Trump cuts US$2.2 billion and threatens rebellious Harvard

Using Truth Social, the media platform he owns, an angry United States President Donald Trump has struck out at Harvard University, threatening to remove the tax-exempt status it has had for centuries – on top of a US$2.2 billion cut to grants – after it refused to accept government demands for swingeing changes.

“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump raged.

The president’s unprecedented threat follows by a day his administration’s official response, the freezing of US$2.2 billion in grants, to Harvard’s rejection of the government’s demands outlined in an 11 April letter from the Department of Education and two other federal agencies.

The demands included policy changes to university governance, hiring, international admissions, viewpoint diversity, fighting antisemitism on campus and discontinuation of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes as well as strengthening student discipline.

This disciplining included “suspending students involved in occupying university buildings” during the period of the pro-Palestinian protests during the 2024-25 academic year that followed Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.

Harvard fights back

On 14 April, rejecting these demands, Harvard’s lawyers underscored that the university “is committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry” and to “fostering open inquiry in a pluralistic community free from intimidation and open to challenging orthodoxies, whatever the source”.

The lawyers also said that Harvard had taken actions to “promote ideological diversity and civil discourse, hired staff to support these programmes and support students”.

The government’s 11 April letter demands: “By August 2025, the university shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit those programmes and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” Examples are the Harvard Divinity School and School of Public Health.

This violates the university’s academic freedom and impinges on Harvard’s legal rights.

The university’s lawyers responded that the letter “disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognised by the Supreme Court.

“The government’s terms also circumvent Harvard’s statutory authority rights by requiring unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms that the government has not proven through mandatory processes established by Congress and required by law.”

As did Harvard President Alan M Garber’s response to the government’s 11 April letter, Harvard’s lawyers emphasised that the government’s cuts will negatively affect “federal funding critical to vital research and innovation that has saved and improved lives and allowed Harvard to play a central role in making our country’s scientific, medical and other research communities the standard-bearers for the world”.

The lawyer’s letter goes a step further than did Garber’s, which noted Harvard’s relationship with a number of hospitals; this letter states that the government’s “demands extend not only to Harvard but to separately incorporated and independently operated medical and research hospitals engaging in life-saving work on behalf of their patients”.

From a legal point of view, the fact that the hospitals are incorporated separately means that whatever limitations the government might place on Harvard cannot impact those institutions’ rights as separate legal entities.

Other responses

Harvard’s decision to reject the government’s demands aligns the institution with both the 600 professors who recently signed a petition calling on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to condemn the government’s attacks on Harvard’s academic freedom and with the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

On 11 April the AAUP filed suit against the government’s threat to cut US$9 billion from Harvard, which was founded in 1636, almost a century and a half before the United States was founded. In 2024 Harvard had an endowment of US$53.2 billion.

The lawsuit challenges “the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus”.

Harvard’s decision sets it at variance with Columbia University’s acquiescence to similar demands last month.

Although Harvard remains open to dialogue with the Trump administration, its lawyers state baldly: “The university 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.”