Trump administration irate at Harvard, will pull additional $1bn in funding

The administration was planning to treat Harvard more leniently until the university released to the public the White House’s demands which officials thought would remain confidential.

The Trump administration has grown so furious with Harvard University after a week of escalating fireworks between the two sides that it is planning to pull an additional US$1 billion of the school’s funding for health research, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump administration officials, the people said, thought the long list of demands they sent Harvard last Friday was a confidential starting point for negotiations.

They were surprised on Monday when Harvard released the letter to the public. Before Monday, the administration was planning to treat Harvard more leniently than Columbia University, but now officials want to apply even more pressure to the nation’s most prominent university, according to the people.

People familiar with Harvard’s response say there was no agreement to keep the letter private, and that its contents – including requirements that Harvard allow federal-government oversight of admissions, hiring and the ideology of students and staff – were a nonstarter.

The letters to Harvard and other schools are coming from a new Trump panel called the Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

In an open letter to the community, Harvard President Alan Garber said the list of demands made clear that “the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner.” And, he added, “we have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement.” People close to Harvard say the task force is now escalating the fight to protect its own reputation. The government’s demand letter to Harvard received blowback after the university released it, including from some on the right who publicly said it was overreach.

People leave Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Harvard’s Monday release of the letter positioned the university as a face of resistance against the Trump administration and has presented the task force with a playbook far different than Columbia’s, which quickly agreed to their demands to try to recover $400 million in federal funding.

The task force had thought Harvard would also concede, according to people close to the matter.

Instead, the acrimony between the two sides deepened. Hours after Harvard released the demand list and announced its intention to fight, the White House froze $2.26 billion in funding. The administration also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and ability to enrol international students. These lines of attack have the potential to drain billions of dollars from the university.

Harvard reached out to the Trump administration in late March to try to avoid a confrontation, people familiar with the matter said. Harvard had already spent months making good-faith efforts to quell campus antisemitism and implement structural changes to stop it from rising again. Harvard thought it was aligned with the general demands that arrived in an April 3 letter from the government task force, but then asked for more specifics.

People close to Harvard said the subsequent demands in the April 11 letter were far more intrusive than they could accept – and they perceived the correspondence to be a final offer. The letter wasn’t marked private, but task force members say that they had made clear in weeks prior that they wanted to keep their discussions private. Harvard disputes that there was any agreement about confidentiality.

Trump administration officials now doubt Harvard ever meant to negotiate and suspect the school aimed to fight the entire time, people familiar with the matter said.

The government’s set of demands was mistakenly sent a day earlier than the task force intended, but its contents weren’t an error, people familiar with the task force said. The administration stands behind the letter with the demands, a White House spokesman said. The New York Times earlier reported that a government official said the letter was sent mistakenly.

“Instead of grandstanding, Harvard should focus on rebuilding confidence among all students, particularly Jewish students,” the spokesman said. “The White House remains open to dialogue, but serious changes are needed at Harvard.” Garber, the Harvard president, said in his message that although some of the government’s demands concerned antisemitism, most would represent “direct governmental regulation.”