Harvard and the Trump administration
Is the Trump administration’s freeze on federal funding to Harvard warranted? Viewpoints from multiple sides.
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Quick announcement
This week’s edition features a shortened format that I’m interested to test out. You’ll notice fewer arguments on each side and a bit less detail overall.
It’s something I’ve been wanting to explore for a while to gauge your interest in shorter editions. It also offers a welcome chance to recharge after dedicating some extra time recently to expanding our reach. With a small team (primarily myself and Krysia), striking the right balance can be helpful to keep everything churning.
On that note, we’ve been engaging in some exciting partnership conversations that I think will really amplify our impact. For instance, we're now an official movement partner of Builders (formerly Starts With Us) and are collaborating on several initiatives with Braver Angels.
I’ll also be the featured speaker in an upcoming Builders event to talk about the Framechange approach and strategies for engaging different perspectives neutrally and curiously. More to come on that soon!
If you have a quick moment, please help us out this week by answering the 1-question poll at the bottom of this edition. Your input truly helps guide our direction.
Thanks as always for your continued readership and support – I’m excited about what's ahead!
Eric
What’s happening
This week, Harvard University rejected demands from the Trump administration that it make a series of policy changes in exchange for continued funding from the federal government. In a letter to the Harvard community, Harvard President Alan Garber said Harvard “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” The Trump administration had targeted Harvard in part for what it calls “programs with egregious records of antisemitism or other bias.”
Trump’s response: The Trump administration responded to Harvard’s refusal by freezing $2.2B in federal funding and a $60M federal contract to the university. It also threatened to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status – which would require Harvard to pay federal taxes on endowment income and donations – and bar Harvard from enrolling international students, who currently make up roughly 27% of total undergraduate and graduate enrollment. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is reportedly assessing the potential tax-exempt status removal with a decision expected soon.
The original demands: Trump’s newly established cross-agency Joint Anti-Semitism Task Force originally sent a letter to Harvard last week with a list of reforms Harvard must make in order to retain its federal funding. Notable requirements include overhauling Harvard’s governance structure to empower those more committed to its “scholarly mission” than activism, conducting regular audits of the ideologies of its staff and students to ensure “viewpoint diversity,” ceasing all DEI-related programs and ensuring strictly “merit-based” hiring and admissions processes, and tightening its screening of international student applicants with regular reporting to the Department of Homeland Security.
Harvard is the first school to directly reject the Trump administration’s demands amid the government’s broader crackdown on elite universities – including Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Northwestern, and Cornell – that it says need to do more to combat antisemitism and other bias on campus. After Harvard’s refusal, Princeton, MIT, and several other institutions sued the Department of Energy in response to its blocking of federal research grants to schools.
The standoff between Harvard and the Trump administration has surfaced debate over the merits of conditional federal funding for private universities and Harvard’s on-campus policies. This week, we bring you the viewpoints from multiple sides. Let us know what you think.
Notable viewpoints
More supportive of Harvard’s position:
Harvard’s rejection is necessary to combat the Trump administration’s growing pursuit of institutional control.
The Trump administration’s demands, which go far beyond limiting discrimination and include requirements to ensure a certain level of “viewpoint diversity” within its staff and student body, amount to an explicit attempt to increase conservative control over the institution and effectively make it a state-run university.
“But a 400-year-old institution should be making decisions with a time horizon of centuries, not news cycles. Making a principled stand now – with the law squarely on its side – is the single best thing Harvard could do to earn its continued place as a symbol of genuine excellence, free inquiry, and commitment to the public good.” (Nikolas Bowie and Benjamin Eidelson, Harvard Law School professors, Boston Globe.)
If Harvard did not take a stand, it would be difficult for any other university to do so. Harvard, with its $53B endowment, is the wealthiest university in the world and has the resources to fight Trump. Specifically, it has roughly $10B in unrestricted funds to spend however it wants and, accounting for annual capital gains and the amount it uses to manage the endowment, could spend $500M without being in any worse financial position compared to 2023.
The Trump administration’s punishment of Harvard is legally unsound.
While Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964) does prohibit public funds from being spent on any program that encourages discrimination, Congress wrote that law with the intention of protecting due process and, in particular, the right to judicial review for institutions accused of discrimination. The Trump administration’s freezing of federal funding for alleged discrimination at Harvard is outside its authority and Harvard is right to fight it.
The Trump administration’s funding freeze effectively violates Harvard’s First Amendment right to free speech because it is removing an entitled benefit under the condition Harvard gives up its constitutional right to free speech, a stipulation referred to as an "unconstitutional condition.” Harvard’s policies, curriculum, and speech on campus amount to the institution speaking how it wants, the restriction of which would be a free speech violation.
More supportive of the Trump administration’s position:
Harvard and similar institutions promote progressive ideologies at the cost of inclusion.
While Harvard has taken some action to limit antisemitism on campus, the civil rights of Jewish students have been and continue to be violated on campus in the context of pro-Palestinian protests and in-class demonstrations. The Trump administration is right to demand it do more to protect diversity and free speech.
Harvard ranked last – 251 out of 251 schools analyzed – in a 2025 Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) survey on campus speech climate. The survey results described Harvard’s speech climate as “abysmal” based on a variety of factors including students’ comfort levels expressing their own ideas, student-perceived levels of self-censorship, and students’ understanding of faculty positions on free speech.
Withholding federal funding from private institutions is within the government’s right.
Threatening to withhold federal funding from universities is not without precedent – one set by the Obama and Biden administrations. For example, Former President Obama instituted a Title IX enforcement policy that many saw as suppressing due process and the rights of those accused of sexual harassment, with Obama conditioning federal funding to universities on their compliance with the new policy. A number of Harvard Law professors formally objected to the Obama administration’s policy given its level of infringement on due process.
“As the federal government reminds Garber, ‘an investment is not an entitlement.’ Private universities are free to teach what they’d like – but if they expect their activity to be funded by the American people, they must justify the value proposition. And they have failed in spectacular fashion.” (Natalie Sandoval, Daily Caller.)
Harvard and similar universities have long promoted a narrowly defined, left-leaning ideology and marginalized those that don’t agree with it, assuming the federal government would always continue supporting it. But now that a conservative government is in power, institutions are meeting the limitations of ideology-driven policies.
Be heard
We want to hear from you! Comment below with your perspective on Harvard’s refusal to comply with the federal government’s demands and we may feature it in our socials or future newsletters. Below are topic ideas to consider.
Do you support or oppose the Trump administration’s crackdown on policies at universities? Why or why not?
What are some arguments or supporting points you appreciate about a viewpoint you disagree with?
1-question poll!
Snippets
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the US would abandon its efforts to end the war in Ukraine if it finds within the next few days that doing so would not be possible within the next few weeks. The remarks come amid the government’s efforts to communicate with both sides on a potential end to the war.
Judge James Boasberg, chief judge in the Federal District Court in Washington DC, issued a ruling that threatened to hold the Trump administration in contempt for its failure to return two planes carrying deported migrants to El Salvador after the judge’s order blocking the deportations last month. Boasberg’s ruling requires the Trump administration to give the deportees an opportunity to challenge their removal in court.
The UK Supreme Court ruled that the term “woman” refers to a “biological woman” assigned female at birth. According to the court, the ruling would not affect discrimination protections for transgender people under the UK’s Equality Act.
President Trump will reportedly replace acting IRS commissioner Gary Shapley, who was appointed this week. He will be replaced by Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender, who will become the fifth person to take the position this year.
Ford has reportedly paused shipments of some SUVs, trucks, and sedans to China to avoid tariffs in the country that could be as high as 150% on those vehicles. The pause comes amid the broader US-China trade war that has escalated over the past several weeks.
Music on the bottom
Check out this brand new release, “God Loves Weirdos,” from one of my favorite bands, Mt. Joy. It has the vintage Mt. Joy songwriting feel and reminds me in a way of – bonus track (!) – “Bathroom Light.” (Specific, visceral imagery that feels modern and timeless all at once.)
Listen to “God Loves Weirdos” on Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music.
Listen to “Bathroom Light” on Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music.
No it's not. It's the birthmark of greed.
Ha ha! Two days ago, I wrote: "5 of the 9 SCOTUS justices attended Harvard Law School. Let’s see how the regime fares when Harvard appeals for relief before the Supreme Court. This will put the Supremes face-to-face with the monstrosity they created.”
Suddenly awakening to the unnerving reality of facing five Angry Harvard Law grads in the Supreme Court, today “Trump Officials Blame Mistake for Setting Off Confrontation With Harvard” according to the N.Y. Times headline, backing away from a “tectonic confrontation.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/business/trump-harvard-letter-mistake.html)
Harvard’s Veritas triumphs over Trump’s University of Pennsylvania’s bitterly ironic Leges sine moribus vanae. (Laws without morals are useless.) Deus habet humoris.
Now let’s see if In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen (In Thy light shall we see light) at Columbia.