Harvard defies Trump’s war on ‘woke’

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Harvard has rejected Donald Trump’s demands for sweeping reforms aimed at purging “woke” ideology from America’s oldest and richest university.

So what? It could hardly do otherwise. In a social media post on Wednesday Trump accused Harvard of hiring “Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’”. He added that Harvard “is a joke, teaches hate and stupidity and should no longer receive federal funds”.

Trump has now extended that threat or actually suspended federal funding for seven American universities including Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Pennsylvania and Princeton.

Point. Harvard received a lengthy letter from the Trump administration which made a number of supposedly ‘legally binding’ demands, including:

• the end of diversity-based hiring and admissions policies;
• a ban on international students “hostile to American values”;
• a government-approved audit of all staff and students to ensure “viewpoint diversity” delivered by the end of the year;
• a government-approved audit of teaching programs to identify “ideological capture”;
• a ban on student groups or clubs that support Palestine;
• a ban on mask-wearing on campus;
• instant reporting of foreign students “supportive of terrorism or antisemitism” to the Department of Homeland Security; and
• quarterly reporting on all of the above.

Counterpoint. Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, responded in a defiant letter on Monday. “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,” he wrote.

Billions vs billions. Trump immediately froze $2.2 billion in federal funding for the university. Fortunately for Harvard it has a $53.2 billion endowment. The UK’s wealthiest university, Oxford, by comparison, has $10.74 billion. "With all of those assets – if Harvard can't resist, who can?" former Harvard president Larry Summers told alumni last week.

Is it enough? The endowment paid out $2.4 billion in 2024, about 37.5 per cent of the university's $6.4 billion operating budget. Gifts are falling as right-wing donors such as hedge fund activist Bill Ackman withhold cash. And the funds are often restricted in their use, earmarked for specific research or jobs.

Come on in, the culture war’s lovely. Harvard’s swift rejection of Trump’s demands was unexpected. The 388-year-old institution had seemed to be avoiding confrontation recently by:

• adopting a stricter definition of antisemitism;
• removing the director and associate director of its Middle Eastern Studies school;
• not joining a top universities’ court challenge to cuts in federal research funding.

First they came for Columbia. The New York university agreed to similar demands from Trump after it lost $400 million in federal funding. Despite this, the administration’s antisemitism task force – which criticised Columbia’s handling of student protests over Gaza – is pushing Trump to install federal oversight, effectively taking control of the university.

Campus protest: MIT, Stanford and Yale universities have backed Harvard.

The American Association of University Professors has launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration in an effort to block the removal of federal funds.

According to Forbes magazine, 39 US universities have big enough endowments and revenue diversity to resist the administration’s attacks.

But first. “If Harvard had not taken this stand, it would have been nearly impossible for other institutions to do so,” Ted Mitchell of the American Council on Education has said.

Brain gain. Some US academics are voting with their feet.

• Three leading Yale professors – philosopher Jason Stanley and historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore – have taken jobs at the University of Toronto.
• In a recent survey of more than 1,600 scientists by the journal Nature, three quarters said they were considering leaving the country.

Several European universities have started a recruitment drive aimed at topflight US academics dubbed “scientific asylum seekers”.

The European Research Council is doubling its relocation budget for researchers moving to the EU specifically to attract US researchers

On the flip. Many American institutions have yielded to Trump’s threats: ABC News paid to settle his suit over the use of the word rape to describe his assault on E. Jean Carroll. Amazon is paying Melania $40 million for a documentary about herself.

What’s more… Several large US law firms have offered to work for him for free to avoid a decree punishing firms that challenge him.

Photo credits: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images