Trump administration vs. Harvard

In a battle that may take years to play out fully, Harvard, the nation’s oldest university is standing up to punitive demands by the Trump administration that it says threaten to destroy its whole reason for being. In so doing, Harvard has become an unlikely hero.

In early April, the Trump administration sent Harvard a letter containing a long list of demands that they said, if unmet, would result in the withdrawal of billions of dollars of federal funding promised for a large assortment of projects mostly in scientific and medical research. After careful consideration, Harvard’s president, Dr. Alan Garber representing Harvard’s governing body, the Harvard Corporation, wrote the Trump administration a polite but strong letter refusing these demands. Along with countless cheers from academics and others from all across the country, a furious Trump quickly announced that he would have the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) terminate Harvard’s tax exempt status (not realizing that for the IRS to do so at the President’s direction would be strictly illegal). These retaliatory moves would be a devastating financial blow to what had always been one of the most financially secure universities in the country.

Although Harvard has been cheered on by educational institutions and individuals all over the country, no other university has dared to take a position along with Harvard in strongly defying Trump’s extremely overbearing demands. The only other Ivy League university to take a public stance is Columbia who acquiesced to nearly all the administration’s demands several weeks earlier.

The administration has placed much of its case for punishing Harvard on exaggerated claims that the University was guilty of antisemitism. But the only documented antisemitism that the administration has cited exists at an individual not an institutional level.

As Jonathan Chait wrote in a recent issue of The Atlantic “The Republicans use of antisemitism as a justification to extend political control over universities has nothing to do with protecting Jews and everything to do with undermining liberal democracy.”

Trump did receive an Ivy League bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania but he nurses a grudge against most elite universities, thinking them more politically “liberal” than he would wish.

Trump did receive an Ivy League bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania but he nurses a grudge against most elite universities thinking them more politically “liberal” than he would wish. The controls he has wanted to place on Harvard, especially the college (politics is less active in manyof the graduate schools) are more closely related to college life and teaching. Most of the research grants, in medicine and the sciences are miles away from academic or political controversy.

The Trump administration’s list of demands that Harvard essentially relinquish control of its hiring of personnel including professors, student admissions, and many other matters was so offensively presented that even administration officials tried to “walk it back” by saying that it was just a preliminary draft. But Harvard’s president wrote back a very polite but firm letter refusing the terms of the demands and saying that he considered several (if not all) of them to not only be crippling but unconstitutional.

A May 6 letter from the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon to Dr. Garber was even more negative and insulting than the earlier one from the administration and it stated that unless Harvard made many changes that the administration demanded there would be no more federal money going to the university whatsoever.

It doesn’t stop. On May 16 the Trump administration announced a series of investigations including one by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission into whether Harvard had discriminated against “white, Asian, male or heterosexual applicants. . .”Several other such investigations have begun.

Meanwhile, what about all the other colleges and universities that were quick to congratulate Harvard for its courage in standing up to the Trump administration’s unreasonable demands? Where are they now, especially other Ivy League universities that the administration has issued more hate-filled rhetoric and nasty threats to?All of the Ivy League schools except for Dartmouth and Yale have been threatened by Trump; now other colleges such as Haverford are being attacked by the House Education Committee and its leading interrogator Rep. Elise Stefanik (whose brutal questioning last year was considered by many to be responsible for the resignations of the then presidents of Harvard, Penn, and Columbia).

What’s next for Harvard? The future looks troubled. Few think Harvard’s tax-free status will be successfully challenged but the various grants may be stifled just by delaying them. Harvard’s endowment is mostly in encumbered accounts and cannot be easily drawn upon like a checking account.Whatever happens Harvard is likely to have a few very difficult years ahead.

Architect and landscape designer (and Harvard graduate) Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville.