Ivy Showdown: Harvard Says No To Trump Administration Demands (2025)

Harvard University has forcefully rejected a set of sweeping demands by the Trump administration, setting up what many higher education leaders have been calling for — a high-profile, principled stand against what they believe is the illegitimate attempt by the federal government to control how private universities conduct their business.

Harvard is just one of a growing list of elite private universities that the administration has targeted for what it claims are failures to combat antisemitism and civil rights violations on campus.

That list now includes six of the eight universities in the Ivy League along with Northwestern University. Billions of dollars hang in the balance, a threat that has caused some institutions to accommodate the demands, often to the dismay of their faculty and students and other higher education officials.

But Harvard is drawing its own line in the sand. On Monday, Harvard President Alan Garber wrote a letter to the campus community stating that the institution had "informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Garber’s response came after the university had received its second letter from federal officials containing a bulleted list of 10 demands that Harvard had to meet if it wanted to maintain financial funding from the federal government. The administration has criticized Harvard’s response to student protests over the war in Gaza, accusing it of failing to adequately confront campus antisemitism and harassment.

Garber maintained that Harvard has taken several steps to combat antisemitism on campus and broaden its intellectual diversity, but he said the government’s letter “makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. 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.”

Indeed, the letter proposes unprecedented governmental oversight and controls of fundamental matters of university governance and academic freedom. Among the demands were requirements to:

• reduce the power held by students and untenured faculty and reduce “the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship";
• implement merit-based hiring policies, with all hiring and related data to be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by it;
• reform its admissions policies and share all admissions data with the federal government where they can be subjected to a comprehensive audit;
• allow an external party to audit several academic programs and departments that the government contends “most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture”;
• end “all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name”; and
• establish “viewpoint diversity in its hiring and admissions practices which must be audited by an external party by this August. The demand is that ”each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse." The audit “shall proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis," and “every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity.”

This last requirement is particularly thorny. The letter does not define “viewpoint diversity,” leaving in question how far its reach might extend. Would the Harvard Medical School be required to hire faculty who believe in the healing powers of crystals? Would the history department need to add a specialist in Holocaust denialism? Will psychology need to recruit a phrenologist? Could an evangelical school like Wheaton College be compelled to appoint an atheist to its faculty?

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” contended Garber, who went on to ague that “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."

The administration’s response came quickly. Within a few hours, federal officials announced they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grant funding and $60 million in contracts to the university, adding this: “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

Harvard appears to have gathered a united front on its resistance at this point, and it also has taken steps to gird itself financially for what could be a protracted battle.

Last Friday, the American Association of University Professors and the Harvard chapter of the AAUP filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the administration from cutting almost $9 billion in federal money for the university and its affiliated hospitals.

In addition, perhaps in anticipation of the financial repercussions it might face, Harvard plans to issue $750 million in bonds, Inside Higher Ed reported.

Now that this battle line is drawn, the stakes for higher education could not be higher. We are about to test President Garber’s belief that "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."