Annabel DeChant

On April 14, Harvard announced that it would not comply with demands that the Trump administration made of the university. The New York Times reported the university’s decision, noting that it made Harvard “the first university to refuse to comply with the administration’s requirements.” According to the Times article, this move “[set] up a showdown between the federal government and the nation’s wealthiest university.”

Consequences came just hours later, with federal officials announcing the freezing of more than $2 billion in grant funding. This marks severe consequences for the university, which has taken a significant stand and made for a major change in tone, as it defies the Trump administration. 

The actions that the administration demanded of the university included sharing hiring and admissions data with the administration and the federal government, “overhauling” academic programs accused by the Trump administration of anti-semitism, and closing DEI-related programming. The administration’s requirements, such as these, “The government’s letter to Harvard on Friday demanded an extraordinary set of changes that would have reshaped the university and ceded an unprecedented degree of control over Harvard’s operations to the federal government.”

Harvard’s defiance marks a decision to stand up for its own independence and rights – as quoted in the Times, the letter rejecting administration demands stated, “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” 

This conflict is not one that erupted out of nowhere. The administration announced the reviewing of billions of dollars of funding for the university back in March. Harvard’s students and faculty have been pushing for a stronger stance by the university, and in March, over 800 members of the faculty “signed a letter urging the university to ‘mount a coordinated opposition to these anti-democratic attacks.’” 

You can read the Trump administration’s letters of demands here and Harvard’s letter rejecting them here.

Harvard is not alone in facing the Trump administration’s harsh focus, though they may be going somewhat solo in their decision to take such a stand against it. Columbia University has also been subject to attack, but they’ve taken a different approach. One article in the Guardian reported, “Columbia University caves to demands to restore $400m from Trump administration.” Among some of the Trump administration’s demands of Columbia were “empowering security officers to arrest people” and “reassigning control of Middle East department.” 

Beyond the institutional level, the students at universities have also faced the Trump administration’s agenda. Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University and legal resident in the United States, was arrested with relation to his role in pro-Palestinian protests in March, and more recently, a judge issued a ruling allowing his deportation. In another case, a Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi, went to his final interview in order to achieve U.S. citizenship, only to be arrested by immigration officials. Rümeysa Öztürk, a PhD student at Tufts University, was “accused [by the U.S. government] of being ‘engaged in activities in support of Hamas’” and arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her attorneys argued that she was “unconstitutionally arrested” and pointed to the lack of solid evidence that she engaged in terrorist activities and saying that she is “unfairly being punished for speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights.” CNN reported that she had been “snatched by masked officers in broad daylight” before being “flown 1,500 miles away.” 

Describing Trump’s campaign of opposition against universities, three New York Times writers stated, “The opaque process, part of a strategy by conservatives to realign the liberal tilt of elite universities, has upended higher education.” They reported that Trump “floated an astounding proposal” at the end of a lunch outside the Oval Office. “What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?” Additionally they described the administration’s approach to the issue as an “aggressive, ad hoc” one. 

These moves by the Trump administration are part of a much bigger picture of controversy around higher education. Here in our own state of Ohio, Senate Bill 1 was described as a move that “guts academic freedom and reshapes Ohio’s public universities.” In Miami’s student newspaper, Associate Teaching Professor John-Charles Duffy wrote an open letter to President Crawford questioning why he hadn’t done more to push back against the bill. Members of the Oxford community also protested “various grievances under the current government administration” in early April, with another planned for later this week. 

It’s unclear for now how the so-called “showdown” between Harvard and the White House will play out, but it does seem pretty sure that higher education and academic institutions will find themselves in troubled waters for some to come.