‘No takeover’: Harvard refuses to surrender independence after Trump threat

Washington: Harvard University has refused to accept a deal with the Trump administration two weeks after the US government threatened to halt $US9 billion ($14 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 on Monday (Tuesday AEST) to US agencies including the Department of Education.

Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration announced it was freezing $US2.3 billion in federal funding to the school. The freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.

The steps of Widener Library at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Credit: Bloomberg

In a post on the university’s website before the freeze, Harvard president Alan Garber said the Trump administration demanded new terms late on Friday that went beyond prior requests in exchange for maintaining federal funding. These included reforming its governance, ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, changing 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 $US53 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 October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza. Garber, who had repeatedly said 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 co-operative 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.”

‘It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a co-operative and constructive manner.’

Alan Garber, Harvard president

The administration also demanded the university stop recognising or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence or illegal harassment” and to overhaul the admissions process to bar any international students “hostile to the American values” or who are “supportive of terrorism or antisemitism”.

The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks – which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters – and suspending any students who occupied university buildings during the protests.

The White House campaign to force changes at elite universities has fuelled concern among faculty and students that the government is violating free speech and will damage 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”.

Demonstrators in Cambridge, Massachussetts call on Harvard University to resist attempts by Donald Trump to influence the institution.Credit: AP

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 hometown 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 cancelled $US400 million of federal money for Columbia University in March and has frozen dozens of research contracts at Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities. It also suspended $US175 million at the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender athlete to compete on its women’s swimming 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 was committed to working with the administration. The law firms, responding to the government agencies, also said the school had 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,” Garber wrote in the letter.

He said the demands violated the university’s First Amendment rights and “exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI”, which prohibits discrimination against students based on their race, colour or national origin.

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

A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College.Credit: AP

However, in a defiant note on its website, the university stated it would “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, supported the school’s social media move, saying he hoped other universities would 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 Corporation for “standing up for education and freedom by standing against the Trump Administration’s brazen attempt to bully schools and weaponise 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 from upstate New York said it was time to “totally cut off US taxpayer funding to this institution that has failed to live up to its founding motto ‘Veritas’.”

Bloomberg, AP

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