Harvard University Monday rejected President Trump’s ultimatum to dismantle diversity initiatives and crack down on student protesters.
The wealthiest and most prestigious Ivy League university said it wouldn’t bow to the White House’s demands even in the face of threats to cut close to $9 billion in federal funding, taking a sharply different approach than Columbia University.
Students walk through a gate at Harvard University, Thursday, June 29, 2023, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Michael Casey)
“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a statement. “No government … should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Garber denounced the White House demands as “assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate.”
Harvard was responding to a laundry list of demands issued by the White House Friday, including restricting admission of foreign students who disagree with government policies, third-party oversight over Harvard departments and new rules designed to crack down on student protests like the ones against the Israeli war in Gaza that rocked campuses last spring.
It also demands Harvard end all programs to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, including in hiring and admissions.
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” warned the letter, which was signed by senior federal officials.
Harvard’s rejection of Trump’s demands suggests it plans to take a far different approach than Columbia and other Ivy League universities, which have sought accommodation in hopes of salvaging billions in U.S. funding.
Harvard professors already filed a lawsuit over the weekend seeking to block the government from any cuts.
The Trump administration has made similar demands of other prestigious universities nationwide in what it says is an effort to combat antisemitism and roll back what it calls “woke” ideology.
Last month, Columbia broadly agreed to a list of nine demands from the administration, including a ban on students wearing masks at protests, hiring dozens of new campus security officers with power to arrest students and appointing a new officials to oversee its Department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies.
The administration had canceled $400 million in federal grants to the school in upper Manhattan, accusing it of “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”