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      Why Harvard Decided to Fight Trump

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      The Trump administration will freeze over $2 billion in federal funds because Harvard refused to comply with a list of demands. Harvard leaders believed saying no was worth the risk.Late last week, officials at Harvard University were trying to decipher what the Trump administration wanted the school to do to combat antisemitism.The government had made some straightforward demands, like requiring the school to ban masks, which are often favored by protesters.But other demands seemed vague.Then, late on Friday night, the federal government sent Harvard a five-page fusillade of new demands that would reshape the school’s operations, admissions, hiring, faculty and student life.It took less than 72 hours for Harvard to say no.The decision is the most overt defiance by a university since President Trump began pressuring higher education to conform to his political priorities.It came after leaders at Harvard, during intense discussions over the weekend, determined that what the government was proposing represented a profound threat to the 388-year-old university’s independence and mission.Harvard has extraordinary financial and political firepower for a clash with Washington. And the university’s leaders watched Columbia University reel, as the Trump administration made more demands, even after the school capitulated.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harvard’s Decision to Resist Trump is ‘of Momentous Significance’

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      But a fight with the nation’s oldest, richest and most elite university is a battle that President Trump and his powerful aide, Stephen Miller, want to have.Harvard University is 140 years older than the United States, has an endowment greater than the G.D.P. of nearly 100 countries and has educated eight American presidents. So if an institution was going to stand up to the Trump administration’s war on academia, Harvard would be at the top of the list.Harvard did that forcefully on Monday in a way that injected energy into other universities across the country fearful of the president’s wrath, rejecting the Trump administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum. Some commentators went so far as to say that Harvard’s decision would empower law firms, the courts, the media and other targets of the White House to push back as well.“This is of momentous, momentous significance,” said J. Michael Luttig, a prominent former federal appeals court judge revered by many conservatives. “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions.”Michael S. Roth, who is the president of Wesleyan University and a rare critic of the White House among university administrators, welcomed Harvard’s decision. “What happens when institutions overreach is that they change course when they meet resistance,” he said. “It’s like when a bully is stopped in his tracks.”Within hours of Harvard’s decision, federal officials said they would freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to the university, along with a $60 million contract.That is a fraction of the $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives, with $7 billion going to the university’s 11 affiliated hospitals in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., including Massachusetts General, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The remaining $2 billion goes to research grants directly for Harvard, including for space exploration, diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and tuberculosis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities

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      As he finished lunch in the private dining room outside the Oval Office on April 1, President Trump floated an astounding proposal: What if the government simply canceled every dollar of the nearly $9 billion promised to Harvard University?The administration’s campaign to expunge “woke” ideology from college campuses had already forced Columbia University to strike a deal. Now, the White House was eyeing the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.“What if we never pay them?” Mr. Trump casually asked, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. “Wouldn’t that be cool?”The moment underscored the aggressive, ad hoc approach continuing to shape one of the new administration’s most consequential policies.Mr. Trump and his top aides are exerting control of huge sums of federal research money to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which they see as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.Their effort was energized by the campus protests against Israel’s response to the October 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas, demonstrations during which Jewish students were sometimes harassed. Soon after taking office, Mr. Trump opened the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which is scrutinizing leading universities for potential civil rights violations and serving as an entry point to pressure schools to reassess their policies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Caution and Courage on Campus Speech

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      More from our inbox:Fired in a Quake Zone Rachel Stern for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Universities Like the One I Run Aren’t Afraid to Let People Argue,” by Michael I. Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 31):As the father of a high school senior currently deciding where to attend college, I agreed with much of what Dr. Kotlikoff had to say. But I was troubled by what he didn’t say. Right now, the greatest threat to academic freedom is the Trump administration.Foreign students are being detained and threatened with deportation for constitutionally protected speech. The independence of academic departments is being threatened by the White House. Universities are scrubbing their official documents of words the administration deems unacceptable. Defending free speech on campus while not calling this out by name can have only one explanation: fear.I sympathize. Putting your institution in this administration’s cross hairs risks devastating punishment. But when those who ought to be the greatest defenders of intellectual freedom stay silent or address such threats obliquely, we should all be scared.When I was a college student, I got to live out the idyllic fantasy that elite schools have marketed for generations: stimulating classes, extracurriculars and lazy afternoons in the quad. My daughter might have a very different experience. Her school might face devastating budget cuts for daring to defy the president. She’ll likely see research disrupted, graduate students’ and professors’ lives upended. She might witness international students being apprehended by masked law enforcement officers for speaking freely.I’m sorry she won’t get my carefree experience. But I hope the leadership of her school shows her something far more valuable: courage.Michael HandelmanBrooklynTo the Editor:Michael I. Kotlikoff’s essay rang true to me — not as theory, but as lived experience. I was a Cornell undergraduate when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. I sat in a class where a professor asked if any students were Republican. Nobody raised a hand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her

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      A barracks-style detention center in Louisiana is jammed with around 90 immigrant women, mostly undocumented workers from central and South America, sharing five toilets and following orders shouted by guards.There is also, among them, a Russian scientist.She is 30 years old, shy and prone to nervous laughter. She cannot work, because her laptop was confiscated. She plays chess with other women when the guards allow it. Otherwise, she passes the time reading books about evolution and cell development.For nearly eight weeks, Kseniia Petrova has been captive to the hard-line immigration policies of the Trump administration. A graduate of a renowned Russian physics and technology institute, Ms. Petrova was recruited to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School. She was part of a team investigating how cells can rejuvenate themselves, with the goal of fending off the damage of aging.On Feb. 16, customs officials detained her at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos she had carried from France at the request of her boss at Harvard. Such an infraction is normally considered minor, punishable with a fine of up to $500. Instead, the customs official canceled Ms. Petrova’s visa on the spot and began deportation proceedings. Then Ms. Petrova told her that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there.This is how she wound up at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, La., waiting for the U.S. government to decide what to do with her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stanford Protesters Charged With Felonies for Pro-Palestinian Occupation

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      Prosecutors filed felony charges on Thursday against 12 protesters, nearly all with ties to Stanford University, for breaking into an administration building and occupying it in 2024.Prosecutors on Thursday filed felony charges against 12 pro-Palestinian protesters — all but one of them a current or former student at Stanford University — for breaking into administration offices in June and causing extensive damage.The charges were among the most severe levied against participants in last year’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. More than 3,000 people were arrested at college protests and encampments in the spring of 2024, but they generally faced misdemeanor charges or saw their charges dropped.Jeff Rosen, the district attorney for Santa Clara County, which includes the Stanford campus, charged the 12 protesters with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. They face up to three years and eight months in prison, as well as the payment of restitution to reimburse the university for the damage.Stanford is one of dozens of schools being investigated by the Trump administration for how they have handled pro-Palestinian protests and whether they have done enough to combat antisemitism on campus. The administration has also revoked the visas of several Stanford students and recent graduates, though the reason is unclear. .Mr. Rosen said that President Trump’s intense focus on Stanford and other universities played no role in the decision to charge the crimes as felonies.“What the federal administration is doing is what they’re doing. What I’m doing is applying the California Penal Code,” Mr. Rosen said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Freezes $1 Billion for Cornell and $790 Million for Northwestern, Officials Say

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      The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools, two U.S. officials said.The funding pause involves mostly grants from and contracts with the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education and Health and Human Services, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unannounced decision.The moves are the latest and largest in a rapidly escalating campaign against elite American universities that has resulted in roughly $3.3 billion in federal funds being suspended or put under review in just over a month. Other schools that have had funds threatened include Brown, Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.Cornell and Northwestern are both facing investigations into allegations of antisemitism and into accusations of racial discrimination stemming from their efforts to promote diversity.Cornell officials said in a statement that they had received more than 75 stop-work orders from the Defense Department on Tuesday, but that they had no information to confirm that more than $1 billion in funding had been suspended. The affected grants, they said, supported research that they described as “profoundly significant to American defense, cybersecurity and health.”“We are actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions,” according to the joint statement from Michael Kotlikoff, the university president; Kavita Bala, the provost; and Robert Harrington, provost for medical affairs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Permanently Bars N.I.H. From Limiting Medical Research Funding

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      A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from limiting funding from the National Institutes of Health that supports research at universities and academic medical centers, restoring billions of dollars in grant money but setting up an almost certain appeal.The ruling by Judge Angel Kelley, of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, made an earlier temporary order by her permanent and was one of the first final decisions in the barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration. But it came about in an unusual way: The government asked the court to enter that very verdict earlier on Friday so it could move ahead with an appeal.The decision nonetheless was an initial win for a diverse assortment of institutions that conduct medical research. After the Trump administration announced the policy change in February, scores of research hospitals and universities issued dire warnings that the proposal threatened to kneecap American scientific prowess and innovation, estimating that the change could force those institutions to collectively cover a nearly $4 billion shortfall.Under the Trump administration’s plan, the National Institutes of Health could cap the funding it provides to cover the “indirect costs” of research — for things like maintenance of buildings, utilities and support staff — at 15 percent in the grants it hands out. Historically, when the agency awarded grants, it could allocate close to 50 percent in some cases to cover the indirect costs associated with a given study.The Trump administration said it had conceived of the policy as a way of freeing up more federal dollars to pay for research directly — covering scientists’ salaries or buying necessary equipment — as opposed to the many tangential costs that hospitals and laboratories incur in maintaining their facilities and other overhead expenses.But critics described that reasoning as disingenuous, as the changes the administration had proposed would paradoxically force institutions to cover the bill, and most likely shed staff and scale down research projects in the process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More