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Students on Thursday protested the president’s attacks on Harvard, but at town hall meetings, defiance mixed with uncertainty as faculty members examined the toll of the White House’s actions.For four days, Harvard University’s name had been in the headlines, heroic to some, villainous to others — after the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning stood up and said no to the demands of President Trump, and then suffered his wrath.But when leaders of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health convened a town hall meeting on Thursday morning, resistance or acquiescence was not the question of the moment, nor was defiance the prevailing mood. The school’s leaders laid out their dire financial circumstances to a stunned and overwhelmed audience of about 1,000 students and faculty and staff members, near the end of a week of unprecedented federal aggression.They had no good news to share.“It’s like you’re hunkering down for the beginning of a war, where you think you’re going to be losing a lot of your freedoms and a lot of your resources,” said Steve Gortmaker, director of the school’s Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, who attended the meeting.With Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, standing toe-to-toe with the president of the United States, faculty members and students on the Cambridge campus on Thursday said they were struggling to make sense of the rapid escalation this week of Mr. Trump’s campaign to bend the university to his will. After Mr. Garber rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, the White House moved swiftly to inflict punishment, freezing $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard on Monday, suggesting on Wednesday it would revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, and then threatening to block the university from enrolling international students.In Harvard Yard, students still hurried to class; tourists still lined up under flowering trees to take photos of a statue of John Harvard. But behind the scenes, professors and researchers acknowledged a rising tide of angst, anger and uncertainty, their pride in the university’s stand against federal intervention mingling with their dread of the painful consequences.Since Harvard University leadership stood up to the Trump administration, many were rushing to sort out what the loss of funding would really mean below the surface.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesWe 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
The Trump administration said it would take $2.2 billion in research funds from the school. Some small donors are doing their best to make up for the shortfall.For two decades after graduating from Harvard, Samuel Graham-Felsen never donated to his alma mater.The 388-year-old university represented elitism, he said. Giving even more money to the world’s wealthiest school didn’t align with his values.“Why should I be giving to this place that has billions of dollars?” he asked himself when he received fund-raising notices.His sentiment changed this week, after the university rejected a series of demands from the Trump administration. The government asked Harvard to do a host of things — like auditing professors’ work for plagiarism and reporting international students who break rules to federal authorities — that outraged the school’s leaders, others in higher education and people far beyond its iron gates.Within hours, the federal government responded with a $2.2 billion funding freeze, and later in the week said it would try to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.The Trump administration has said it is targeting Harvard because it has not done enough to combat antisemitism. That did not sit well with Mr. Graham-Felsen, a novelist and freelance writer in New Jersey, who is Jewish.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
It was bound to happen.Encouraged by the ease with which many big US institutions caved in to their demands, the Trump regime – that is, the small cadre of bottom-feeding fanatics around Donald Trump (JD Vance, Elon Musk, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and RFK Jr) along with the child king himself – have overreached.They’ve dared China, Harvard and the supreme court to blink.But guess what? They’ve met their matches. None of them has blinked – and they won’t.China not only refused to back down when the Trump regime threatened it with huge tariffs, but also retaliated with huge tariffs of its own, plus a freeze on the export of rare-earth elements that the US’s high-tech and defense industries depend on.Harvard also pointedly defied the regime, issuing a clear rebuke to its attempt to interfere with academic freedom.The supreme court – in a rare unanimous decision – ordered Trump to facilitate the return of a legal US resident wrongly deported to a dangerous prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges.But the White House was defiant. On Monday, both Trump officials and El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said they could not return Kilmar Ábrego García.“Of course, I’m not going to do it,” Bukele said when asked. Trump sat by his side with a smile on his face. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, joined in the cruel imitation of justice: “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him.”What’s next?I suspect the testosterone-poisoned lackeys around King Trump are urging him to hit back even harder, escalating their confrontations with China, Harvard and the supreme court. They view these showdowns as ultimate tests of the regime’s strength.Think of it – they must be telling themselves and their boss – what prizes! If they defeat China, they have brought the world’s other economic powerhouse to its knees!If they defeat Harvard University, they have been victorious over the world’s intellectual powerhouse!skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf they defeat the supreme court, they have conquered the entire US government!Win these battles and no one will ever again doubt the power and resolve of the Trump regime!Hopefully, Trump is smarter than this. He knows these three institutions will not back down. They are rich and powerful enough to defy Trump’s escalating threats and demands. They cannot and will not cower.If Trump escalates his wars against them, they’ll become even stronger in the eyes of their supporters and constituents, and much of the world.The American people will see that Trump is actually a blowhard with no real power at all.So if he’s smart, Trump will try to de-escalate these three conflicts.He’s already hinted at an off-ramp with China. He will probably find some way to claim that Harvard has capitulated to his demands. He will avoid a showdown with the supreme court.But keep a watch on these three. They are Trump’s most formidable foes. If he doesn’t understand this and instead succumbs to the urges of his power-crazed lackeys, the Trump regime’s days will in effect be over before it even completes the first hundred of them.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More
The move would be a major escalation of the Trump administration’s attempts to choke off federal money and support for the leading research university.The Internal Revenue Service is weighing whether to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, according to three people familiar with the matter, which would be a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s attempts to choke off federal money and support for the leading research university.President Trump on Tuesday publicly called for Harvard to pay taxes, continuing a standoff in which the administration has demanded the university revamp its hiring and admissions practices and its curriculum.Some I.R.S. officials have told colleagues that the Treasury Department on Wednesday asked the agency to consider revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, according to two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.An I.R.S. spokeswoman declined to comment. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment. CNN first reported that the I.R.S. was looking at potentially rescinding Harvard’s tax-exempt status.Federal law bars the president from either directly or indirectly requesting the I.R.S. to investigate or audit specific targets. The I.R.S. does at times revoke tax exemptions from organizations for conducting too many political or commercial activities, but those groups can appeal the agency’s decision in court. Any attempt to take away Harvard’s tax exemption would be likely to face a legal challenge, which tax experts expect would be successful.Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said the I.R.S.’s scrutiny of Harvard began before the president’s social media post.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
Researchers who have lost funds warned of long-term repercussions, but several said their school should still refuse to comply with the federal government.Dr. Sarah Fortune, an immunologist who spends a lot of time in her laboratory at Harvard, never expected to be caught in a battle with the White House.But early Tuesday morning, she received an official notice to “stop work” on her lab’s federally funded research on tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills more than a million people a year worldwide.Just hours earlier, the Trump administration had vowed to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding at Harvard. If fully executed, it will be the deepest cut yet in a White House campaign against elite universities that began shortly after President Trump took office in January. Other universities, including Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, have also seen deep cuts to research funding.Dr. Fortune’s contract, a $60 million National Institutes of Health agreement involving Harvard and other universities across the country, appeared to be one of the first projects affected. Stop-work notices also began arriving this week at an obscure Harvard office called “sponsored programs” that coordinates federal research funding.One Harvard professor, David R. Walt, received a notice that his research toward a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S., must stop immediately. Two other orders will affect research on space travel and radiation sickness, just weeks after the scientist, Dr. Donald E. Ingber, who engineers fake organs that are useful in studies of human illnesses, was approached by the government to expand his work.David R. Walt at his lab at Harvard Medical School, where he does research searching for a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or A.L.S.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesWe 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
The showdown between the Trump administration and institutions of higher learning intensified on Tuesday, when President Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to accept his administration’s demands on hiring, admissions and curriculum.His threat, and the stakes involved, highlighted not only the billions of dollars in government funding that colleges receive every year but how that practice started and what all that money goes toward.When did colleges and universities begin receiving substantial federal funds?Around the time of World War II, the U.S. government started funding universities for the purpose of aiding the war effort, funneling money toward medical research, innovation and financial aid for students.The relationship between the federal government and higher education soon became symbiotic. As the government counted on universities to produce educated and employable students, as well as breakthrough scientific research, universities came to rely on continued funding.In 1970, the government dispersed about $3.4 billion to higher education. Today, individual colleges depend on what could be billions of dollars, which mainly go toward financial aid and research. Harvard alone receives $9 billion.What does the government money fund, and what kinds of programs will lose out if it is cut?The funding freezes have caused work stoppages, cut contracts, imperiled medical research and left students in limbo. Reductions can also affect hospitals that are affiliated with universities, like the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital, both of which are affiliated with Harvard.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
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
