The White House campaign to force changes at elite universities has fuelled concern among faculty and students that the government is violating free speech and will damage 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”.
Demonstrators in Cambridge, Massachussetts call on Harvard University to resist attempts by Donald Trump to influence the institution.Credit: AP
The Cambridge City Council unanimously passed a resolution last week calling on Harvard to rebuff the Trump administration’s demands, a rare comment by the university’s hometown on its policies. Elected officials, including Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons, joined a protest over the weekend on campus that also drew alumni and current students.
The Trump administration cancelled $US400 million of federal money for Columbia University in March and has frozen dozens of research contracts at Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities. It also suspended $US175 million at the University of Pennsylvania because the school allowed a transgender athlete to compete on its women’s swimming team several years ago.
Garber has acknowledged the need to tackle antisemitism, noting that he’s experienced it directly while serving as the university’s leader, and said Harvard was committed to working with the administration. The law firms, responding to the government agencies, also said the school had 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,” Garber wrote in the letter.
He said the demands violated the university’s First Amendment rights and “exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI”, which prohibits discrimination against students based on their race, colour or national origin.
In recent weeks, the school placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation and forced the faculty leaders of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies to leave their posts. Harvard also suspended a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College.Credit: AP
However, in a defiant note on its website, the university stated it would “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”. The school initially posted language that indicated it would not “negotiate”, which was updated.
Former Harvard president Larry Summers, a frequent critic of the school’s response to antisemitism on campus, supported the school’s social media move, saying he hoped other universities would 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.
Democratic lawmakers were also supportive, with Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey offering “gratitude” to Garber and the Harvard Corporation for “standing up for education and freedom by standing against the Trump Administration’s brazen attempt to bully schools and weaponise the US Department of Justice under the false pretext of civil rights”.
But the move also elicited a furious response from US representative Elise Stefanik. The Republican from upstate New York said it was time to “totally cut off US taxpayer funding to this institution that has failed to live up to its founding motto ‘Veritas’.”
Bloomberg, AP