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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday threatened to pull Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students if the Ivy League institution does not comply with an extensive record request by April 30. The agency also canceled $2.7 million in grants to the university.
Earlier in the week, President Donald Trump reupped his calls for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status and all federal funding. This all comes just days after the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force announced it was freezing over $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to Harvard.
The federal onslaught follows Harvard’s refusal to comply with a list of unprecedented demands from the Trump administration, which university leadership called an overstep of authority — an assessment with which free speech and higher education experts have agreed.
Dive Insight:
The federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism first turned its attention on Harvard last month. The task force announced a review into $9 billion of the university’s federal funding and claimed that Harvard has not done enough to protect Jewish students from harassment. However, it did not publicly cite specific incidents or allegations, and some free speech experts and Israeli academics argue the administration is weaponizing antisemitism concerns.
Days after announcing the review, federal officials delivered Harvard a laundry list of ultimatums, including changes to academic programming and “meaningful governance reforms.” If the university complied, it had a chance — but no guarantee — to continue receiving federal funding, the task force said.
In response, Harvard became the first well-known institution to rebuke the Trump administration’s demands. Alan Garber, president of Harvard, said the task force’s desired oversight oversteps its authority and infringes on the university’s constitutional rights.
“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 said in a Monday statement.
Upon Garber’s defiance, the task force froze billions of the university’s federal funding and made further demands, including that it “audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity.”
On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Harvard was “bending the knee to antisemitism” under “its spineless leadership.”
The department is now demanding that the university hand over “detailed records on Harvard’s foreign student visa holders’ illegal and violent activities” by the end of the month or immediately lose its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification.
International students studying the U.S. cannot attend a college that is not SEVP approved.
In 2024-25, 6,793 international students attended Harvard, making up 27.2% of the university’s enrollment, according to institutional data.
“If Harvard cannot verify it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of enrolling foreign students,” DHS said in a statement.
Following Harvard’s condemnation of federal interference attempts, Trump ratcheted up his criticism of the university online.
“Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges,” he said in a Wednesday social media post. “Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
In a separate post, he said that Harvard should “be Taxed as a Political Entity.”
It’s not clear that the Trump administration would have gone easier on Harvard had it complied.
Columbia University, another Ivy League institution, agreed to a similar round of task force demands following the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants. The task force praised the university’s compliance but has yet to publicly reinstate its funding. The Trump administration also reportedly began pursuing a consent decree against Columbia, which would give the federal courts increased oversight of the institution.
Columbia has since followed Harvard’s lead. In a Monday statement, its newly-appointed acting president said the university “would reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community.”
Last Friday, three federal agencies sent a demand letter to Harvard University laying out conditions for the university to continue receiving federal funds. The letter is unprecedented in its scope. It would essentially render Harvard a vassal institution, subjecting much of its corporate and academic governance to federal directives.
If Harvard acceded to these demands, faculty hiring, student admissions, student and faculty disciplinary procedures, university programming decisions, student group recognition processes, and much more would be transformed to align with the government’s ideological preferences.
Among other things, the university would be required to:
Abolish ideological litmus tests in hiring and admissions practices and take steps to ensure viewpoint diversity in the faculty and student body. How Harvard can take both steps simultaneously and also commit to merit-based hiring and admissions, another directive, is unclear. FIRE opposes ideological litmus tests, but you can’t abolish them by trading one litmus test for another.
Deny admission to international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” These values go undefined. And, as any historian or Supreme Court observer would know, they’re subject to intense debate and varied interpretations. Ironically, this is also an ideological litmus test of the sort prohibited by the directive that Harvard abolish such tests.
Audit certain disfavored academic departments. The mandatory audit would include investigations into individual faculty members and would require Harvard to work hand in glove with the government to sanction faculty members who allegedly engaged in anti-Semitic discrimination or otherwise “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules.” The federal government’s definition of anti-Semitism incorporates the IHRA definition, which Harvard recently adopted and FIRE has long criticized as violating First Amendment standards.
Discontinue DEI. This would include shuttering all “programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives” relating to “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” These terms also go undefined in the letter, and while FIRE has been critical of many university DEI programs for their tendency to chill and censor speech, not all of them do, and many programs are within a university’s prerogative to create. This is especially true at private institutions.
Reform student disciplinary processes and procedures. The letter demands Harvard not fund or recognize any student group that “endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment.” This amounts to a federal requirement of viewpoint discrimination. While many would find these categories of speech abhorrent, the categories go undefined and would nevertheless be protected by the First Amendment so long as the speech stays confined to endorsement and promotion and the student groups do not themselves engage in any criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment. The letter also identifies specific student groups that must lose recognition and funding.
Implement a comprehensive mask ban. Masks can be used by criminals to commit crimes, the sick to stay healthy, and, yes, protesters to remain anonymous. A blanket mask ban is an overbroad requirement that infringes on individuals’ constitutional right to anonymous speech.
Risk double jeopardy. The letter demands that Harvard “carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years.” To the extent any student was already tried for these alleged violations, this requirement would amount to “double jeopardy,” violating the venerated and centuries-old principle of fundamental fairness, enshrined in the Fifth Amendment, that says no individual should be tried for the same infraction twice.
Generally reform corporate governance structure and practices, including by “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty” in its current structure. How Harvard governs its academic programs, and who should have a say in that governance, is up to Harvard, not the federal government. The First Amendment and basic principles of academic freedom require no less.
In addition to these demands, the university would be required to undergo frequent and highly intrusive audits to ensure compliance. In short, the federal government would effectively serve as president and provost of Harvard University.
The ostensible justification for these demands stems from the government’s belief that Harvard has allowed for a hostile environment for Jewish students in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But federal law also dictates specific procedures for adjudicating alleged noncompliance — procedures the government circumvented here.
If allowed to stand, the government could revoke federal funding from any institution regardless of the merit of the government’s allegations. This processless approach is a loaded gun for partisan administrations to target institutions and individuals that dissent from administration policies and priorities.
What Harvard does — for better or worse — others follow. Those of us who support free inquiry, academic freedom, and fair procedures on campus — not to mention institutional autonomy — can hope that maybe its action will inspire other institutions to grow a backbone.
It’s true that institutions take federal funding voluntarily. But it’s also true that the government cannot condition federal funding on institutions giving up their autonomy and constitutional rights. A requirement that Harvard relinquish its authority to guide core academic programs certainly violates its free speech and academic freedom rights, as well as those of its students and faculty.
It’s also true that Harvard doesn’t have clean hands. For the past two years, it has sat at the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, and it may well have violated Title VI by failing to meaningfully respond to conduct creating a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus. But just as with individuals, we don’t punish institutions based on allegations alone. And we cannot restore free speech with censorship.
This isn’t the first time FIRE has objected to a presidential administration using federal civil rights law to violate rights. Under the Obama and Biden administrations, the federal government weaponized Title IX to erode campus due process and free speech protections. The fight over the Obama/Biden rules lasted over a decade, and has been largely resolved (for now) in court and with President Trump’s Department of Education promulgating federal rules that protect free speech and due process rights in campus sexual misconduct investigations.
That’s why we’re deeply concerned that the administration doesn’t recognize that what was wrong and unlawful in the Title IX context is also wrong and unlawful in the Title VI context. Indeed, these federal requirements go even further than what we saw in the Title IX context.
Fortunately, Harvard is fighting back. Yesterday, Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in an open letter:
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. 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.
Garber’s response didn’t sit well with the federal government, which soon announced it was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to the university. The fight will continue.
What Harvard does — for better or worse — others follow. Those of us who support free inquiry, academic freedom, and fair procedures on campus — not to mention institutional autonomy — can hope that maybe its action will inspire other institutions to grow a backbone.
There is some evidence of that already. On the same day Harvard announced it was rejecting the administration’s demands, Columbia University’s new acting president announced Columbia would not agree to any federal demands that “require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”
In addition to Columbia, the administration also froze grants at Cornell University and Northwestern University and is investigating nearly 60 other universities.
Behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. Until more universities stand alongside Harvard in opposing the government’s unconstitutional demands, we can be sure these demands won’t be the last.
Protesters in Cambridge urged Harvard to resist Trump’s demands at a Saturday rally.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Harvard University is pushing back on demands from the Trump administration calling for a long list of institutional reforms in response to alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations on campus.
Nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants hang in the balance at the institution amid a review the administration announced last month, alleging the university has mishandled instances of antisemitic harassment on campus.
President Alan Garber said Monday that the institution will not accept the administration’s agreement, writing that Harvard “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
Hours later, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced a freeze on $2.2 billion in multiyear grant funding for the institution and $60 million in multiyear contracts.
The Trump administration presented Harvard with at least two demand letters, the first on April 3 and another on Friday. The letters call for changes to governance, hiring and admissions, a ban on masks, and more, including greater scrutiny of international applicants to exclude “students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” according to one letter.
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the University to its promise,” top officials at the General Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in Friday’s letter to Harvard leadership.
Friday’s letter also called for a mask ban; a shutdown of all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and the reformation of multiple programs “with egregious records of antisemitism or other bias.” Targets include Harvard’s Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and several others.
The administration also called for the university to “commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”
In a public letter to the Harvard community, Garber rejected the sweeping demands.
“Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to ‘maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.’ It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative 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.”
Garber’s letter rejecting Trump’s demands also included a link to the legal response sent to the federal government, which noted changes to campus policies and “new accountability procedures” introduced at the university over the course of the last 15 months.
“It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court,” lawyers representing the university wrote in response.
In addition to freezing more than $2 billion in federal funding, the joint task force responded to the institution’s rejection, saying, “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges—that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”
Dozens of colleges across the nation—including others in the Ivy League—are also facing investigations into alleged antisemitism and other issues, including race-based programs or scholarships and the participation of transgender athletes in intercollegiate athletics.
Harvard’s rebuttal to the federal government comes as the university plans to issue $750 million in bonds, which a spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed was “part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Princeton is also issuing $320 million in bonds this spring.
Harvard faculty have also taken legal action against the Trump administration.
The Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday alleging that the review of Harvard’s funds was an illegal exploitation of the Civil Rights Act and an effort to impose political views upon the institution.
The lawsuit alleged that the Trump administration’s “unlawful actions have already caused severe and irreparable harm by halting academic research and inquiry at Harvard, including in areas that have no relation whatsoever to charges of antisemitism or other civil rights violations.”
Harvard’s AAUP chapter also signed a lawsuit last month with other faculty groups pushing back on the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian student activists.
In what legal experts are calling a landmark case for academic freedom, Harvard faculty and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging unconstitutional attempts to control campus speech and governance through threatened funding cuts.
The legal action, filed Friday, seeks to block the administration from withholding $8.7 billion in federal funding for Harvard University and its affiliated hospitals after demands that the university implement specific policy changes and restructure its operations.
According to court documents, the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued a demand letter on April 3 outlining “immediate next steps” Harvard must take to maintain its “financial relationship with the United States government.” These demands reportedly extend far beyond addressing antisemitism, including new speech restrictions, elimination of all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and mandatory cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security.
“The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” said Andrew Manuel Crespo, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants.”
The lawsuit comes after the task force chair announced on Fox News in March that “the academic system in this country has been hijacked by the left, has been hijacked by the Marxists,” and threatened to “bankrupt these universities” by removing federal funding.
Harvard professors involved in the lawsuit claim the administration’s threats have already begun to impact academic freedom on campus.
“The research and teaching of Harvard faculty have already been chilled by the Trump administration’s attempt to coerce the university into changing its curriculum and governing structure,” said Dr. Kirsten Weld, professor of History and president of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter. “If Trump can threaten to withhold billions of dollars from our colleagues unless we stop teaching about diversity and inclusion, he can make the same threat to try and stop us from teaching about science, his critics, or anything else.”
The plaintiffs have requested an immediate temporary restraining order to prevent any funding cuts while the case proceeds.
The AAUP warns that allowing such governmental intrusion at Harvard could set a dangerous precedent for institutions nationwide.
“Our students and faculty members across the nation are terrified,” said Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel. “If the administration’s lawless and unconstitutional attempts to control speech and governance at Harvard are allowed to proceed, then any one of our institutions could be next.”
Dr. Todd Wolfson, president of the AAUP, characterized the administration’s actions as “an attack on democracy and economic mobility” with harms that “will be so irreparable that they will last generations.”
At the heart of the case is whether the federal government can legally condition billions in funding on compliance with policy demands that appear to target specific viewpoints and academic content.
Nikolas Bowie, Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard and secretary-treasurer of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, argues there is no legal basis for the administration’s actions.
“No law in this country permits President Trump to suspend billions of dollars from universities like Penn, Princeton, or Harvard simply because he doesn’t like their policies on transgender athletes, their research on climate change, or the constitutionally protected speech of their students and faculty.”
Legal experts note that the case could potentially reach the United States Supreme Court, given its significant First Amendment and separation of powers implications.
The Trump administration presented Harvard University with a letter Thursday outlining “immediate next steps” the institution must take in order to have a “continued financial relationship with the United States government,” The Boston Globe reported and Inside Higher Ed confirmed.
The ultimatum came just three days after the president’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism notified the university it had been placed under review for its alleged failure to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination. If the case follows the precedent set at other universities, Harvard and its affiliate medical institutions could lose up to $9 billion in federal grants and contracts if they do not comply.
Sources say the move is driven less by true concern about antisemitism on campus than by the government’s desire to abolish diversity efforts and hobble higher ed institutions it deems too “woke.” This week alone, the administration has retracted funds from Brown and Princeton Universities. Before that, it targeted the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University and opened dozens of civil rights investigations at other colleges, all of which are ongoing.
Many of the task force’s demands for Harvard mirror those presented to Columbia last month, including mandates to reform antisemitism accountability programs on campus, ban masks for nonmedical purposes, review certain academic departments and reshape admissions policies. The main difference: Columbia’s letter targeted specific departments and programs, while Harvard’s was broader.
For example, while the letter received by Columbia called for one specific Middle Eastern studies department to be placed under receivership, Harvard’s letter called more generally for “oversight and accountability for biased programs [and departments] that fuel antisemitism.”
Inside Higher Ed requested a copy of the letter from Harvard, which declined to send it but confirmed that they had received it. Inside Higher Ed later received a copy from a different source.
Some higher education advocates speculate that the Trump administration’s latest demands were deliberately vague in the hopes that colleges will overcomply.
“What I’ve learned from various experiences with higher ed law is that it’s unusual to be general in legal documents,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement for the American Council on Education. Trump’s “open-ended” letter “starts to look like a fishing expedition,” he added. “‘We want you to throw everything open to us so that we get to determine how you do this.’”
But conservative higher ed analysts believe the demands—even when broadened—are justified.
“Many of these are extremely reasonable—restricting demonstrations inside academic buildings, requiring participants and demonstrations to identify themselves when asked, committing to antidiscrimination policies, intellectual diversity and institutional neutrality,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Still, he raised questions about how certain mandates in the letter will be enforced.
“When you see this in the context of the federal government trying to use funding as a lever to force some of these reforms, that’s where one might raise some legitimate concern,” he said. “For instance, trying to ensure viewpoint diversity is a very laudable goal, but if the federal government is trying to … decide what constitutes viewpoint diversity, there is a case to be made that that is a violation of the First Amendment.”
What Does the Letter Say?
The demands made of Harvard Thursday largely target the same aspects of higher ed that Trump has focused on since taking office in January.
Some center on pro-Palestinian protests, like the requirements to hold allegedly antisemitic programs accountable, reform discipline procedures and review all “antisemitic rule violations” since Oct. 7, 2023.
Others focus on enforcing Trump’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on affirmative action; the university must make “durable” merit-based changes to its admissions and hiring practices and shut down all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which the administration believes promote making “snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes.”
The letter was signed by the same three task force members who signed Columbia’s demand letter: Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service; Sean Keveney, acting general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services; and Thomas Wheeler, acting general counsel for the Department of Education.
The most notable difference in Harvard’s letter is that the task force is demanding “full cooperation” with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That department and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have been arresting and revoking visas from international students and scholars who, the government says, are supporting terrorist groups by participating in pro-Palestinian protests.
Will Harvard Capitulate?
Harvard already appears to be taking steps to comply. On Wednesday, the university put a pro-Palestinian student group on probation. The week before, a dean removed two top leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, which has been accused of biased teaching about Israel.
A letter to the campus community from university president Alan Garber also suggested capitulation is likely.
“If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” Garber wrote following the task force’s review. “We will engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism.”
But Fansmith noted such actions may not be enough to predict whether Harvard will fully acquiesce to the Trump administration’s demands.
“If you look at all of these institutions over the last two years, they’ve been making a number of changes in policies, procedures, personnel and everything else,” he said. “And a lot of that was happening and was at pace before this administration took office and started sending letters.”
Harvard was one of the first three universities that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce grilled about antisemitism on campus in December 2023. Shortly after, then-president Claudine Gay—the first Black woman to lead Harvard—resigned. The university has since been working to make changes at the campus level.
Both Fansmith and Cooper pointed to Trump’s mandates regarding curriculum as the most likely to face opposition, as was the case at Columbia.
A little over a week after the Trump administration laid out its ultimatum, Columbia capitulated and agreed to all but one demand: The university refused to put its department of Middle Eastern studies into receivership, a form of academic probation that involves hiring an outside department chair. Instead, it placed the department under internal review and announced it would hire a new senior vice provost to oversee the academic program.
“You need to be making sure that Jewish students are not subject to harassment,” Cooper said. But “where that crosses the line is if the federal government is telling the universities … ‘this is how you have to appoint somebody to put an academic department into receivership,’ as was the original demand made of Columbia.”
Regardless of how Harvard responds, one thing seems likely: There are more funding freezes to come.
“A lot of folks were expecting Columbia to file a legal challenge, and when that didn’t happen, that might have emboldened the administration a bit to go after some of these other institutions,” Cooper said. But sooner than later, “one of these institutions might say, ‘We’re not going to make the reforms.’”
“I don’t have a great guess as to which institution that will be,” he added, “but I would expect we probably will see a lawsuit at some point.”
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Dive Brief:
Harvard University on Thursday received a list of wide-ranging demands from the Trump administration tying the Ivy League institution’s federal funding to its complete compliance.
Among the requirements are that Harvard review and change programs and departments that the Trump administration described as “biased” and that “fuel antisemitism,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by Higher Ed Dive. It also calls for the university to make “meaningful governance reforms” that will selectively empower employees “committed to implementing the changes” demanded in the letter.
The demands came the same week the Trump administration put $9 billion of Harvard’s federal grants and contracts under review. The government alleged the probe stemmed from reports that the university failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.
Dive Insight:
The three federal agencies behind the letter— the U.S. Department of Education,U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. General Services Administration — said the list of nine demands represent “broad, non-exhaustive areas of reform” that Harvard must enact “to remain a responsible recipient of federal taxpayer dollars.”
Their letter called on Harvard to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and prove it does not offer preferential treatment based on race, color or national origin in admissions or hiring “through structural and personnel action.”It also called for increased scrutiny of student groups and a comprehensive mask ban, with exemptions for religious and medical reasons.
But the agencies, operating as members of President Donald Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, offered few details on how Harvard could meet the demands.
For example, the letter did not outline which programs or departments it considered biased, nor did it say whether Harvard or the task force would determine which ones needed reform.It also didn’t describe how Harvard officials could determine why someone is wearing a mask.
The Education Department declined to answer questions on Friday. HHS and GSA did not respond to requests for comment.
Thursday’s letter marked the first time Harvard officials saw the demands, according to a university spokesperson, who did not respond to further questions. The letter did not set a hard deadline for the ultimatums, instead calling for Harvard’s “immediate cooperation.”
Before the Trump administration issued its demands, Harvard President Alan Garber acknowledged antisemitism exists on campus and said he had experienced it directly “even while serving as president.”
“We will engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism,” he wrote in a Monday message to campus. “We resolve to take the measures that will move Harvard and its vital mission forward while protecting our community and its academic freedom.”
Many members of the Harvard community, however, had a stronger response.
As of Friday afternoon, over 800 Harvard faculty members had signed a letter dated March 24 calling on the university’s governing boardsto publicly condemn attacks on universities and “legally contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance.” More than 400 alumni of the university have so far signed their own version of the same letter.
The demands made of Harvard echo the situation faced by one its Ivy League peers, Columbia University, last month.
The federal task force is threatening billions in federal funds and grants at Columbia, and it has canceled $400 million worth thus far. When the Trump administration sent Columbia a then-unprecedented list of demands, the university quickly capitulated— to the consternation of faculty and academic freedom advocates alike.
The Trump administration lauded Columbia’s compliance as a “positive first step” for maintaining federal funding but has not publicly announced that it has restored the $400 million in canceled grants and contracts.
“Columbia’s compliance with the Task Force’s preconditions is only the first step in rehabilitating its relationship with the government, and more importantly, its students and faculty,” the task force said in a statement at the time.
We’re rounding up recent stories, from one Ivy League university facing a multibillion-dollar federal review to another losing its president in under a year.
In 1967, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Harvard University English professor Neil Rudenstine intervened in a protest on campus, where a recruiter from Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm, had been surrounded by students upset about U.S. attacks on Vietnamese civilians. He helped defuse the tension by negotiating with students to release the recruiter.
That foray into conflict resolution prompted an unexpected shift from a budding literary career to academic administration. Rudenstine would then go on to serve as dean of students at Princeton University and in other roles before making his way back to Harvard as president, a job he held from 1991 to 2001.
Now 90, Rudenstine released a book last month titled Our Contentious Universities: A Personal History(The American Philosophical Society Press) that is partly a memoir and partly an exploration of campus protests movements across multiple decades and causes.
Rudenstine discussed the book with Inside Higher Ed, sharing his personal experiences of protests in years past and his thoughts on the latest wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Excerpts of the conversation have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What motivated you to write this book?
A: From my point of view, increasing student protests starting in the ’90s seemed to be different from those of the ’60s, and more complicated to deal with. So I began to try to find out what the differences were and what the results might be of the new movement, so to speak. That got me immersed to look again at the 1960s, and after that, events began to take over.
Q: What differences do you see in protests of the past versus today?
A: In the ’60s, student protests were quite violent at times, but they were all mainly concerned with the Vietnam War. Of course, there were other things, like student protests over apartheid in South Africa [in the 1980s]. But the main issue in the 1960s was the war, and students were essentially united in their feelings against the war. There was virtually no sense of students in any way protesting against one another, or student groups disagreeing with other student groups. It was a united feeling.
It was also a feeling that if the war were to come to an end, the protests would probably also come to an end. In the ’90s and afterward, students were far more diverse. There were more Black students, Jewish students, Asian American students, first-generation students and so on. These groups did not necessarily agree with one another in terms of what was important to protest against, and they sometimes protested against one another. So the situation was very different; there was no single overriding issue like the war.
Q: Tell me about your own protest experiences, starting when you were a professor at Harvard in 1967 and helped bring an end to a protest organized by Students for a Democratic Society.
A: I was, at the time, an assistant professor of English literature, and totally absorbed by that job at Harvard. One day I was walking across campus outside of Harvard Yard, and I heard shouting and cheering going on around [Mallinckrodt Laboratory], which was a chemistry building. It turned out that Students for a Democratic Society had organized a protest that imprisoned a recruiter for the Dow Chemical Company who wanted to interview students for jobs. And since Dow was making some products [such as napalm] that were used in the war, the SDS students decided to imprison this recruiter.
Purely by chance, I stopped by, and I thought it was not proper of the university to imprison a recruiter who’d come to interview students and told the students that by using their megaphone. After several hours of discussion and debate, the students released the recruiter and gave up the protest. I was somehow identified as the person who had helped to bring this about, and that led to me being asked to be dean of students at Princeton University to help with their protest movements. A very considerable accident got in the way of my literary career and deflected me from literature to student protests in a way that I had never imagined. It was purely the result of chance and serendipity.
Q: Near the end of your career, students staged a sit-in to demand a living wage at Harvard. How were you able to wind that protest down without police intervention?
A: That was a very complicated situation. Students sat in my office building, Massachusetts Hall, because they wanted to change the way in which many people at the university were reimbursed for their services. The living wage protest was not very rational. If they had wanted a minimum wage change, we might have been able to discuss it, but the method they chose was not rational, and they sat in the building for more than two weeks. So we had a very complicated and delicate situation.
I decided at the beginning that whatever we would do, we would not call the police, because calling the police in earlier days at Columbia, Harvard, Kent State and other places had led to terrible situations of riots and police beating students. So the question was, how can we not call the police but also bring the situation to a conclusion? It took many, many days of discussion and waiting in order to try to find this conclusion.
What happened was that the next president [Larry Summers] said, “Why don’t you put together a committee to look into the issue, and that will give the students a way out, and it’ll give you a way out? It’s not likely that this committee will embrace the solution that the students have chosen at all, but it’ll bring an end to the protests.” And that’s what happened. We appointed a committee, the students were able to claim the victory and walk out of the building, and we were able go back into our offices and basically say that we were happy nobody had been hurt, and that we would trust the new committee to make very good recommendations about what should be done in the future.
Q: You wrote that you were “taken aback” by how quickly presidents brought in police to break up protest encampments last spring. What other tactics do you believe they should have considered first?
A: Obviously, every situation is different, so there’s no one general thing you can do. But there is a way which you can call for the judiciary to step in. If students are identified as being in the protest, if the [judiciary] tells them to evacuate whatever building they happen to be occupying or whatever they’re doing wrong, they can be held in contempt of court if they don’t obey those admonitions. That’s a very good substitute for bringing in the police; if you’re held in contempt of court, it’s a very serious crime, and very few students want to do that, so they tend to leave right away. We had tried that at Princeton, and that seemed to be a good substitute for actually calling the police, which led, of course, to terrible things at Columbia and elsewhere, when the police tended to just brutalize the students when they were called in.
Another alternative, of course, is to wait out the students in the hope that sooner or later, their academic needs will force them to go back out and get to their studies. That was a tactic we also used at Princeton.
Q: What do you think about the institutional neutrality movement?
A: I’m a little bit skeptical about the conception and certainly the term of neutrality. I understand why people would embrace the idea at the University of Chicago, for example, and other places. I think that’s a very interesting point of view, and I think at times it’s definitely the thing to do. You don’t want to go around commenting all the time on what has happened internationally or nationally. At the same time, it’s a very difficult row to hoe, because there simply are some events that require, if not an actual stance by the university, certainly some kind of an analysis with a possible outcome. I do think that there are times when it’s important for a leader to speak out, and it has to be done very thoughtfully, and one has to choose those moments carefully.
Q: Any advice for today’s college presidents on how to handle campus protests?
A: That’s a tough one. I think what they’re doing is about as good as can be done, and that’s clarifying what is legitimate as a protest or what is not legitimate and being willing to discipline students if they really cross the line of what’s permissible in an obstructive way that harms other people’s capacity to do their jobs. I hope the universities are open to discussing in a more collaborative way things that need to be ironed out, other than simply responding with police force. The more they can discuss and analyze and find ways to reason with the students and even some faculty … the more they are able to possibly defuse protest or the threat of protest.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining a Harvard Medical School research associate who’s a Russian native. One of Kseniia Petrova’s lawyers says the government is trying to deport her to Russia, where she faces possible arrest due to her “prior political activism and outspoken opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Gregory Romanovsky, the lawyer, said in a statement that Petrova was trying to re-enter the U.S. on Feb. 16 at Boston’s Logan International Airport when a Customs and Border Protection officer discovered she “had not completed the required customs paperwork for a non-hazardous scientific sample she was bringing from an affiliated laboratory in France.”
“CBP was authorized to seize the item and issue a fine,” Romanovsky wrote. “Instead, they chose to cancel Ms. Petrova’s visa and detain her.”
Petrova remains in ICE custody in Louisiana. The Boston Globereported earlier on her detention.
Romanovsky wrote that “CBP improperly invoked their extensive immigration authority to impose a punishment grossly disproportionate to the situation. This overreach reflects broader concerns about the treatment of international scholars by U.S. immigration authorities.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that Petrova was “detained after lying to federal officers about carrying biological substances into the country. A subsequent K9 inspection uncovered undeclared petri dishes, containers of unknown substances, and loose vials of embryonic frog cells, all without proper permits. Messages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them. She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.”
Harvard spokespeople didn’t provide an interview Friday about the situation or answer multiple emailed questions. In a brief email, the medical school’s media relations arm said, “We are monitoring this situation.”
Romanovsky has sued to restore Petrova’s visa.
“Ms. Petrova’s 1.5-month-long detention has caused significant disruption to both her professional and personal life,” Romanovsky said in his statement. “As a dedicated and highly respected researcher, her work is critical to scientific progress. We strongly urge ICE to release Ms. Petrova while her legal proceedings are ongoing.”
Since its founding in 1836, the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has sought to “renew that interest in Harvard’s welfare and glory which separation and absence have hitherto caused too long and lamentably to slumber.”
Today, as Harvard faces mounting challenges to its foundational commitment to Veritas(Truth) — steadily being replaced, it seems, by Pontius Pilate’s cynical sneer: Quid est veritas? (What is truth?) — a renewed interest among alumni in their alma mater’s “welfare and glory” is more vital than ever.
And the upcoming HAA Board elections offer Harvard alumni the perfect place to start. The task is to elect leaders who will champion free expression, viewpoint diversity, civil discourse, and academic freedom — the very tools that make the pursuit of Veritas possible.
Among the candidates seeking an elected director position, Allison Pillinger Choi, A.B. 2006, stands out with a compelling vision. Under the banner of “Building Balance,” Choi is campaigning for a Harvard where “all truth-seeking ideas — whether conservative, liberal, or otherwise — are heard, valued, and respected.”
Choi’s life story exemplifies the very balance she aims to promote. Born and raised in South Florida to a Korean immigrant mother and a third-generation Jewish American father, she mastered the art of equilibrium early on. This instinct for poise carried her through Harvard, where she balanced an economics degree, Division I varsity tennis, editorship on The Crimson’s business board, and shifts at various Cambridge eateries.
Allison Pillinger Choi with her husband, Brian, and two children in the Dunster House library at Harvard.
After a successful postgraduate career in finance and fitness — balancing checkbooks and barbells — she now lives in New York with her husband and two children while serving on local nonprofit boards dedicated to the arts, civics, and the environment. Most notably, she is the co-founder of Experiment in Dialogue, an initiative promoting conversations across ideological divides.
FIRE recently sat down with Choi to discuss her campaign for the HAA Board, her thoughts on free expression at Harvard, and how she envisions bringing balance to her alma mater. Below is our conversation, edited for readability.
How has your experience at Harvard, both as a student and alum, shaped your views on free expression and intellectual diversity?
As an undergraduate, I sensed unspoken limits on which political views were acceptable. In one instance, I remember taking a class on labor markets where the professor made it clear how he felt about unions. While I respected his research and affable style of teaching, as the daughter of a union worker, I knew the issue was more complex.
My father had explained to me and my brother that while unions can be a force for good, they also have downsides. I knew there was more to the argument than was offered in class, but I didn’t want to cross that invisible line — so I often just stayed quiet, went along with the prevailing view, and answered questions accordingly.
That experience stayed with me. Over the years, as an alum, I’ve heard even more troubling stories — students and faculty feeling pressured to hide their beliefs or adjust how they talk about certain issues to avoid backlash. It made me realize that maybe I was part of the problem by staying silent.
Now, I want to be part of the solution — not only by encouraging people to speak up but also by helping others see that viewpoint diversity is essential for genuine intellectual growth.
Your campaign focuses on “Bringing Balance.” Can you explain what that means and why you think it’s important right now, especially at Harvard?
The theme of my campaign, “Building Balance,” carries several layers of meaning. For one, it’s about fostering a diversity of viewpoints. This doesn’t mean insisting on a strict 50/50 split or symmetrical representation. Rather, it’s about broadening the spectrum of perspectives and opinions. It ensures that a wide range of voices are present. This approach helps prevent institutions from falling into the trap of echo chambers, where only reinforcing viewpoints are heard and where growth is limited.
“Building Balance” also refers to finding stability. Many higher education institutions today are navigating heightened tensions. I believe that embracing viewpoint diversity — by welcoming advocates from various personal and political backgrounds — can contribute to a healthier, more stable environment where all sincere, truth-seeking perspectives are respected and considered.
Finally, “Building Balance” is about recognizing and strengthening the extraordinary elements present at Harvard. It’s not about dismantling, it’s about building upon a strong foundation. I believe that viewpoint diversity, civil discourse, and academic freedom are the foundational elements of our university community, and integral to continued success.
What role do you see alumni playing in promoting free expression and viewpoint diversity at Harvard?
Alumni have numerous ways to contribute to the promotion of free expression and viewpoint diversity at Harvard. One of the most simple and effective actions is to just show up. Attend HAA events and broader Harvard community gatherings that highlight heterodox thinkers and speakers. And why not invite an alumni friend along? Extra credit if that friend brings a different political perspective!
The HAA is always looking for new ways to engage alumni and increase participation. With the growing number of initiatives supporting the classical liberal values of freedom and expression at Harvard, our community has more opportunities for anyone eager to champion viewpoint diversity. As an HAA elected director, I would support and expand these initiatives.
One of the unique — and often overlooked — aspects of being a viewpoint diversity advocate is that there’s no requirement to hold any particular opinion. All that’s needed is curiosity. However, if a viewpoint diversity advocate does have strong convictions, that’s perfectly fine, too. The key is to approach differing views with humility and charity. With these qualities, every alumnus is capable of both promoting and exercising free expression and viewpoint diversity.
Indeed, it’s an “exercise.” As Harvard professor Eric Beerbohm, head of the university’s new Civil Discourse Initiative, aptly puts it, “The ability to engage in empathetic disagreement is like a muscle — it grows stronger with deliberate practice. These kinds of scenarios, where participants are challenged to consider new perspectives and make tough decisions, provide exactly that kind of exercise.”
How can the HAA better engage alumni who feel disconnected or frustrated with the current campus climate?
As an elected director, I would love to help the HAA deepen alumni engagement and re-engage those who feel disconnected or frustrated. One effective approach is to expand the variety of event themes, particularly by hosting panel discussions that feature diverse viewpoints on a range of important topics.
While the panelists would be experts in their fields, each would offer a unique perspective and set of beliefs. The common thread among them would be their shared commitment to open inquiry and civil discourse.
These events could be modeled after the spirit of professor Michael Sandel’s renowned undergraduate course, “Justice,” one of Harvard’s most popular classes. In Sandel’s lectures, he regularly invited professors with opposing viewpoints to debate controversial topics, with the goal of seeking truth. Professors like Sandel understand that complex issues rarely have clear-cut answers.
It is only through the rigorous process of challenging and questioning that we improve our understanding, move closer to truth, and expand our communities. Alumni groups could carry forward Sandel’s legacy of viewpoint diversity by hosting events where renowned thinkers debate significant topics, fostering a space for respectful and productive dialogue among heterodox thinkers and doers.
If elected, what would success look like for you at the end of your term as an elected director?
If elected, success at the end of my three-year term would mean accomplishing at least two key goals. The first would be seeing more HAA volunteers actively contributing to viewpoint diversity initiatives within their areas of interest. With roughly 200 Harvard clubs and 60 shared interest groups covering a range of professional fields, academic disciplines, and personal identity backgrounds, there is so much opportunity to foster diverse perspectives!
While these HAA groups share common interests, each alumnus brings something unique. I believe we can proactively seek and encourage a diversity of viewpoints across our HAA communities.
The second goal is to establish an alumni event series that pays homage to the deep friendship between Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia — both former Harvard Law students. Their remarkable bond transcended the controversial issues they often disagreed on in their judicial decisions.
United by their shared love of country and opera, among other interests, they demonstrated how mutual respect and admiration can flourish despite ideological differences. I want to celebrate this sentiment through events that feature speakers of opposing views, followed by a post-debate social.
Allison Pillinger Choi’s candidacy for HAA Board is a call to action –– to awaken alumni from their “slumber” and take an interest in the “welfare and glory” of Harvard. If you are a Harvard alum and are interested in supporting Choi’s vision for “Building Balance,” be sure to make your voice heard in this important election.
The HAA Board election begins on April 1 and will remain open until 5 p.m. EST on May 20th. All Harvard degree holders as of Jan. 1, 2025 are eligible to vote. Alumni can cast their ballots online, via the alumni portal, or by paper ballot, which you will receive in the mail, to fill six openings among the HAA elected directors.
