes over the past 15 months, including tightening disciplinary procedures.  

“Harvard is in a very different place today from where it was a year ago,” according to the letter. 

In recent weeks the school placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation and forced the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies to leave their posts. Harvard also suspended a partnership it has with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

But the university, in a defiant note on its website, stated it will “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.” The school initially posted language that indicated it would not “negotiate,” which was updated. 

Former Harvard president Larry Summers, a frequent critic of the school’s response to antisemitism on campus, was supportive of the school’s move on social media, saying he hoped other universities take a similar stand. Jeff Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, on X described it as a “powerful and entirely justified” statement by Garber. 

Democratic lawmakers were also supportive with Massachusetts governor Maura Healey offering “gratitude” to Garber and the Harvard Corp. for “standing up for education and freedom by standing against the Trump Administration’s brazen attempt to bully schools and weaponize the US Department of Justice under the false pretext of civil rights.” 

But the move also elicited a furious response from US Representative Elise Stefanik. The Republican lawmaker from upstate New York said it’s time to “totally cut off U.S. taxpayer funding to this institution that has failed to live up to its founding motto Veritas.”

(Updates with Massachusetts governor in penultimate paragraph.)

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