A Harvard professor gives a perspective on the university clash

The Trump Administration and the Wealthiest College in the World: A Battle for the Establishment of Academic Freedom in the Twenty–Five Years

His comments marked the latest volley in a battle between the Trump administration and the wealthiest college in the world, a battle that heated up last Friday when the administration sent Harvard a list of demands it said must be met, or risk losing some $9 billion in federal funding.

On Monday, Harvard wouldn’t comply with the Trump administration’s attempt to control America’s higher education system. Its president, Alan Garber, brightly illuminated the profound principle at stake in remaining independent of the government’s edicts.

The Trump administration froze Harvard’s federal grants and contracts after Harvard lawyers refused the government’s long list of demands. Academic leaders around the country might be staggered by the prospect of losing even a fraction of that kind of money, but Harvard made it clear that it wasn’t taking its stand simply because its $53 billion endowment gave it the resources to do so.

“Harvard really had no choice given the extent of the demands the Trump administration had made upon it,” Dorf said.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said that by Harvard taking the lead, other institutions could oppose the administration’s demands.

“Harvard stood up and sent a chill across higher education, that would have made it difficult for other institutions to define themselves where the red line is,” Mitchell said.

The US Education Department is investigating 60 universities for their handling of Jewish students.

“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable,” the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said in a statement yesterday. It’s time for elite universities to get serious about changing if they want to keep getting taxpayer support.

“We will choke off the money to schools that teach Marxists how to destroy Western civilization,” Trump said in a speech in Florida in 2023. “The days of subsidizing communists in our colleges will soon be over.”

Former President Barack Obama, in a statement today, praised Harvard’s response and called the administration’s moves an “unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom.”

The White House believes that it is fighting antisemitism on college campuses. Trump dislikes colleges and universities he thinks are too liberal for a long time. In the last month, the administration has canceled about $11 billion in federal grants at several prestigious universities.

“The catalog of horrors is a thick one,” Mitchell said. There are a good number of things that the administration can try to throw institutions off balance. And tax-exempt status is one of them.

Colleges and universities are tax-exempt. They are given nonprofit status along with charities, religious institutions and some political organizations.

Republicans have long sought to curb the tax exemptions in higher education. Congress passed a 1.4 percent tax on university endowments, which affected many elite institutions.

The Harvard faculty and American Association of University Professors filed a lawsuit late last week against the administration over demands to change to maintain funding levels. Among those demands are that Harvard eliminate DEI programs, screen international students who are “supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in its hiring.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote in a public letter that took a stand against government overreach into academic freedom. Doing otherwise, he said, would threaten the values of any private university “devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.”

Nikolas Bowie, a professor at Harvard Law, stands with the university’s decision. He says it’s important for institutions to determine what is taught on their campuses.

“For us to change what we think is important, because of prevailing orthodoxy in the White House, would turn Harvard’s pursuit of truth, its motto, to just pursuit of popular opinion,” Bowie told Morning Edition. “That may be an important role for politicians to take and elected officials, but it’s not the role of academics.”

The administration sent Harvard a list of demands last week, threatening them with losing $9 billion in federal funding if their requirements are not met.

That’s correct. Right now, the sciences and medical research at Harvard are directly influenced by federal funding, but pretty much everything that Harvard does is related to the federal government.

The study was canceled at the last moment because the president stripped the hospital of federal funding. Yet, that’s what the president right now is proposing,” Bowie said.

Michel Martin: I noticed that the university is highlighting its research projects. Is it one of the threatened projects that focuses on Alzheimer’s disease or something like that?

Bowie: The Trump Administration can’t afford to seize federal funds and punish the rest of the university for deporting protesters for injustices in Gaza

When I was a law student, I learned law from the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard. The demand letter last Friday took aim at that particular clinic. I don’t believe that’s the reason, but I think it is because the Trump administration doesn’t like the legal positions it’s communicating.

In its Monday response, Harvard said it has made changes in the last 15 months to devote resources to programs that promote ideological diversity. Isn’t it an admission by the Trump administration that it had a point there?

Our job is to gain wisdom and understanding. Diverse viewpoints are required to bring that about. And, of course, having conservative and other colleagues who can participate in these conversations is critical, but it shouldn’t be done at the point of a financial gun.

Bowie: Oh, we do. No law in this country permits the president to seize federal funds and to just keep them until an institution complies with his personal will. There’s laws that govern how federal funds are used because they’re used for important things like research.

The Constitution also just prohibits public officials from abusing their power to punish their political enemies. That’s what the president is doing here when he’s deporting students for protesting injustices in Gaza. It doesn’t permit him to punish the rest of the university either for how it disciplines those students.