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    The Guardian view on Trump v universities: essential institutions must defend themselves | Editorial

    Enfeebling universities or seizing control is an early chapter in the authoritarian playbook, studied eagerly by the likes of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. “Would-be authoritarians and one-party states centrally target universities with the aim of restricting dissent,” Jason Stanley, a scholar of fascism at Yale, wrote in the Guardian in September. Last month, he announced that he was leaving the US for Canada because of the political climate and particularly the battle over higher education.It is not merely that universities are often bastions of liberal attitudes and hotbeds for protest. They also constitute one of the critical institutions of civil society; they are a bulwark of democracy. The Trump administration is taking on judges, lawyers, NGOs and the media: it would be astonishing if universities were not on the list. They embody the importance of knowledge, rationality and independent thought.In a typically brazen reversal, Donald Trump has accused his administration’s top target – Harvard – of being the “threat to democracy”. The administration is attacking diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and says it is tackling the failure of universities to root out antisemitism – a claim widely challenged. Most Trump supporters are unlikely to take issue with cutting billions of dollars of public spending on wealthy elite institutions. A pragmatic counter-argument would be that much of that money goes to scientific and medical research that will enrich the US as a nation and benefit vast numbers of people who have never ventured near an Ivy League university.The administration’s outrageous demands of Harvard include federal oversight of admissions, the dismantling of diversity programmes, an end to recruitment of international students “hostile to American values”, and the compelled hiring of “viewpoint diverse” staff.Harvard has commendably chosen to fight back. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” wrote its president, Alan Garber. It is suing the government over the freeze on $2.2bn in federal funding, part of a threat to withhold $9bn. That is encouraging others to speak out. Over 150 university presidents have signed a joint letter denouncing “unprecedented government overreach and political interference”.Many have pointed out that the world’s richest university can afford to stand firm thanks to its unrivalled $53bn endowment and sympathetic billionaire alumni. But its the same prestige and power that have surely made it the primary target: force it to fold, and weaker institutions will follow. It’s worth noting that Harvard toughened its position after faculty, students and alumni pushed hard for it to do so, warning that concessions would only encourage the administration. Columbia acquiesced to an extraordinary list of demands but $400m of withheld funding has yet to be restored, and the administration is reportedly seeking to extend control over the university.Whatever comes of Harvard’s suit, this is an administration that has already chosen to ignore court rulings. It may step up its assault, by revoking charitable status and clamping down on international students. (Many may already be concluding that studying in the US, however eminent the institution, may not be worth the hostile immigration environment.) But Harvard is fighting back not just because it can, but because it must. In doing so, it is defending not only academic freedom, but democracy more broadly – and inspiring others to do so.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    The Zuckerbergs Founded Two Bay Area Schools. Now They’re Closing.

    Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, opened the schools to help communities of color. Some families wonder if the shutting of the schools is related to his D.E.I. retrenchment.The Primary School opened in 2016, just a couple miles from Facebook’s headquarters. Its mission was to serve as a tuition-free hub where children from low-income families could be educated and have access to health care and social workers under one roof.Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician married to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, worked with Meredith Liu, an educator and friend, to build the school in East Palo Alto, Calif., a diverse town that rarely reaps the benefits of its far wealthier Silicon Valley neighbors.They talked about how low-income children were more likely to have experienced trauma early in life, and how that trauma would have lasting effects. The Primary School, its website declared, tried to overcome the systemic racism and poverty that hurts communities of color.This week, however, school officials stunned families when they told parents the campus will shutter in the summer of 2026.Emeline Vainikolo said she and other parents were invited by school administrators to a breakfast of bagels, fruit and Starbucks coffee and were abruptly told of the closure, but given no reason. They were left staring at one another “dumbfounded,” she said. Her son, a kindergartner, later relayed a reason that he had gleaned from his teacher, she said.“‘Mommy, the guy who’s been giving money to our school doesn’t want to give it to us anymore,’” he told 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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    Trump’s class war on Harvard – podcast

    Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday on the grounds that a recent $2bn (£1.5bn) funding freeze was unlawful. It is the most significant act of resistance taken by a US college in response to Trump’s crackdown on higher education.Ed Pilkington, chief reporter for Guardian US, explains to Michael Safi that capitulating to Trump’s demands would have severely undermined Harvard’s reputation, and that the administration was targeting it for being a bastion of liberal thought.As Pilkington describes, at the same time Trump is tapping into a deep seam of resentment towards higher education that has been building in the US as the cost of college attendance rockets and more people see the liberal ideas emerging from universities as irrelevant to their lives.The pair discuss the way Harvard is trying to appeal to the public by highlighting its contributions to society and whether the ultimate survival of higher education’s autonomy will be determined by the law courts or the court of public opinion.Support the Guardian today: theguardian.com/todayinfocuspod More

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    Trump signs orders cracking down on diversity and inclusion at US universities

    Donald Trump signed executive orders on Wednesday targeting universities as his administration seeks to reshape higher-education institutions and continues to crack down on diversity and inclusion efforts.The actions address foreign gifts to universities, directing the federal government to “enforce laws on the books” related to the disclosure of large donations, and college accreditation, which the president has referred to as his “secret weapon” to upend US universities. While reading the orders to Trump, the White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the third-party groups that accredit universities have relied on “woke ideology” rather than merit.Linda McMahon, the education secretary, added during the signing in the Oval Office: “We should be looking at those who have real merit to get in, and we have to look harder at those universities that aren’t enforcing that.”Trump’s administration has been engaged in an all-out attack on US universities since the president took office in January, seeking to dramatically alter institutions he has claimed have been taken over by “Marxist maniacs and lunatics”. The federal government has sought to cut billions in funding from universities unless they comply with administration demands; banned diversity initiatives; and detained international students in retaliation for their activism.This week, more than 150 US university presidents signed a statement condemning the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” in higher education. Meanwhile, Harvard University – which Scharf mentioned by name when introducing the order related to foreign gifts – has sued the government in response to the threatened funding cuts.The president has referred to accreditation as a “secret weapon” in his fight against universities.“I will fire the radical-left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” he said last summer. “We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once for all.”According to a statement from the White House, the order directs McMahon to hold accreditors accountable with “denial, monitoring, suspension, or termination of accreditation recognition, for accreditors’ poor performance or violations of federal civil rights law”. It also orders administration officials to investigate “unlawful discrimination” in higher education.The White House alleges accreditors have imposed “discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards”, which it describes as a violation of federal law and an abuse of their authority.While signing orders on Wednesday that Scharf said would direct schools out of the “whole sort of diversity, equity and inclusion cult”, the president said that the US was “getting out of that … after being in that jungle for a long time”.Despite his condemnation of diversity and inclusion efforts, Trump also signed an order establishing a White House initiative on historically black colleges and universities to promote “excellence and innovation”. The order facilitates the creation of a presidential advisory board on HBCUs and seeks to address funding barriers and increase affordability and retention rates.The president also signed orders related to workforce development and artificial intelligence education to ensure the future workforce is “adequately trained in AI tools”, Scharf said. More

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    ‘National disgrace’: US lawmakers decry student detentions on visit to Ice jails

    Congressional lawmakers denounced the treatment of Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, the students being detained by US immigration authorities for their pro-Palestinian activism, as a “national disgrace” during a visit to the two facilities in Louisiana where each are being held.“We stand firm with them in support of free speech,” the Louisiana congressman Troy Carter, who led the delegation, said during a press conference after the visits on Tuesday. “They are frightened, they’re concerned, they want to go home.”Öztürk, a Tufts University PhD student, and Khalil, a graduate of Columbia, have been detained for more than a month since US immigration authorities took them into custody. Neither have been accused of criminal conduct and are being held in violation of their constitutional rights, members of the delegation said.The delegation included representatives Carter, Bennie Thompson, Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Senator Ed Markey, and Alanah Odoms, the executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. They visited the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, where Öztürk is being held, and traveled to the Central Louisiana Ice processing center in Jena to see Khalil.They met with Öztürk and Khalil and others in Ice custody to conduct “real-time oversight” of a “rogue and lawless” administration, Pressley said.Their detention comes as the Trump administration has staged an extraordinary crackdown on immigrants, illegally removing people from the country and seeking to detain and deport people for constitutionally protected free speech that it considers adverse to US foreign policy.“It’s a national disgrace what is taking place,” Markey said. “We stand right now at a turning point in American history. The constitution is being eroded by the Trump administration. We saw today here in these detention centers in Louisiana examples of how far [it] is willing to go.”McGovern described those being held as political prisoners. He said: “This is not about enforcing the law. This is moving us toward an authoritarian state.”Late last month, officials detained Öztürk, who co-wrote a piece in a Tufts student newspaper that was critical of the university’s response to Israel’s attacks Palestinians. The 30-year old has said she has been held in “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane” conditions in a Louisiana facility and has had difficulty receiving medical treatment.Öztürk was disappeared when she was detained, Pressley said, adding that she was denied food, water and the opportunity to seek legal counsel. Khalil missed the birth of his first child, she said. She described Donald Trump as a dictator with a draconian vision for the US.“They are setting the foundational floor to violate the due process and free speech of every person who calls this country home, whatever your status is,” she said. “It could be you tomorrow for suffering a miscarriage. It could be you tomorrow for reading a banned book.”Those in custody are shaken and were visibly upset and afraid, the delegation said. They have said they are not receiving necessary healthcare and that the facilities are kept extremely cold.“We have to resist, we have to push back. We’re a much better country than this,” McGovern said.Earlier this month a judge ruled that Khalil, who helped lead demonstrations at Columbia last year and has been imprisoned for more than a month, is eligible to be deported from the US.The Trump administration has argued that Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the US and child of Palestinian refugees, holds beliefs that are counter to the country’s foreign policy interests.On Monday, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont met with Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian green-card holder and Columbia student who was detained while at a naturalization interview. More

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    Harvard sues Trump administration over efforts to ‘gain control of academic decision-making’

    Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging it is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard”.The university is fighting back against the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding after Harvard officials refused to comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”. Harvard is specifically looking to halt a freeze on $2.2bn in grants.The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration has sought to force changes at multiple Ivy League institutions after months of student activism centered around the war in Gaza. The administration has painted the campus protests as anti-American, and the institutions as liberal and antisemitic, which Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, refuted.White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the “gravy train of federal assistance” to institutions like Harvard was coming to an end.“Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege,” Fields said.In a letter announcing the university’s decision to reject Trump’s demands, Garber wrote: “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.”Garber, in a statement published on Monday, reiterated that the Trump administration had doubled down on its response to the university’s refusal to comply with the administration’s demands, despite claims that the letter indicating Harvard’s federal research funding was at risk was sent by mistake.“The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2bn in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” Garber wrote.“These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”Harvard is the first university to file a lawsuit in response to Trump’s crackdown on top US universities that is says mishandled last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.Earlier this month, the Trump administration had sent a letter to Harvard with the list of demands, which included changes to its admissions policies, removing recognition of some student clubs, and hiring some new faculty.Last Tuesday, Trump had called for Harvard, the US’s oldest and wealthiest university and one of the most prestigious in the world, to lose its tax-exempt status, CNN first reported.“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” the US president said in a post on his Truth Social platform. More

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    Trump’s political bullying of Harvard will do nothing to foster diversity of thought | Kenan Malik

    Few people want to live in an echo chamber. Many have no problem being friends with those who vote differently to the way they do. And many would probably agree with John Stuart Mill that “he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that” – that to truly know one’s own argument, one must also know the arguments of those who disagree.How to create a culture that encourages more fruitful engagement between those of differing political views has become a key question in contemporary public debate. Nowhere more so than in universities, where there has been much debate about “viewpoint diversity”, the aspiration to nurture differing and conflicting perspectives within an institution or group as a means of sharpening arguments and teasing out truths.Universities have in recent decades become recognised as predominantly liberal institutions in which the range of debates can be constrained, both by the fact that most people share a similar perspective and by a culture wary of ideas deemed offensive or hurtful. Hence the growing calls for greater viewpoint diversity. The desire to create a richer culture of intellectual engagement and debate has also, however, been turned into a political cudgel, as in the current standoff between Donald Trump and Harvard University. The Trump administration sent to Harvard, as to many other elite colleges, a series of demands for the reorganisation of its governance and procedures, and for the reform of myriad departments deemed too radical.It is part of an attempt to impose political authority over academic life. One key demand is that any department “lacking viewpoint diversity” must hire new faculty members to transform its political complexion. University authorities must “audit” political views and only hire staff whose politics would ensure greater diversity of opinion.To engage with conservative perspectives is vital. This, though, is identity politics of a particularly pernicious kind packaged as a challenge to “woke” beliefs, a form of social engineering that conservatives normally denounce. Whatever happened to their insistence that the person best qualified for a job should get it?Nor is it easy to see what political balance might mean. How many conservatives should there be? How many Marxists? Should there be a quota for Jews supporting the Palestinian struggle? Or for Hamas-hating Muslims?At the same time as demanding viewpoint diversity, the White House insists that “Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences and practices … throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests”. How then can the university collect data on the political views of potential hires, even were that acceptable practice, to refashion every department’s ideological complexion as Trump demands?These are not merely problems and contradictions within Maga world but reflect conundrums within much of the discussion around viewpoint diversity. The lack of viewpoint diversity can be a real issue. The solutions proffered, though, often threaten to make the problem worse. Trump’s demand is in essence for universities to introduce affirmative action for conservatives while abolishing diversity policies in every other sphere. Similar ideas have long percolated through liberal arguments for viewpoint diversity.In an address to the American Psychological Association in 2001, psychologist and legal scholar Richard Redding argued for “affirmative-action-like practices” to increase the numbers of conservatives in academia. Many others, such as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who helped establish the Heterodox Academy as an academic forum for diverse views, and Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a fierce critic of Trump’s assault on universities, have followed suit, arguing, in Roth’s words, for “an affirmative-action program for the full range of conservative ideas and traditions”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolitical scientist Eric Kauffman, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Heterodox Social Science, argues that he is “not advocating affirmative action”, but insists, too, that what “a university decides to do on gender and race in terms of equity and diversity and inclusion … should be matched by equal action on ideological and political equity, diversity and inclusion”.Fostering diversity of opinion, nurturing a richer culture of debate and encouraging freedom of expression are all vital aims. But, in advocating affirmative action for certain political viewpoints, institutionalising individuals’ political identities, and making political beliefs legitimate criteria for admission and recruitment, the proposed solution, cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder observes, “embraces the very problem it diagnoses”.In defining academics by their political views, the traditional vision of scholarly objectivity, as another anthropologist Nicolas Langlitz notes, becomes subverted. Max Weber, perhaps the most influential of 20th-century sociologists, proposed a “value-neutral approach” by which one aimed to be objective irrespective of one’s politics. Many now view Weber’s approach as naive, given that “nobody has found a way to eradicate confirmation bias in individuals”, as Haidt and his colleagues have argued. All that is possible, they suggest, is to “diversify the field to the point where individual viewpoint biases begin to cancel each other out”. In other words, ensure that liberal bias in research becomes countervailed by conservative bias. This may work in many circumstances but, in others, it may make the search for answers more difficult.In many disciplines within the social sciences or the humanities, the political stance of the scholar can be vital to the argument – for instance, in the difference between conservative, liberal and Marxist views of globalisation. Here, robust debate is essential but there may be no “neutral” position to be arrived at by washing out the “biases”.I began by suggesting that few people want to live in an echo chamber. Nevertheless, societies have also become more fragmented and the politics of identity have helped create a more Balkanised world. It is a culture particularly entrenched in universities, where, as Shweder observes, “exposure to arguments and evidence that challenges one’s convictions” can often be experienced “as trauma or as the creation of a hostile work environment”.These are not issues confined to universities, nor to one side of the Atlantic. These are cultural changes we all need to confront. They are also cultural shifts that cannot be remedied through state mandates or bureaucratic procedures.What we need, rather, is to rethink what is meant by social and political engagement and, in particular, to encourage and celebrate, in place of Balkanised intellectual silos, what Shweder calls “the capacity of the human mind to stay on the move between different points of view”. More

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    What would it mean for Trump to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status?

    Harvard University is in a standoff with Donald Trump after rejecting a series of demands from the president’s administration, which critics view as an attack on the elite college for its reputation among conservatives as a bastion of liberal thought.After cutting off its funding, Trump has reportedly given the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) a potentially illegal order to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. Such a decision would mark an escalation in the Republican president’s weaponization of federal government agencies against the people and institutions that defy it.Here’s more about the battle between Trump and Harvard and how the president might try to use the IRS:How did the standoff begin?The Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce this month sent the university a letter saying it had “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”. It listed demands, including banning face masks, closing its diversity, equity and inclusion programs and cooperating with immigration authorities.How did Harvard react?Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, refused to yield, saying: “[T]he university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” It has retained attorneys William Burck and Robert Hur, both veterans of Republican administrations, who say Trump’s demands are “in contravention of the first amendment”. Harvard’s stand is in contrast to the situation at Columbia University, which acceded to similar demands from the Trump administration in exchange for the restoration of $400m in federal funding that was revoked.How did Trump retaliate?The Trump administration quickly froze $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multiyear contracts to Harvard. A member of the president’s antisemitism taskforce attacked the school’s stance, saying it “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”. Trump then called for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt status, and the Washington Post reported that the administration had asked the IRS’s top attorney to revoke it.What is tax-exempt status?If the IRS grants an organization tax-exempt status, they can avoid paying federal income tax, but must follow certain rules. These include refraining from campaign activity or attempting to influence legislation, while no individuals or shareholders are allowed to receive their earnings. According to the IRS, the status is available to charitable, religious, scientific and literary organizations, as well as those involved in preventing cruelty to children or animals, organizing amateur sports competitions or conducting testing for public safety reasons.Can Trump legally ask the IRS to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status?Federal law prohibits the president from directing the IRS to conduct an investigation or audit, and no evidence has yet emerged that the university has done anything to lose its tax-exempt status. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told US media “any forthcoming actions by the IRS are conducted independently of the President, and investigations into any institution’s violations of their tax status were initiated prior to” Trump’s public call for the status to be revoked.Has something like this happened under Trump before?In 2022, after Trump’s first term concluded, the New York Times reported that the former FBI director James Comey and his ex-deputy, Andrew McCabe, had been selected in 2019 for the IRS’s most invasive form of random tax audit. Trump had fired both Comey and McCabe during his term, and tax experts said both of them being selected for the audits was unusual. Trump, who had attacked Comey and McCabe by name even after their dismissals, denied any involvement. More