Harvard refuses to negotiate with Trump over independence

Harvard University refused to accept a deal with the Trump administration two weeks after the US government threatened to halt $9 billion in funding, vowing it won’t “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights.”

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” the school’s lawyers — Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and King & Spalding — wrote in a letter Monday to US agencies including the Department of Education.  

Harvard president Alan Garber said in a post on the school’s website that the administration demanded new terms late Friday that went beyond prior requests. These included reforming its governance, ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and changes to its admissions and hiring.

The oldest and richest US university —with a $53 billion endowment — had emerged as a target as the government sought changes at the nation’s top colleges, which were roiled by pro-Palestinian student protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliatory response in Gaza.

“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.”

The White House has used instances of antisemitism on campuses to try and force changes at elite universities across the country, stirring concern among faculty and students that they’re violating free speech and damaging scientific research. A group of Harvard professors suing the administration has accused it of exploiting Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to “coerce universities into undermining free speech and academic inquiry in service of the government’s political or policy preferences.” 

The Trump administration has already canceled $400 million in federal money to Columbia University in March, and has frozen dozens of research contracts at Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities. It also suspended $175 million at the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender athlete to compete on its women’s swim team several years ago.

Garber has acknowledged the need to tackle antisemitism on campus, noting that he’s experienced it directly while serving as the university’s leader, and said Harvard is committed to working with the administration. The law firms, responding to the government agencies, also said the school has made “lasting and robust” changes over the past 15 months, including tightening disciplinary procedures.  

“Harvard is in a very different place today from where it was a year ago,” according to the letter. 

In recent weeks the school placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation and forced the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies to leave their posts. Harvard also suspended a partnership it has with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

But the university, in a defiant note on its website, stated it will “not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”

Former Harvard president Larry Summers, a frequent critic of the school’s response to antisemitism on campus, was supportive of the school’s move on social media, saying he hope other universities take a similar stand. Jeff Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, on X described it as a “powerful and entirely justified” statement by Garber. 

But the move also elicited a furious response from US Representative Elise Stefanik. The Republican lawmaker from upstate New York said it’s time to “totally cut off U.S. taxpayer funding to this institution that has failed to live up to its founding motto Veritas.”

--With assistance from Akayla Gardner.

(Updates with Stefanik quote in last paragraph.)

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