Tag: Harvard

Higher education postcard: Harvard University

Greetings from Cambridge! No, not that one.

This is Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of Harvard University. Harvard is one of the world’s great universities; it’s the oldest university in the United States of America; and it is currently the target of attempted coercion by the executive of the USA. There’s quite a story to tell!

April showers bring May flowers

In the 1630s, the northeast of what would become the USA was a series of colonies from Britain: parties of settlers had landed, established small towns, fought and traded with the people who were already there (this was no terra incognita), and either died out or survived. The colonies were not independent states: they were British, and ultimately ruled from Britain. But local government was needed, and in the case of the Massachusetts Bay colony this was via the charter obtained by the Massachusetts Bay Company.

The General Court of Massachusetts was the local government, and in 1636 it allocated £400 to establish a college to be located in Newetowne. In 1638, Newetowne was renamed Cambridge; this was coincident with a bequest by John Harvard, a graduate of the University of Cambridge in England, who left the college half of his estate, and his library of 400 books.

John Harvard was born in Southwark in 1607; he studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and gained a BA in 1632, and an MA in 1635. He moved to the Massachusetts colony in 1637 and was a puritan preacher, he died in 1638. The value of his estate was £1700, worth about 300,000 today. And the college got half of that. Not a huge amount, but enough to get the college going; and it was named for him in commemoration.

Here’s two fun facts: the statue of Harvard at Harvard says on its plinth that he was the founder. Not true. Also, it isn’t an image of Harvard, but of an 1884 student who was descended from an early president of the university.

The first students graduated in 1642. In 1650 the college was granted a charter – issued by the General Court, not the British monarch, for by 1650 Britain was temporarily a commonwealth not a monarchy. The charter created the Harvard Corporation, being the president and the fellows of Harvard College; and it is this corporation which continues to this day.

Harvard College continued to grow and develop, as successful colleges do. Its curriculum was modelled on the Cambridge liberal arts approach; its theology was Puritan. It enrolled a native American student, John Sassemon, in 1653. When serving as interpreter to Metacom, the Wampanoag chief in 1675, he was murdered as an English informant, sparking the worst of the many wars between settlers and existing populations in New England.

Independence day

The late eighteenth century was momentous in America. Eight Harvard graduates (John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry, William Ellery, William Williams, and William Hooper) signed the declaration of independence in 1776.

In 1780, when Massachusetts as a state gained a constitution, it granted to Harvard the title of university. In 1781 a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa opened at Harvard – it is the oldest continually running chapter of the society. And in 1782 it opened a medical school – which, interestingly, the university’s own history regards as the start of it being a proper university.

A side note on Phi Beta Kappa. This described itself as an academic honour society; such societies also might be known as fraternities. Frat houses cause no end of trouble on some American university campuses, as well as providing a location for some sometimes dubious comedy.

You may recall in my blog on Purdue University that one of its presidents resigned having failed to ban fraternities from campus. There’s loads of them – the Wikipedia entry has too many for me to count – and there are accrediting bodies. I may have to find a postcard one day…

Football crazy

In the nineteenth century Harvard continued to grow, adding schools of divinity and law in the first couple of decades, a science school in the 1850s, a dental school in the 1860s, and a graduate school in 1872. In 1852 the first intercollegiate boat race – Harvard versus Yale – took place on Lake Winnipesaukee. And in 1875 the first intercollegiate football match (gridiron, not association, union or league) took place. Harvard won.

Let’s at this point note Tom Lehrer, mathematician, satirist, Harvard alumnus and academic, who I regard as one of Harvard’s finest. An early song of his, Fight fiercely, Harvard, satirizes the football fight song. And the YouTube video linked above has some fabulous footage of Harvard v Yale games through the ages.

Lehrer also wrote Bright College Days, a satire of college songs. Which includes the wonderful line, “ivy-covered professors, in ivy-covered halls”. A great Lehrer quote: “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize.” And finally, Lehrer in 2022 gave all his songs to the public, making them available without copyright on a website: well done, sir.

Establishment

Harvard was by now a firm fixture in the US establishment. Eight US Presidents have been educated at Harvard (as was the most recent Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney). In 1886, at its 250th anniversary celebrations, President Grover Cleveland, not an alumnus, was in attendance.

In 1908 the Harvard Business School opened, the first in the country restricting its intake to graduates. More schools were established; the Harvard University Press opened in 1913; the first Harvard Nobel laureate was crowned in 1914 (Theodore Richards, for determination of atomic weights).

In 1947 General George C Marshall (pictured, when he himself was a student at the Virginia equivalent of Colonel Oates’ miliary academy), then Secretary of State, received an honorary degree. He used his speech to announce the Marshall Plan, via which the US supported the rebuilding of post-war Europe. To be fair this knocks most graduation speeches I have heard into a cocked hat.

Opening the door a little wider…

It would be fair to characterise Harvard as not having been, historically, at the forefront of change. One example is women’s education.

Harvard was, like (I suspect but can’t demonstrate) nearly all universities previously, restricted to men only. In 1879 Arthur Gilman, a banker, and his wife Stella Scott Gilman, wished their daughter to have a university education. Harvard would not admit women, so they persuaded the president of Harvard to allow them to employ Harvard academics, part-time, to deliver courses to women in what became known as the Harvard Annex.

They had hoped that Harvard might relax its stance and accept women to study for degrees, but the attitude of the university was summed up in 1869 by its President, Charles Eliot, who in his inaugural address said:

The world knows next to nothing about the capacities of the female sex. Only after generations of civil freedom and social equality will it be possible to obtain the data necessary for an adequate discussion of woman’s natural tendencies, tastes, and capabilities…It is not the business of the University to decide this mooted point.

And this in 1888 from Eliot to a potential new faculty member:

There is no obligation to teach at The Annex. Those professors who on general grounds take an interest in the education of women…feel some obligation but there are many professors who think it their duty NOT to teach there, in which opinion some of the Corporation and Overseers agree.

Nevertheless, the Harvard Annex thrived, with increasing numbers of women wishing to study there. In 1894 a compromise was reached: the annex became a degree-awarding college – Radcliffe College – with Harvard staff teaching and guaranteeing standards.

In the 1930s a subsequent Harvard President – Lawrence Lowell – felt that Radcliffe was a distraction to Harvard’s academics, and a limit was placed on the number of students who could be admitted to Radcliffe: 750 undergraduates in total, 250 graduate students. These limits stayed in place until 1979, when Radcliffe was incorporated into Harvard, which finally became co-educational.

It wasn’t only women with which Harvard, historically, had a problem. In the 1923, Lowell had sought to put a cap on the proportion of Jewish students at Harvard. He was unsuccessful. Harvard presidents don’t always get what they want.

Lowell also enforced racial segregation where he could. In 1921 he refused to allow black students to reside in the university’s dormitories. Writing to the father of one such student, he said:

We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man, but we do not owe to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.

Do the right thing

Faced with examples like these, you might be forgiven for thinking Harvard would always behave badly where it could. But they are currently taking a stand for academic autonomy.

Threatened with withdrawal of funding and tax exempt status, the university has refused to accede to the US government’s demands which are, frankly, a full-on assault on academic autonomy. Here’s the letter of 11 April sent to the university; here’s the university’s response.

It is worth taking a minute to read the demands made of Harvard. They relate to student discipline; the appointment and employment of faculty; the content of programmes; the admission of students. The US government cavilled that the letter was sent in error (and if you believe that I’d like to talk to you about a bridge I have for sale) but its my view that where a country’s government threatens universities, that country is in trouble.

Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion, so it has the financial resources to cushion the significant blow. But it didn’t have to resist, and we should all be glad that it is doing so.

Missed opportunities

With such a big university, such a famous university and such an old university, there’s a stack of things which I haven’t been able to write about. Another time, maybe.

For now, here’s a jigsaw of the card, which was sent in November 1907 to Miss Adeline Tower at Rutgers Prep School, New Jersey. The message on the front – to save you straining you eyes – reads:

Dear Ade: how are you? Eliza came home alright. I missed her very much. Hope to see you Xmas. Love Grandma

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May 8, 2025
Harvard Faculty Pledge 10% of Salary to Defend Against Trump

Nearly 100 senior faculty members at Harvard have committed to taking a pay cut to support the institution’s legal defense against the federal government.

The Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funding, threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and said it would end the institution’s ability to enroll international students.

Last month, Harvard filed a lawsuit to halt the federal freeze on $2.2 billion in grants after university officials refused to comply with a sweeping list of demands from the government.

On Friday, President Trump repeated his calls to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status. “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial.

Harvard president Alan Garber said taking away the institution’s nonprofit tax exemption would be “highly illegal” and that its mission to educate and research would be “severely impaired” if the status were revoked.

In their pledge, 89 senior faculty signatories said they would take a 10 percent pay cut for up to a year to protect the institution, as well as faculty and students who are more exposed to efforts to shore up costs, including by limiting graduate student enrollment and implementing hiring and salary freezes.

“The financial costs will not be shared equally among our community. Staff and students in many programs, in particular, are under greater threat than those of us with tenured positions,” the pledge says.

Ryan Enos, a signatory and professor of government at Harvard, estimated that the donations could amount to more than $2 million.

The group said it intends to move quickly but has not decided how the salary cuts will be implemented.

“We envision that faculty who have made the pledge will hold a vote and if the majority agrees that the university is making a good faith effort to use its own resources in support of staff, student, and academic programs, faculty will proceed with their donation.”

Last week the institution announced changes to its admissions, curriculum and disciplinary procedures after two internal task forces launched last year investigating anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism on campus found the university’s response lacking.

In response to the efforts, a White House official told CNN, “Harvard’s steps so far to curb antisemitism are ‘positive,’” but “what we’re seeing is not enough, and there’s actually probably going to be additional funding being cut.”

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May 6, 2025
Trump Admin Cuts Off New Research Funding to Harvard

Harvard has about $9 billion in grants and contracts from the federal government.

Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

Harvard University won’t be getting any new grants, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote in a blistering letter to the institution that was posted on the social media platform known as X.

“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote. “You have an approximately $53 billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.”

McMahon didn’t specify what grants she was referring to in the letter, sent Monday evening, but other media outlets reported that the Trump administration was cutting Harvard off from new research grants.

The move escalates the Trump administration’s war with Harvard University. After the university rejected sweeping demands, the administration froze $2.26 billion of Harvard’s estimated $9 billion in grants and contracts. Harvard then sued. Trump also has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its ability to enroll international students.

The letter didn’t cite any legal authority for cutting off new funds to Harvard, so it’s unclear if McMahon can follow through on her threat.

McMahon accused Harvard of failing to follow federal law and abide “by any semblance of academic rigor.” She also raised questions about why the university was offering an introductory math course to address pandemic learning loss and criticized the decision to scrap standardized testing requirements.

“Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest level of mathematics, are being rejected?” McMahon wrote.

Over all, she wrote that Harvard had “made a mockery of the country’s higher education system,” referencing in part the plagiarism allegations against the university’s former president. To McMahon, it all shows “evidence of Harvard’s disastrous management” and an “urgent need for massive reform.”

Trump administration officials told Politico that to restore the flow of federal funds, Harvard “would have to enter into a negotiation with the government to satisfy the government that it’s in compliance with all federal laws.” (The government has yet to release any finding or evidence showing that Harvard isn’t complying with federal laws, though officials have made plenty of accusations.)

McMahon wrote that the administration stands by its demands for “common sense” reforms such as merit-based admissions and hiring decisions and an “end to unlawful programs that promote crude identity stereotypes.” Those changes “will advance the best interests of Harvard University,” she added.

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May 5, 2025
Harvard faculty group pledges 10% of salary to help university fight Trump
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Dive Brief:
- Dozens of faculty members at Harvard University have signed on to contribute 10% of their salaries, for up to a year, to the institution’s legal fight against the Trump administration.
- As of Friday afternoon, 88 senior faculty had signed the agreement, according to organizers. Of those, 43 have done so publicly.
- The faculty pledge came just before President Donald Trump said his administration will pull Harvard’s tax-exempt status, adding “It’s what they deserve!” in a Friday social media post.
Dive Insight:

This week’s developments are only the latest in the ongoing battle between Harvard and Trump.

In the president’s numerous attacks on higher education, Harvard in particular has borne intense scrutiny from the Trump administration. That aggression escalated significantly in mid-April when the Ivy League institution rebuked demands from federal agencies to interfere in academic matters, becoming the first well-known college to respond so forcefully.

Since then, the administration has slashed Harvard’s federal funding by almost $2.3 billion, threatened billions of dollars more, opened Title VI investigations into it and its law review, and threatened its ability to enroll international students.

Harvard is now suing the Trump administration over what it calls the government’s efforts to withhold federal funding “as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking.”

Though Harvard is one of the best-resourced institutions in the country, the legal battle is likely to be arduous and expensive. This week’s faculty salary pledge described the university as facing “severe financial damage for its defense of academic freedom.”

That damage could come in the form of an unprecedented tax bill.

In previous social media posts, Trump said Harvard “is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds” and should “be Taxed as a Political Entity.”

Trump, as president, does not have unilateral legal authority to pull Harvard’s tax exemption, a status bestowed by the Internal Revenue Service. And neither the president nor employees of the executive office can legally direct the IRS to audit or investigate an institution. Federal law requires IRS employees who receive such directions to report them to the agency’s oversight office.

Despite this, CNN reported in April that the IRS was making arrangements to revoke Harvard’s status, just after Trump posted on the matter.

Such a change would significantly escalate Trump’s financial battle against Harvard that prompted the faculty pledge. The 11 faculty members leading the salary pledge said they intend for the signatories to hold a vote.

“If the majority agrees that the university is making a good faith effort to use its own resources in support of staff, student, and academic programs, faculty will proceed with their donation,” their letter said.

The pledge also acknowledged that not all faculty at Harvard are in a position to pledge 10% — or any — of their income and said the salary contribution plan is “only one of the various ways in which we can express solidarity around the university.”

“We also know that many faculty are making important contributions to the Harvard community during this difficult time in other ways, by helping students and staff directly,” it said.
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May 2, 2025
Modest Thoughts From a Minor Donor to Harvard (opinion)

Responding to Harvard University’s defiance of the coercive and illegal demands from the Trump administration, some major donors have recently urged the university to make accommodations rather than fight. A few have withheld large gifts over the last year and a half.

Holding degrees from two of Harvard’s least wealthy schools (Divinity and Education), I have made small annual donations to my relatively impecunious alma maters for 45 years, and I offer these considerations to weigh against those of the big donors who have generally graduated from Harvard’s wealthiest, so-called major schools.

Harvard’s resistance to authoritarian overreach bolsters the entire system of U.S. higher education, which came to be regarded as the best in the world only in the 1970s, after a century of slow development. Harvard’s defiance of unlawful authoritarianism inspires universities throughout the world.

This controversy is therefore not just about Harvard, but all of higher education everywhere. If Harvard caves, then no university will dare to defy governmental overreach. If Harvard resists, then others will be inspired to do so and shamed if they do not.

The urging by major donors to strike a deal with the Trump administration may result from feeling that Harvard’s small and secretive governing board, the Corporation, has, in recent months, not listened to them and ignored “the rightward shift of the country” that prompted Trump’s demands. (Although Harvard’s “major” and wealthiest professional schools—business, law and medicine—still graduate leading financiers on Wall Street and conservative justices of the Supreme Court, notwithstanding claims about the university’s “sins” of left-wing radicalism.)

In any case, the implied threat of major donors to withhold donations is transactional, just like the demands of the Trump administration. Thus, Harvard is caught between two transactional parties. Is the defiance of coercive and illegal overreach worth the possible loss in large gifts?

And the loss could be considerable. Over the last century, the rule in higher education fundraising is that 90 percent of gifts come from the top 10 percent of donors. Big donors count. Little ones scarcely, it seems.

But there are financial counterpoints.

By adjusting the spending rule for its endowment income and by floating bonds and loans, Harvard does have the resources to supplant lost federal income until its legal challenges are litigated, notwithstanding the prospect of further demands by the Trump administration.

Indeed, the annual investment income of large endowments vastly exceeds annual fundraising. As a result, wealthy universities were already shifting their focus from “gifts to growth” of investment yield by the beginning of the 21st century. Fundraising became less important than investing endowment.

Furthermore, major alumni donors, who might fear alienating the Trump administration by donating to Harvard, could easily make donations anonymously, which has long been a tradition in higher education.

Finally, and most importantly, Harvard’s defiance has already inspired support from many alumni who may now do more, counterbalancing the support of transactional big donors who withdraw.

I know that some little donors, like me, have not included Harvard in their estate plans precisely because Harvard has seemed so rich and invulnerable. As former president Drew Gilpin Faust once observed, Harvard’s commitment to its endowment could make the university “as close to immortal as any earthly institution might be.”

Now we see that Harvard needs the support of all of its alumni in these perilous times, not only for the sake of alma mater, but all of higher education.

Bruce A. Kimball, emeritus professor at the Ohio State University, is a former Guggenheim Fellow and co-author with Sarah M. Iler of Wealth, Price and Cost in American Higher Education: A Brief History (Johns Hopkins, 2023) and co-author with Daniel R. Coquillette of the two-volume history of Harvard Law School (Harvard 2015, 2020).

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May 2, 2025
Harvard Law Review Accused of Race-Based Discrimination

In the latest salvo in the war between the Trump administration and Harvard University, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services launched Title VI investigations into Harvard and the Harvard Law Review for alleged race-based discrimination at the 138-year-old student-run publication.

“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor in a statement. “Title VI’s demands are clear: recipients of federal financial assistance may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin … The Trump Administration will not allow Harvard, or any other recipients of federal funds, to trample on anyone’s civil rights.”

The statement alleged that the editor of the Harvard Law Review wrote that it was “concerning” that the vast majority of people seeking to respond to an article about police reform “are white men.” It also accused another editor of suggesting that a submission receive “expedited review because the author was a minority.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon reposted a tweet from the Free Beacon that purports to show additional evidence of race-based decision-making at the Law Review.

“We will not allow recipients of federal funding to discriminate on the basis of race,” McMahon wrote.

Members of the Harvard Law Review have not publicly commented on the allegations. But an HLS spokesperson told Axios, “Harvard Law School is committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations.”

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April 30, 2025
Harvard Eyes Changes to Address Antisemitism, Anti-Muslim Bias

Harvard University is introducing changes to its admissions, curriculum and orientation and other aspects of campus life as recommended by two internal task force reports on discrimination and harassment released Tuesday. The goal is to support civil discourse and address concerns raised by the two task forces, which were convened more than a year ago to review antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias at the university.

The university also plans to initiate a research project on antisemitism and provide support for a “comprehensive historical analysis of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians at Harvard,” officials announced Tuesday. Harvard will also invest in Jewish studies and organize events featuring experts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Deans will work with faculty to ensure students are treated fairly regardless of political and religious beliefs and prevent professors from taking political positions in class that create feelings of exclusion, according to the task force reports.

A review of disciplinary policies and procedures is also planned.

The announcement comes as the nation’s wealthiest university is locked in a standoff with the Trump administration over how officials handled pro-Palestinian campus protests last spring, which has prompted the federal government to freeze billions in research funding for Harvard and led the university to fire back with a lawsuit. Now, amid withering federal scrutiny and an ongoing Title VI investigation, Harvard has released more than 500 pages detailing the recent concerns of Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students along with recommended improvements.

Of the two task forces, one focused on combating antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias while the other took on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. Those task forces, launched in January 2024, were asked to examine Harvard’s recent history, identify root causes of bias, evaluate evidence on the frequency of such behaviors and recommend steps to combat bias.

That work is now done. And the end result finds Harvard lacking—but aiming for improvement.

Harvard president Alan Garber noted that the report “revealed aspects of a charged period in our recent history” that required addressing. While the university has already made various changes since he became president last January, he noted the work is far from finished.

He also expressed concerns about the findings.

“Especially disturbing is the reported willingness of some students to treat each other with disdain rather than sympathy, eager to criticize and ostracize, particularly when afforded the anonymity and distance that social media provides. Some students reported being pushed by their peers to the periphery of campus life because of who they are or what they believe, eroding our shared sense of community in the process,” Garber wrote in a Tuesday statement.

The Findings

The dual task force reports show a campus sharply divided in the aftermath of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which prompted a brutal counteroffensive in Gaza and the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, children among them. The antisemitism task force report makes clear that tensions had been building on campus since the mid-2010s as the Israel-Palestine conflict became more divisive. The report found that after Oct. 7, “our Harvard community fell apart.”

Authors of that report noted that since the 2010s, pro-Israeli events and guests were targeted, and some Jewish students with pro-Israel views found themselves excluded socially. They also found that Jewish students and others on campus faced instances of bullying, intimidation and harassment and were shunned for expressing pro-Israel or moderate views. Students also alleged that university programming skewed in favor of Palestinian views. But then after Oct. 7, some Jewish students noticed a shift in the campus climate.

“My experience has been different before and after October 7th,” one student wrote to the task forces. “Before October 7th, being Jewish was largely irrelevant. It was not a barrier. I was proud to be Jewish. When it came up, it was positive. After October 7th, I experienced the following in this order: first there was pressure, then there was chaos, then hostility, and in certain spaces, the normalization of subtle discrimination like, ‘We’ll welcome you in this space if you align in a certain way. If not, you can’t come here.’ This has to do with the enforcement of rules.”

Jewish students also expressed concerns about speaking up.

“I do not feel mentally safe on campus. Though I am not Israeli, I have openly expressed sympathy for October 7th survivors and attended events for Holocaust survivors. I have faced many social consequences for not thinking in ways my classmates would deem progressive, which I find unreasonable,” one student wrote in response to a survey by the two task forces.

The task force exploring anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias yielded similar findings, with students and employees alike reporting threats and concerns related to their identities.

“The feeling over and over again for Palestinians is that their lives don’t matter as much,” one student said. “Sometimes it’s explicit. It’s really hard when it’s your family that matters less.”

Others expressed free speech concerns.

“It would be close to impossible to express views at Harvard sympathizing with Palestinians,” one Harvard faculty member said, as quoted in the report. “The idea of ‘antisemitism’ has been expanded so much that anything that even remotely expresses concern about the calamity that’s facing Palestinians is prohibited at Harvard. I’m not Arab/Muslim and have no ethnic or religious affiliations with Palestinians other than having a connection as a fellow human being.”

Both reports also expressed safety concerns regarding doxxing trucks and related online campaigns as well as about the role those outside the Harvard community had in amplifying campus divisions.

Respondents to task force surveys also saw Harvard as complicit in failing to address concerns.

“I’ve had positive interactions with the administration. They just don’t know what to do,” one graduate student wrote in a response. “They didn’t expect this level of anti-Zionism. [My school] didn’t expect having to draw a line between free speech and harassment. Anti-Zionism is considered an intellectual exercise and not as discrimination by some in the administration.”

The Next Steps

In his statement, Garber noted the university has already “made necessary changes and essential progress on many fronts” including campus protest rules and various other areas.

But more changes are coming as a result of the task force’s recommendations. On admissions, Harvard has committed to reviewing its processes to emphasize candidates who “engage constructively with different perspectives, show empathy, and participate in civil discourse.”

The university will also offer additional training for Office for Community Conduct staff on antisemitism and hire a staffer to oversee all antisemitism and shared-ancestry complaints. Mental health professionals at Harvard have already received cultural competency training on anti-Muslim bias and antisemitism to give them a better understanding of student needs.

Harvard has also committed to partnering with an Israeli university.

Additionally, deans will work with faculty “to define shared expectations for teaching excellence,” a process intended to ensure “appropriate focus on course subject matter” and to ensure “that students are treated fairly regardless of their identity or political/religious beliefs.” That effort also aims to promote “intellectual openness and respectful dialogue among students” and urges faculty members to refrain “from endorsing or advocating political positions in a manner that may cause students to feel pressure to demonstrate allegiance.” The stated aim of a related curriculum review is to uphold “standards of academic excellence and intellectual rigor.”

The university will also host a series of events on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Harvard is further investing in Jewish studies, including hiring additional personnel. The university will make similar investments in Arabic language and cultures and Islamic and Palestinian studies.

Harvard is also “exploring the creation of a major initiative to promote viewpoint diversity.”

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April 29, 2025
Demands of Harvard Are Blueprint for Repression (opinion)

Harvard University’s courageous refusal to obey the demands of the Trump administration—and its subsequent filing of a lawsuit this week seeking restoration of its federal funding—has inspired praise across academia. But there has been less attention to just how terrible those demands were. No government entity in the United States has ever proposed such repressive measures against a college. By making outrageous demands a condition of federal funding—and freezing $2.2 billion in funds because Harvard refused to obey—the Trump administration is setting a precedent for threatening the same authoritarian measures against every college in America.

The April 11 letter to Harvard from Trump administration officials proposed a staggering level of control over a private college. Although at least one of the authors reported that the letter was sent in error while negotiations were still ongoing, this mistake didn’t stop the Trump administration from punishing Harvard for refusing to accept its dictates.

After Harvard rejected the demands, Trump himself posted further threats to Harvard’s tax-exempt status on social media, even though federal law bars presidents from directly or indirectly requesting Internal Revenue Service investigations against specific targets: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’” Of course, if Harvard obeyed the Trump regime’s orders to silence political speech, it would be pushing a right-wing ideological agenda.

Among the stipulations in the April 11 letter, the Trump administration demanded the power to compel hiring based on political views to, in effect, give almost complete preference to political conservatives: “Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.” Since most people who enter academia are liberal, as are most current academics, this demand for ideological balance would effectively ban the hiring of liberal professors in virtually all departments for many years.

Decisions on how to measure the presence or lack of viewpoint diversity would be made by “an external party” hired by Harvard with the approval of the federal government (meaning Trump). Government-imposed discrimination based on viewpoint would also apply to students, since the letter requires the “external party … to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” If every department “must be individually viewpoint diverse,” then students with underrepresented viewpoints (Nazis, perhaps?) must receive special preferences in admissions. This concept that every department’s students, faculty and staff must match the distribution of viewpoints of the general population is both repressive and crazy to imagine.

The Trump administration letter also ordered Harvard to commission a Trump-approved consultant to report on “individual faculty members” who “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7”—and asserted that Harvard must “cooperate” with the federal government to “determine appropriate sanctions” for these professors. Retroactively punishing professors who violated no rules for allegedly encouraging student protesters is an extraordinary abuse of government power.

Not to stop there, the Trump administration letter seeks to suppress the right to protest: “Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions … including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption.” Since the Trump administration seems to regard every protest as a “disruption” (and Harvard itself has wrongly banned silent protests), this could require immediate police intervention to stop a broad range of actions.

The Trump administration also demanded unprecedented control over Harvard’s disciplinary system to order punishments of student protesters without due process. Among other specific steps, the Trump administration ordered Harvard to ban five specific student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and the National Lawyers Guild, and “discipline” all “active members of those student organizations,” including by banning them from serving as officers in any other student groups. And Harvard would be compelled to implement government-imposed punishments by “permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings.”

Shared governance is another target of Trump and his minions. The Trump administration’s demands for Harvard included “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty” and “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.” It’s bizarre to imagine that a university could be forced by the government to determine whether a professor is committed to “activism” before banning them from any position of power such as a department chair or committee member. The letter also demands “removing or reforming institutional bodies and practices that delay and obstruct enforcement [of campus rules governing protests], including the relevant Administrative Boards and FAS Faculty Council.”

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration’s letter also demands a complete ban on diversity programs: “The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name.” This repression not only interferes with the ability of universities to run their own operations, but it is also designed to suppress speech on a massive scale by banning all programs anywhere in the university that address issues of diversity and equity, with no exceptions for academic programs.

There’s more. Harvard would be forced to share “all hiring and related data” to permit endless ideological “audits.” A requirement that “all existing and prospective faculty shall be reviewed for plagiarism” could be used to purge controversial faculty. Perhaps the most ironic part of the letter to Harvard is its command for ideological control over foreign students: “the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” Trump’s regime is undermining the Constitution and shredding the Bill of Rights, while demanding that foreign students prove their devotion to the very documents that the Trump administration is destroying.

The Trump administration’s letter to Harvard should shock and appall even those conservatives who previously expressed some sympathy with the desire to punish elite universities by any means necessary. This is fascism, pure and simple. It portends an effort to assert total government control over all public and private universities to compel them to obey orders about their hiring, admissions, discipline and other policies. It is an attempt to control virtually every aspect of colleges to suppress free expression, ban protests and impose a far-right agenda.

It’s tempting to hope that the Trump administration merely wanted to target Harvard alone and freeze its funding by proposing a long series of absurdly evil demands, knowing that no college could possibly agree to obey.

But the reality is that the letter to Harvard is a fascist blueprint for total control of all colleges in America, public and private. The demand for authoritarian control by the Trump administration is an assault on higher education and free speech in general. If Trump officials can impose repression on any college they target, then private corporations (as the assaults on private law firms have indicated) and state and local governments will soon follow.

The government repression that began with Columbia University will not end with Harvard or the Ivy League institutions. These are the first volleys in a war against academic freedom, with the clear aim of suppressing free expression on campus or destroying colleges in the battle.

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April 24, 2025
McMahon Defends Harvard Cuts, Faces Grilling During CNBC Interview

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the Trump administration’s crackdown on Harvard University and other colleges during a contentious appearance Tuesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box as she faced questions about the government’s decision to freeze universities’ federal funding.

Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen, the morning talk show’s hosts, grilled McMahon during the 12-minute segment about whether freezing billions in grants and contracts was due to valid civil rights concerns or unjustified political and ideological standards; they suggested it was the latter. (Harvard sued Monday over the funding freeze, which followed the university’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s sweeping demands.)

But McMahon reiterated that, for her, it was a matter of holding colleges accountable for antisemitism on campus—not an alleged liberal bias.

“I made it very clear these are not First Amendment infractions; this is civil rights,” she said. “This is making sure that students on all campuses can come and learn and be safe.”

Harvard argued in the lawsuit that some of the demands—like auditing faculty for viewpoint diversity—do not directly address antisemitism and infringe on the private institution’s First Amendment rights.

Sorkin echoed Harvard’s argument during the interview and questioned McMahon about the lawsuit’s claims.

“The question is whether viewpoint diversity is really about free speech,” he said.

In defense, McMahon said that “this letter [of demands] that was sent to Harvard was a point of negotiation … and it was really not a final offer.” She added that she hoped Harvard would come back to the table. (Trump officials told The New York Times that the April 11 letter was sent by mistake.)

“We would like to be able to move forward with them and other universities,” she said.

McMahon later reiterated her argument that this was a civil rights matter and said, “I think we’re on very solid grounds” regarding the lawsuit.

But Kernen countered that requiring universities to hire conservative faculty members is just as bad as historically maintaining liberal ones, calling the act “thought control.”

“It’s the other side of the same coin, isn’t it?” he said.

McMahon said it’s fair to take a look at some faculty members.

Near the end of the interview, Sorkin asked McMahon about her end goal if universities lose their federal funding and tax-exempt status. (The IRS is reportedly reviewing Harvard’s tax-exemption.)

“We have not said that the tax exemption should be taken away, but I think it’s worth having a look at,” McMahon said. “I think the president has put all the tools on the table and we should have the ability to utilize all of those particular tools.”

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April 23, 2025
FAQ: Responding to common questions about the fight between Harvard and the Trump administration

On April 21, 2025, Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the federal government froze $2.2 billion in federal research funding with threats of more cuts to come. The administration claimed Harvard failed to address anti-Semitism on campus, especially in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and issued a list of demands in exchange for lifting the freeze.

These demands included adopting an ideological litmus test for foreign students, a comprehensive mask ban, an audit of disfavored academic departments, mandated reforms to the university’s internal governance structure, and eliminating diversity programs. Harvard argued that these demands and the funding cuts that followed violated its institutional autonomy and constitutional right free speech and academic freedom. In the lawsuit, the university is asking the court to restore its funding and block the government from imposing such requirements in the future.

FIRE agrees that the Trump administration’s approach is unlawful. Below are answers to some common questions we have received about the situation.

Harvard isn’t entitled to federal funds. Why is FIRE defending it?

You’re right. Harvard isn’t entitled to federal funding. No institution is.

But Harvard — just like you (or FIRE, or any person or organization) — is entitled to a federal government that follows the law. And just as the law gives us certain protections, it also says the government can’t cancel funding on a whim, like the administration did last week.

Let’s take a closer look.

The vast majority of colleges and universities receive federal funds. These funds mostly consist of financial aid, like Pell grants, and grants for scientific and medical research. Of the $9 billion reportedly under review by the Trump administration, the Harvard Crimson estimates over $6 billion comes in the form of funding for five regional hospitals associated with the university, along with $2.7 billion in research funding at the university itself.

To be eligible to receive federal funding, institutions pledge to follow federal anti-discrimination laws. Those laws include Title VI, the federal law that prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. Since the George W. Bush administration, the federal government has interpreted Title VI as prohibiting anti-Semitic discrimination, too.

So far, so good. Colleges get government funding for students and research. The federal government in return gets (among other things) a commitment that those colleges won’t engage in or tolerate discrimination. That’s the deal.

And the deal has rules to protect colleges, the government, and the taxpayers who foot the bill from being negatively affected by arbitrary decisions. Before the federal government can pull funds from an institution, it has to take a series of steps.

First, the Department of Education must investigate complaints about discrimination. If it finds problems, ED is required to work with an institution to address those problems “by informal means whenever possible.” This is the most common process, where the department’s Office for Civil Rights enters into a “resolution agreement” with an institution to ensure compliance with Title VI.

If that doesn’t work, for whatever reason, here’s what happens next. In order to strip federal funding, the department must give notice to the institution again and provide an opportunity for an administrative hearing where the institution can challenge the determination. If the determination stands, ED then has to report this to Congress and give 30 days’ notice before it actually terminates funding to the affected programs. ED may also refer the matter to the Department of Justice for litigation.

In short, one way or another, the federal government is going to have to provide evidence and prove its case if it wants to pull out of the deal.

Those are a lot of steps, but they’re important. They protect students by making sure colleges live up to their obligations. And they protect colleges by making sure they have an opportunity to contest the allegations as well as a chance to make things right.

These rules are also important because they provide a safeguard against political bias, risk of error, and governmental overreach.

Even the federal government acknowledges the role of due process and following existing statute. In a federal court filing earlier this month, the government wrote, “But ED’s only power is to withhold funding from institutions receiving federal funding, after a robust process required by statute and aimed at ensuring compliance.” In that same court filing, the government reiterated that point, writing that “by statute and regulation, numerous steps aimed at ensuring compliance must occur before ED may withdraw funding.”

Without these rules, an administration could, for example, decide to dramatically expand the definition of “sexual harassment” to include core protected speech and to remove due process protections from sexual misconduct hearings, using the threat of federal funding to force schools to go along with it. That’s exactly what happened under President Obama — and FIRE fought back.

And without these rules, nothing prevents the federal government from arbitrarily declaring a university in violation of federal law, yanking federal funding, and demanding fealty and censorship.

That’s what President Trump is doing now. And again, FIRE is fighting back.

Is FIRE saying that what happened to Jewish students at Harvard and other colleges is OK?

No. As FIRE has consistently noted, some campus protests veered into violations of both campus rules and the law. Examples include when protesters took over buildings, blocked access and exit to and from areas of campus, disrupted classes, or committed acts of violence against Jewish students.

In responding to these incidents — or failing to respond — Harvard, Columbia, and other colleges may well have been in violation of their obligations under Title VI. If they refused to correct their mistakes as the process played out, revoking their funding might have been justified and legal.

But the process matters.

What FIRE is saying is that the law is important. Following it isn’t optional. It protects all of us — students, faculty, administrators, families, scientists, hospitals, and the entire country. The administration can’t just decide unilaterally to skip steps.

If you support President Trump — or just don’t like Harvard — remember this: Any power the president seizes to ignore the law now won’t magically disappear when he leaves office. It will be wielded by his successors, too. And this time, it might well target schools or other organizations you like.

Didn’t Harvard rank last for free speech on your list?

It sure did — two years in a row, in fact.

But one of the reasons we created our rankings was to give colleges and universities an incentive to do better. Protecting expressive rights on campus is a big part of our mission, and Harvard has a long way to go. Indeed, Harvard (like Columbia) makes a politically popular target precisely because so many people resent its years of engaging in the kind of behavior towards dissenting students and faculty that FIRE was founded to combat.

But lately Harvard has been making an effort, and we won’t succeed by writing schools off. And we definitely won’t succeed by allowing the federal government to take them over, trading one dominant ideology for another.

You can’t censor your way to free speech.

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April 22, 2025