Ten days ago the Trump administration sent Harvard a letter with a list of ten demands. Harvard looked at it over the weekend and on Monday announced that it would not comply with the demands.
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.
Since then the Trump administration has floated several new possibilities for pressuring Harvard to fall in line including cutting their tax-exempt status, and removing their ability to accept international students. Yesterday, the administration announced plans to pull another $1 billion per year in federal money.
President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to pull an additional $1 billion in federal funding from Harvard University amid his public battle with the institution, according to a report published Sunday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the $1 billion is related to the elite Massachusetts Ivy League school’s health research funding, according to sources familiar with the matter…
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) canceled $2.7 million in DHS grants to the university.
Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country with an endowment of $53 billion. Still, the loss of more than $3 billion per year (or possibly much more than that) is something Harvard can’t ignore. Today the school filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the cuts.
Harvard University sued the Trump administration in federal court Monday in an effort to block the government from freezing funding to the school, the latest move in the escalating feud between the nation’s wealthiest school and the White House.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in Massachusetts against multiple federal agencies, seeks to block the Trump administration from withholding federal funding “as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard.”
Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, said in a message to the university community Monday that the Trump administration’s actions are unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.
The Harvard Crimson has more on the lawsuit.
The 51-page complaint, filed in a United States district court, asks for the court to halt and declare unlawful the $2.2 billion freeze, as well as any freezes made in connection with “unconstitutional conditions” in the Trump administration’s April 3 and April 11 letters outlining demands to Harvard.
“We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honor their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion,” University President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced in a message to Harvard affiliates Monday afternoon…
The University also accused federal agencies of bypassing legally required procedures under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, alleging that the Department of Health and Human Services cut off grants without fair legal justification. The freeze, Harvard’s lawyers wrote, “has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance.”…
“Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism,” he wrote. “Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach.”
My own guess, and that’s all it is at this point, is that Harvard has a case based on some of the demands made by the administration in that letter they sent 10-days ago. For instance, the demand that Harvard get rid of all DEI programs. That’s based on the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Supreme Court decision outlawing Affirmative Action and their interpretation of DEI as a form of illegal discrimination. But as you can imagine, there are going to be courts in Massachusetts that disagree with that interpretation.
Harvard may have bought itself some breathing room as it can probably expect a lower court ruling from a progressive judge in Massachusetts that puts in place another TRO of some kind. But in the long run this may not work out so well.
All of this is likely to wind up before the Supreme Court which may then be obligated to explain how its decision ending Affirmative Action applies to other aspects of DEI. That decision, whenever it comes, may not be fully favorable to the Trump administration but it also may not be fully favorable to aspects of DEI including mandatory hiring statements, separation of students by race and other aspects of what is called equity.
In short, I think Trump is likely to see some wins on the underlying issue in the long run and, if that happens, those wins will persist long after he leaves office.
