Trump’s Demands of Harvard Escalate His War on Higher Ed

The Trump administration shook higher ed last month when it stripped Columbia University of $400 million and demanded the institution put an academic department under review, discipline pro-Palestinian protesters and create an admissions reform plan, among other measures.

But the administration’s recent demands of Harvard University appear to mark a massive escalation in the federal government’s onslaught on higher education.

In a letter to Harvard on Friday, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism insisted on a litany of detailed changes at the university to address alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations, including new policies on what student clubs can exist and a federal audit of students’, professors’ and administrators’ “viewpoint diversity.” The move came after the task force notified Harvard earlier this month that $9 billion in federal funding was under review and issued a much vaguer set of demands, including a review of “programs and departments that fuel antisemitic harassment.” Students and locals protested, urging Harvard to fight back.

Harvard president Alan M. Garber initially signaled a willingness to work with the federal government. But when served with the more expansive directives last week, Garber flatly refused to comply, writing in a Monday letter to the campus community that the university would not “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

The refusal sparked an immediate backlash: The task force swiftly froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grant funding and $60 million in contracts to the institution. Some of the funds at risk go to local hospitals affiliated with Harvard’s medical school and “life-saving research,” according to earlier communications from Garber.

Higher ed leaders and scholars say the specificity and severity of the task force’s threats to Harvard go beyond any of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on higher ed thus far.

Susan Dynarski, Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education at Harvard, noted that the demands to Columbia were two pages long. “Now we’re at five pages of insane, censorious overreach,” she said. “Chairman Mao would blush.”

The Trump administration isn’t blushing.

Trump is “begging a good question,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in a press briefing on Tuesday. “More than $2 billion out the door to Harvard when they have a $50 billion endowment—why are the American taxpayers subsidizing a university that has billions of dollars in the bank already? And we certainly shouldn’t be funding a place where such grave antisemitism exists.”

What Are the Demands?

The Trump administration called for far-reaching changes to, and extensive federal oversight of, crucial aspects of the way the university operates, including governance and teaching.

Among its most jarring orders, the task force demanded Harvard commission an external party to audit the university’s student body, faculty, staff, and leaders “for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.”

Departments found lacking would need to hire a “critical mass” of new faculty who add viewpoint diversity, according to the task force’s letter. And any “teaching unit” without sufficient viewpoint diversity must admit more students who will shift the unit’s ideological makeup.

Kirsten Weld, a history professor at Harvard and president of its American Association of University Professors chapter, called the provision “comical,” noting that it’s unclear what a “teaching unit” is—perhaps a lecture class—or how ideological diversity would be assessed, let alone how “the Trump administration’s officials are in any position to be reliable enforcers of ideological balance, whatever that means.” (The AAUP chapter filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday over its threats to Harvard’s federal funds.)

“It is fatuous, absurd, insulting, anti-intellectual and obscene,” Weld said. “You could not consent to this and remain a university, according to any dictionary definition of the word ‘university.’”

Other demands are also putting higher ed institutions on edge.

The task force ordered Harvard to turn over all hiring and admissions data to the federal government for comprehensive audits, at least through the end of 2028, to ensure “merit-based” hiring and admissions processes.

Now we’re at five pages of insane, censorious overreach. Chairman Mao would blush.”

—Susan Dynarski, Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Education

Harvard was also told to review its admissions process for international students to avoid enrolling those “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” The task force commanded the university to “immediately report” any foreign student who “commits a conduct violation” to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

In addition, the task force demanded that a third party be assigned to audit specific programs and departments it accused of having “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias,” including the Divinity School, the Graduate School of Education and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. The same external party must report on individual faculty members “who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7.” Those faculty are to receive sanctions agreed upon by the university and the federal government “within the bounds of academic freedom and the First Amendment,” the letter said.

More broadly, the task force raised concerns about the faculty holding undue influence over the institution. It called on the university to make governance reforms, namely, “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty,” in addition to any faculty or administrators “more committed to activism than scholarship.”

Weld said the idea that students and professors, tenured or otherwise, have outsize control over the university is “ridiculous.” She noted that Harvard doesn’t have a universitywide faculty senate, though it’s now developing one.

“Professors don’t have any formal mechanisms by which to participate in governance at the university, nor do students,” she said. “This vision of the university in which the problem is that radical professors and students have too much power is a culture war fever dream.”

Adam Sychla, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School and a member of the bargaining committee for Harvard Academic Workers, a union for non-tenure-track researchers and teachers, said the demands are a “cynical weaponization” of antisemitism, which he described as a “scourge we are always fighting.”

“How does cutting lifesaving medical research or firing outstanding teachers make anyone in our community safer?” he said. “Just by targeting universities and federal funding, Jewish members of our union will also lose academic freedom, their livelihoods, potentially legal status, like anyone else in our community will.”

The task force demanded changes to student discipline as well, including immediately intervening in disruptive protests and banning any student club that “endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment” or “invites non-students onto campus who regularly violate campus rules.” Like Columbia, Harvard was also ordered to implement a mask ban and expel and suspend students involved in pro-Palestinian protests or antisemitic incidents.

For good measure, the task force directed that all diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs close.

Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations and national engagement at the American Council on Education, said the list of demands touches on all “the fundamental roles of a college,” from which students are enrolled to who gets to teach.

“There is almost nothing they are not trying to put a federal stamp on,” he said. “It is so far past the boundary of what is acceptable and what we have ever thought to be legal or appropriate.”

He emphasized that Republicans should be as worried as Democrats by the extent of the federal government’s overreach.

“What the task force put forth in that letter is so blatantly unreasonable and such a clear interference in the independence of the institution and academic freedom and the constitutional protections the institution has that it doesn’t really matter your politics,” he said. “We should not want any administration or the federal government ever doing the kinds of things this administration is demanding of Harvard. It should trouble anyone, especially people who care about small governments and protecting individual rights.”

Fighting Back

Harvard’s sharp rebuke of the Trump administration stands in stark contrast to Columbia’s initial response to its set of demands. Columbia complied with much of what was asked of it, including overhauling student discipline processes, adding more campus officers with the power to make arrests and enforcing a mask ban.

But Fansmith said it’s hard to compare the two institutions, given that Columbia was the first university to come under the Trump administration’s scrutiny and face such dire threats to its funding.

He noted that higher ed institutions generally work with the federal government to address concerns and reach agreements, so Columbia arguably did what universities have done “for decades.” But despite negotiating, its funds weren’t restored. In addition, the antisemitism task force is considering putting Columbia under a consent decree that would add legal weight to the directives it gave the institution.

Harvard learned from Columbia’s example that “the government doesn’t negotiate in good faith,” Fansmith said. The Trump administration is “not looking to resolve problems. Most of their proposed solutions have nothing to do with antisemitism.” Plus, the demands on Harvard would “functionally, fundamentally change what the institution was—and not in good ways.”

Weld believes Harvard’s resistance may create room for other institutions to resist, too.

“If Harvard had not stepped forward and announced that it was going to fight back, it would have sent a devastating chill through the rest of the sector,” she said. “Because if the wealthiest and best-resourced institution in human history was not willing to stand up and fight, then it’s very difficult to imagine how any other institution would feel that they should stick their necks out.”

Already, Harvard’s fight may be having a ripple effect. Despite Columbia’s earlier compliance, the university is now putting up a fight of its own.

Under threat of a consent decree, Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, emphasized in a Monday letter to the campus community that the university would only be pushed so far. While she stands by the changes Columbia has already made, “other ideas, including overly prescriptive requests about our governance, how we conduct our presidential search process, and how specifically to address viewpoint diversity issues are not subject to negotiation,” she said.

She noted that she read “with great interest” Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands “that would strike at the very heart of that university’s venerable mission.”

Weld and other faculty are advocating for Harvard’s leaders to continue to resist.

“Harvard fighting back doesn’t guarantee that other institutions in the sector are going to do anything similar,” she said. “It doesn’t guarantee anything about the nature or extent to which Harvard will fight … but it opens up a horizon of possibility for others that would have felt direly foreclosed if this had broken another way, if Harvard had decided to follow Columbia’s path.”