The Trump administration has escalated its standoff with Harvard University, threatening to cut an additional $1 billion in health research funding over the school's refusal to comply with sweeping federal demands that include surrendering oversight of its admissions, hiring, and internal reporting on antisemitism and Islamophobia.
A letter sent Saturday by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights to Harvard leadership, obtained by The Free Press, requests access to all reports generated by university task forces on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias since October 2023, including unpublished drafts. It also seeks the names of those involved in preparing the reports and their availability for interviews.
This follows a broader crackdown on elite universities that the Trump administration says have failed to address campus antisemitism, particularly in the wake of pro-Palestinian protests over Israel's war in Gaza. The White House has already frozen $2.3 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard and is threatening to revoke the university's tax-exempt status, block foreign student enrollment, and strip an additional $1 billion in public research funding, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, and Northwestern have also faced funding suspensions under similar pressures. Columbia responded by implementing new protest restrictions and disciplinary procedures and pledged to review its Middle East curriculum.
The April 11 letter to Harvard, reportedly signed by multiple federal agencies, outlined conditions that Harvard officials later described as excessive and unconstitutional. These included eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, banning masks at protests, enacting merit-based admissions policies, and requiring federal oversight of "ideology" on campus. Harvard rejected the terms, with President Alan M. Garber stating, "The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that administration officials had initially planned a softer approach toward Harvard, but changed course after the school publicly released the April 11 letter, which they believed was confidential. Officials then moved to expand pressure on the university.
"The administration was planning to treat Harvard more leniently than Columbia University, but now officials want to apply even more pressure," the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The New York Times said Friday that officials claimed the letter had been sent "in error," though the White House confirmed its authenticity.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, a Harvard alumna, condemned the Trump administration's tactics on CBS's Face the Nation. "It's part of this continued playbook that Donald Trump has been using, which is to silence critics," she said.
The Anti-Defamation League's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, also raised concerns about federal overreach. "The issue of combating antisemitism on campus should be addressed on its own process and merits," he wrote Friday. "Other debates on higher education may be important, but they can and should be resolved separate from fighting antisemitism on campus."
The administration's demands are the most aggressive intervention in American higher education by the federal government in decades. In addition to funding threats, the Trump White House has revoked visas of foreign students involved in protests and is pressing universities to discipline or expel demonstrators it views as sympathetic to Hamas.
In rejecting the April 11 demands, Harvard warned that many of the proposals "represent direct governmental regulation of the 'intellectual conditions' at Harvard" and exceed the authority of the federal government.
