Donald Trump tries to run Harvard

The Trump Administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funds to Harvard after the university refused to surrender to its sweeping demands. Picture: AFP

The Trump Administration on Monday froze $2.2 billion in funds to Harvard after the university refused to surrender to its sweeping demands. Few Americans will shed tears for the Cambridge crowd, but there are good reasons to oppose this unprecedented attempt by government to micromanage a private university.

Stipulate that the feds have a duty to enforce civil-rights laws, and Harvard failed to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests. But the university agreed to strengthen protections for Jewish students in a legal settlement with Students Against Antisemitism, which praised it for “implementing effective long-term changes.”

The Trump Administration nonetheless demanded last week that Harvard accede to what is effectively a federal receivership under threat of losing $9 billion. Some of the demands are within the government’s civil-rights purview, such as requiring Harvard to discipline students who violate its discrimination policies. It also wants Harvard to “shutter all diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, under “whatever name,” that violate federal law.

But the Administration runs off the legal rails by ordering Harvard to reduce “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralisation.” It also orders the school to review “all existing and prospective faculty … for plagiarism” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit.”

These reforms may be worth pursuing, but the government has no business requiring them. Its biggest overreach is requiring “viewpoint diversity,” which it doesn’t define. Does this mean the English department must hire more Republican faculty or Shakespeare scholars? An external monitor will decide such questions.

If the monitor finds insufficient diversity, however defined, the university must hire “a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide” that diversity and admit “a critical mass of students” to provide the same. Must Harvard ask applicants if they support Mr Trump and impose ideological quotas in hiring and admissions?

Harvard is bound by the High Court’s Students for Fair Admissions precedent (2023), which prohibits racial preferences in admissions. The Administration offers no evidence that Harvard is violating the law but intends a fishing expedition to prove it is. It demands to audit Harvard’s hiring and admissions data and publish admissions rates disaggregated by race, GPA and test scores.

Is the aim to use disparate impact analysis — a favourite tool of the left — to tag Harvard with discrimination? Even race-neutral policies — such as admitting more students from low-income schools — might result in racially disparate outcomes. At least the Biden and Obama Administrations did investigations before bringing down a Title IX hammer. The Trump team is shooting first and investigating later.

In a better world, Harvard and all colleges would be less dependent on Washington for money. But Republicans can’t seem to muster the courage to reform the student-loan program, such as capping graduate loans, which would force universities to shrink administrative bloat and politicised departments.

In any case, much of the federal money Harvard receives supports medical research and affiliated hospitals including Boston Children’s. Harvard could fund some though not all of such research with its $53 billion endowment, but there are sure to be casualties from the Administration’s hostage-taking, including perhaps cancer patients.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government may not use federal benefits or funds to coerce parties to surrender their constitutional rights. This is what the Administration is doing by demanding Harvard accede to “viewpoint diversity.”

The Administration is also overstepping its authority by imposing sweeping conditions on funds that weren’t spelled out by Congress. The Justices held in Cummings (2022) that “if Congress intends to impose a condition on the grant of federal moneys, it must do so unambiguously” to ensure the recipient “voluntarily and knowingly accept[ed] the terms.”

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Congress can pass a law to advance Mr Trump’s higher-ed reforms, such as reporting admissions data. But the Administration can’t unilaterally and retroactively attach strings to grants that are unrelated to their purpose. President Trump has enough balls in the air without also trying to run Harvard.

The Wall St Journal