Education

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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to similar demands from the Trump administration in exchange for the restoration of $400m in federal funding that was revoked.How did Trump retaliate?The Trump administration quickly froze $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multiyear contracts to Harvard.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

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Pundits see a ‘diploma divide’ in politics. They’re focused on the wrong thing | Dustin Guastella

      by

      Since about 2020, a number of researchers have determined that the most salient divide in politics today is the diploma divide – that is, the division between those who have a four-year college degree and those who do not. Those who have a degree are more liberal, those who don’t are less. The former tend to vote for Democrats, the latter for Republicans.There is a certain elegance to how simple and clean the picture is. And, by virtue of this tidiness, some insist that “educational polarization” is a better way to understand political shifts today than reliance on older, softer, messier ideas like social class. Conceptual cleanliness is certainly attractive. It’s far easier to determine who is “college educated” and who is not than it is to establish similarly defined boundaries between the working and middle classes. Yet whether we understand shifting political alignments as a function of class, as a broad social and relational concept, or education, a narrow credential category, implies a great deal about political strategy.For one thing, it’s not a good sign that those who wish to craft a political strategy for progressives are looking for yet more ways to make class disappear from the conversation. Traditional class concepts, by their mere mention, reveal something significant about the nature of our society. To talk about “the working class” in politics reminds us that there is a relationship between the type of work people do, their labor market position, their economic interests and their ideology. To say that a political party wins the “the working class vote” is to suggest that they persuaded these voters that they stand for the interests of the humble against the interests of the elite. Yet if we focus only on education, we risk suggesting something different altogether. If we say that a given party wins the “non-college-educated vote”, without reference to social class, we risk suggesting that political behavior is related, primarily, to intelligence or achievement.Today, many liberals are proud that their party wins the majority of college-educated voters. They see this as a sign that they are the “smart party” and that the Republicans are dumb. No doubt, there is good evidence that higher education itself leads to more progressive views. In this light, progressives might conclude that the only real political problem to be solved is that there aren’t enough educated voters to give Democrats a majority. Intuitively, that suggests partisans should focus on getting more people to go to college so that we might have a society where 51% of the people are college-educated liberals, at which point the “smart party” would have an absolute majority.This isn’t that far from what the Democrats have actually tried to do over these last three decades – they’ve relied on consolidating their gains among college-educated voters and encouraged everyone else to go to college. Not only has this failed as a political strategy, it’s actually made the class conundrum worse. Saturating the labor market with more college-educated workers has weakened the wage premium for these workers and saddled them with an immense amount of debt that they are increasingly unable to pay off. That fueled a political rift when Joe Biden’s plans to forgive some of this debt were viewed by many blue-collar workers as an unfair attempt at rewarding the already well-off.And by increasing the proportion of college-educated people from 20% in 1990 to over 38% in 2021, we’ve done absolutely nothing for those workers who don’t have a degree, except, in a particularly cruel irony, made it harder for them to get certain jobs that now require college credentials. Over this period those without a college degree have seen their wages stagnate or decline, and the income and wealth gap between them and their college-educated counterparts has grown wide. The very rich, meanwhile, have taken off into the exosphere, sitting on a celestial plane so high above us that they flit between the parties based on whoever they think will win.Worse still, by making education a major part of the Democratic party’s plan for achieving social uplift and economic growth, Democrats have unwittingly surrounded themselves with voters and staffers who don’t understand the world beyond their laptops. More than the wage advantage, a college education offers workers a shield from manual work, routine layoffs and the opportunity to help shape our common culture. As a result, college-educated voters are less worried about the effects of immigration as a downward pressure on their wage, they don’t fret over free trade deals and they broadly welcome cultural changes. It’s not that the Democratic party is the “smart party”, but it is the “go to college” and “learn to code” party, the party of looser immigration restrictions and cosmopolitan norms. If it’s not opposed to the economic interests of those without a college degree, it has become ambivalent about them.In fact, for a long time the Democratic party has focused its appeals on the edges of the working class (the very poor and the not-so-professional-class). As a result, it has neglected the views and interests of the great big hunk in the center of the wage distribution. By doing so, Democrats have neglected any substantive critique of the increasingly hi-tech hyper-global economy that has left working-class voters behind. Democrats are now seen as defenders of the status quo, representatives of the well-heeled and well-educated and totally unequipped to challenge Trump’s national-populist narrative.Working-class disaffection with the Democrats began with blue-collar white voters. Many liberals assumed this was the political price they had to pay for civil rights. Relatedly, they also assumed that working-class voters of color would remain loyal to the Democratic party. They haven’t. Democratic party disaffection has spread from working-class whites to working-class Latino and Black voters.What exactly will keep lower-income college-educated voters in the Democratic coalition? What does the party offer them as their economic position erodes? Meanwhile, as the wage premium for college-educated workers continues to shrink, there is reason to believe that college-educational attainment will stall and Democrats’ college-educated base will only get smaller.An emphasis on education just can’t fill the working-class sized hole in Democrats’ electoral coalition. If they are ever to chart their way back to power, progressives need to develop a program that addresses class grievances as class grievances.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Harvard shows resistance is possible. But universities must join forces | Jan-Werner Müller

      by

      Harvard is refusing the plainly illegal demands by the Trump administration. That sends an important signal: resistance is possible.But universities must realize that the government is adopting a divide-and-rule tactic: they should collaborate on a shared litigation strategy, take a common approach in getting the public on their side, and do everything possible to have Congress push back against Trump treating money allocated by the legislature as if it were a private slush fund to be used for political blackmail. Some faculty have already begun to unite. In principle, not just progressives, but self-respecting conservatives – if any remain – should be responsive to such a three-pronged strategy.It has become abundantly clear that Trump 2.0 is using a moral panic about “woke” and pro-Palestinian protests as pretexts to subjugate institutions posing multiple threats to aspiring autocrats: universities constitute an independent source of information; they encourage critical thinking; they gather in one spot young people easily outraged by injustices. Of course, like all institutions, they have flaws; but, unlike, let’s say, businesses, they give wide latitude to criticism and position-taking (if you think colleges are censoring speech, try some political oratory on the factory floor or in the boardroom).Some academic leaders think they might mollify the Trumpists, or at least get a better deal, if they concede points about allegedly widespread antisemitism, as well as supposed indoctrination and discrimination. Self-criticism should of course be part of university life, but trumpeting on page-one op-eds that there are deep structural problems with higher education is naive at best. For one thing, there are no simple generalizations about the roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the US; even what are usually called “elite universities” are hardly all the same.Yet far too many academics are uncritically repeating the right’s propaganda about a “free speech crisis” and conservatives feeling marginalized. Is it perhaps relevant that the most popular majors remain business and health sciences – subjects hardly taught by dogmatic lefties hell-bent on silencing dissent? Is it just about possible that some much-cited statistics – that many more professors vote for the Democrats – have more to do with the GOP having turned itself into the anti-science party, rather than professors all wanting to corrupt the youth with socialist nonsense?Even those worried about what the government’s letter to Harvard called “ideological capture” might balk at the proposed remedy: what can only be called totalitarian social engineering in the name of assuring “viewpoint diversity”. The government seeks to subject an entire university to an ideology audit: both faculty and students would have to be tested for “viewpoints” – whatever that means exactly. If an imbalance were to be found, departments would have to bring in what the Trumpist education commissars call a “critical mass” of faculty and students with viewpoints deemed politically correct by the commissars.This is not just an attack on academic freedom; it is a license to investigate individuals’ minds and consciences (could a student be hiding a secret interest in Judith Butler? Only extensive interrogations would reveal the truth!). Might students be encouraged to denounce their professors, in ways already popular on rightwing websites? Might professors in turn be encouraged to tell on their charges (he looks preppy, but he once wrote an essay on gender ideology)?Besides the obvious contradiction of violating freedoms in the name of freedom, there is the rank hypocrisy of demanding “viewpoint diversity” while seeking to outlaw any diversity initiatives not based on political ideology. And the practical enforcement of viewpoint diversity would probably also be a tad uneven: no economics department would be forced to hire Marxists; evangelical colleges are unlikely to be led towards balance by having to bring in a “critical mass” of faculty promoting atheism.Trumpists are trying hard to frame university leaders as feeling “entitled” – one small step from calling them welfare queens and kings parasitic to the taxpayer. Education, they insinuate, is a luxury for spoilt kids, research a pretext for faculty to impose loony personal beliefs. If one accepts this framing, an otherwise inexplicable idea starts to make sense: Christopher Rufo, the much-platformed strategist of the attacks on academic freedom, wants to “reduce the size of the sector itself”.Why would one want to deny opportunities for kids to learn and for research to advance, unless one fears critical thinking? Or unless one has a completely warped view – Musk-style – of how science actually works? Or unless one exhibits willful ignorance of the fact that the government does not just shovel cash to universities so they can organize more pride parades, but that it concludes contracts for research after highly competitive selection processes?Clearly, the Trump administration is in the business of unprecedented national self-harm. Those who think of themselves as “conserving” must ask whether they really want to be part of an orgy of destruction. Those who say they worship the founders must wonder whether they can tolerate daily violations of the constitution, as Trump works to impound funds approved by Congress (for research, among other things).Self-declared free speech defenders must question why they would support an administration inspired more by Mao than by Madison. And those who just want to hold on to basic decency must ask whether they can accept a proposition along the lines of: “We’ll prevent cures for cancer, as long as Harvard doesn’t hire mediocre conservatives.” As my colleague David Bell has recently put it, if this proposition becomes acceptable, it will be the triumph of malignancy in more than one sense.

      Jan-Werner Müller is a Guardian US columnist and a professor of politics at Princeton University. More

    • 213 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The mysterious firing of a Chinese professor has Asian students on edge: ‘Brings chills to our spines’

      by

      When FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents descended recently on two homes owned by Xiaofeng Wang, a Chinese national and cybersecurity professor at Indiana University, many in the idyllic college town of Bloomington were shocked.In December, Wang had been questioned by his employers about allegedly receiving undisclosed funding from China on a project that also received US federal research grants. On the same day of the home raids, Wang was fired from his longstanding post at Indiana University over email – a move that goes against the university’s own policy.But Wang hasn’t been charged with any offence, and his lawyer says no criminal charges are pending.The incident has driven fear into the hearts of Bloomington’s Asian community of faculty and students who fear a political motivation.“I study at the computer science department, and I’ve overheard Chinese professors talking about how worried they are that something similar could happen them, too,” says a Chinese PhD student who came to Bloomington from Suzhou, Jiangsu province, last September and who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the issue.During the first Trump administration, the Department of Justice created the China Initiative in an effort to find and prosecute spies for Beijing working in US research and development sectors. At the time, it was criticized by rights groups for fueling racial profiling and violence against Asian Americans, and a review by the Biden administration saw the effort ended in 2022.Now as before, Trump has made targeting universities whose leadership and faculty he believes run against his own agenda a key element of his second term.For the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Gang Chen, what happened to Wang “brings chills to our spines”.“What is particularly troubling in this case is that Indiana University fired him and his wife without due process, presuming guilt instead of innocence,” Chen says.Chen, who has US and Chinese nationality, found himself charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly failing to disclose links to Chinese organizations on a grant application for a federally funded project, with just weeks remaining in Trump’s first term, in January 2021.The charges were dismissed a year later.“The investigations on Professor Wang and his firing creates huge fear among researchers of Chinese descent, especially students and postdoctorates from China. It is clear that such events, together with legislation and hostile rhetoric, are driving out talents. I learned that many Chinese students and postdoctorates here are considering leaving the US.”More students from China come to the US to study and research at third-level institutions than from any other country.The fear of Chinese spies operating in the US isn’t completely unfounded.A report released recently by US intelligence agencies found that China remains the top cyber threat to America, and many politicians on the right believe smaller colleges in low-key parts of the country such as the midwest could be used as gateways into the US by the Chinese Communist party.In October, five Chinese students at a college in Michigan were charged with spying on a military training camp where Taiwanese soldiers participate. This month, information on several Chinese students at Purdue University, also in Indiana, was sought by members of Congress, claiming national security interests, though no charges have been brought.But the vast majority of the estimated 300,000 Chinese academics and students in the US today are in the country to legitimately contribute to research and to learn, say experts who fear that Trump’s targeting of colleges deemed to be antisemitic may now be shifting to the midwest.Last month, the Department of Education named Indiana University Bloomington among 60 colleges under investigation for alleged antisemitic discrimination, a move that could result in funding cuts.It’s not only Chinese academics and students who could be affected.Universities in Illinois, Indiana and other heartland states are home to some of the largest Chinese student populations in the country.Nearly half of Urbana-Champaign’s combined population of 130,000 people in neighboring Illinois is made up of college students and staff. Nearly six thousand are students from China.In Bloomington, which has a population of under 80,000 people, close to 50,000 are students, with nearly 10% coming from overseas.Midwestern colleges and the communities around them are keen to attract international students and rely heavily on the money they bring with them; about 2,000 Chinese students enroll at Indiana University every year. International undergrad students are charged an average of $42,000 in tuition and fees, alongside $14,000 in housing and food, bringing hundreds of millions of dollars into the college and town.Over the years, these and other small university towns have come to rely on international students to prop up their economies.A couple of blocks west of the University of Indiana Bloomington campus, a grouping of Chinese, Korean and Asian eateries cater to the college’s large Asian community. The sidewalk in front of the Longfei Chinese restaurant is dotted with food signs written in Mandarin. The restaurant’s manager, however, says he believes that the political problems between Washington and Beijing have seen the number of Chinese students coming to the US – and through his doors – fall in recent years.The Chinese PhD student, who one recent morning is here grabbing lunch, says his student visa status allows him to stay in the US for up to five years, but he and his Chinese colleagues are worried that the Trump administration may cut that short.“I’m concerned with President Trump’s hostility against China and this kind of hostility may affect Chinese students and professors, and the funding that we get,” he says.“I’m concerned about the impact on my life.”Faculty at the department where Wang worked for more than two decades have called for Indiana University to revoke his dismissal. His profile page on the University’s website has been removed and college authorities have not commented on his firing.“Neither Prof Wang nor Ms Ma [his wife, who worked as a library analyst at the same university] have been arrested … further, there are no pending criminal charges as far as we are aware,” says Jason Covert, a lawyer at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, a firm representing Wang and Ma.“They look forward to clearing their names and resuming their successful careers at the conclusion of this investigation.”Covert would not say whether Wang planned to remain in the US. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump officials cut billions in Harvard funds after university defies demands

      by

      The US education department is freezing about $2.3bn in federal funds to Harvard University, the agency said on Monday.The announcement comes as the Ivy League school has decided to fight the White House’s demands that it crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations, including shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs.“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,” said a member of a department taskforce on combating antisemitism in a statement.The education department taskforce on combating antisemitism said in a statement it was freezing $2.2bn in grants and $60m in multi-year contract value to Harvard.In a letter to Harvard on Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, a requirement that Harvard institute what it calls “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies as well as conduct an audit of the study body, faculty and leadership on their views about diversity.The demands, which are an update from an earlier letter, also call for a ban on face masks, which appeared to target pro-Palestinian protesters; close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”; and pressured the university to stop recognizing or funding “any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment”.The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.Harvard’s president said in a letter that the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.“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,” Alan Garber, the university president, wrote, adding that Harvard had taken extensive reforms to address antisemitism.Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “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.”On Monday, Barack Obama posted in support of the university: “Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions – rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to make sure all students at Harvard can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiry, rigorous debate and mutual respect. Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”The demands from the Trump administration prompted a group of alumni to write to university leaders calling for it to “legally contest and refuse to comply with unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance”.“Harvard stood up today for the integrity, values, and freedoms that serve as the foundation of higher education,” said Anurima Bhargava, one of the alumni behind the letter. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transformative growth will not yield to bullying and authoritarian whims.”It also sparked a protest over the weekend from members of the Harvard community and from residents of Cambridge and a lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors on Friday challenging the cuts.In their lawsuit, plaintiffs argue that the Trump administration has failed to follow steps required under Title VI before it starts cutting funds, and giving notice of the cuts to both the university and Congress.“These sweeping yet indeterminate demands are not remedies targeting the causes of any determination of noncompliance with federal law. Instead, they overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the university to punishing disfavored speech,” plaintiffs wrote.Edward Helmore contributed to this report More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Harvard says it will not ‘yield’ to Trump demands over $9bn in funding cuts

      by

      Harvard University said on Monday that it will not comply with a new list of demands from the Trump administration issued last week that the government says are designed to crack down on antisemitism and alleged civil rights violations at elite academic institutions.In a message to the Harvard community, the university president, Alan Garber, vowed that the school would not yield to the government’s pressure campaign. “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber said.The Trump administration said it would review $9bn of federal grants and contracts, including Harvard’s research hospitals, as part of its effort to “root out antisemitism”.In a letter last week from the government’s antisemitism taskforce, the university was accused of having “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment”.The Trump administration has also demanded that Harvard ban face masks and close its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which it says teach students and staff “to make snap judgments about each other based on crude race and identity stereotypes”. The administration also demanded that Harvard cooperate with federal immigration authorities.The administration further asked Harvard to reform its admissions process for international students to screen for students “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” – and to report international students to federal authorities if they break university conduct policies.University faculties are also under the government’s microscope as it has called for “reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship”.Harvard’s announced resistance to the administration’s demands comes as Trump’s federal government pits itself against several Ivy League universities over intellectual and political freedoms. The dispute has been playing out in the courts over efforts by the administration to deport several postgraduate students holding provisional citizenship or student visas over pro-Palestinian demonstrations that the government alleges were shows of support for terrorism.On Friday, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that the Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian organizer Mahmoud Khalil, 30, can be deported despite having been granted legal permanent residence in the US. The government contended that Khalil’s presence in the US posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences”, satisfying requirements for deportation, according to the judge.After that ruling, Khalil’s immigration attorney Marc Van Der Hout told the court that his client would appeal.The letter from Harvard’s president said the university would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to dismantle its diversity programming and to limit student protests in exchange for its federal funding.“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 wrote in the message.Garber said the government’s demands were a political ploy.“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” he wrote. “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.”The new approach by the university, which sits on an endowment valued at over $52bn, comes in contrast to Columbia University. Columbia, which holds an endowment of $14bn, largely acceded to the administration demands after it was threatened with $400m in federal funding cuts.But Jewish advocacy groups are divided on the administration’s efforts. Some say they are an innovative and muscular way to combat what they see as campus antisemitism. Others maintain that the government is weaponizing antisemitism to pursue wider intellectual crackdowns.“The gun to the head and shutting down all science seems like a counterproductive way to handle the particular problems of antisemitism,” Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor, told the Boston Globe earlier in April. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Harvard Professors Sue Trump Administration Over Threat to Federal Funds

      by

      Two groups representing Harvard professors sued the Trump administration on Friday, saying that its threat to cut billions in federal funding for the university violates free speech and other First Amendment rights.The lawsuit by the American Association of University Professors and the Harvard faculty chapter of the group follows the Trump administration’s announcement earlier this month that it was reviewing about $9 billion in federal funding that Harvard receives. The administration also sent the school a list of demands that it must meet if it wants to keep the funds.The suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, seeks a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administration from cutting the funds.“This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus,” the lawsuit said.The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.The Trump administration has been on a campaign against elite universities that it views as being too lax on antisemitism. In a recent letter to Harvard, the administration said the school had “fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence.” Other top schools like Columbia and Cornell have also been targeted.Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday. In recent weeks, Alan Garber, the university president, has said that Harvard had spent “considerable effort” during the past 15 months addressing antisemitism, adding that there was still more work to be done.In a statement, Andrew Manuel Crespo, a law professor at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, said the administration’s policies are a pretext to chill universities and their faculties from engaging in speech, teaching and research that don’t align with President Trump’s views.“Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants,” Mr. Crespo said.On Saturday afternoon, hundreds of protesters, including students, professors and even the mayor of Cambridge, braved the cold to protest against the Trump administration’s threat to cut Harvard’s funding. At a packed park in Cambridge, Mass., home to Harvard’s campus, they called on the university to lead the charge against the government’s crackdown on higher education.“Harvard possesses not just the resources to withstand the pressure,” said Mayor Denise Simmons of Cambridge, “but the moral obligation to do so.”Miles J. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass. More