Harvard defends its response to antisemitism in rejecting White House demands
The school’s Jewish president says the White House seeks to control “intellectual conditions” on campus, not fight antisemitism
Harvard University was hit by a £1.7 billion federal funding freeze on Monday, hours after the school’s president announced they would not bend to a list of demands by the Trump administration that included expanding efforts to combat antisemitism on its campus.
In a letter to the Harvard community, Harvard’s President Alan Garber lambasted the Trump administration’s demands, writing that the school has actively fought antisemitism on campus and the administration’s conditions infringed on the school’s First Amendment rights.
“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” wrote Garber, who is Jewish. “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 demands included in the Trump administration’s Friday letter ranged from slashing DEI efforts to stopping the recognition of pro-Palestinian clubs on campus. One demand aimed at targeting antisemitism required the school to audit programs and departments that “most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture,” including the school’s Middle Eastern studies centre and international human rights clinic.
Last month, the school paused a research partnership between one of the departments listed, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB), and Birzeit University, a Palestinian university in the West Bank, following criticism of the relationship from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance.
The alumni group, formed following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October, 2023, criticised Garber’s letter in a post on X Monday, writing, “Harvard declares it will resist changes to its governance, but where’s the statement outlining what it WILL do instead to fight antisemitism?”
In Garber’s letter, he cited the school’s past and current efforts to curtail antisemitism on its campus. In January, the school settled two lawsuits with Jewish groups that claimed the school had fostered an antisemitic environment. As part of the settlements, the school pledged to police anti-Zionist speech and partner with an Israeli university.
The funding freeze comes two weeks after the Trump administration announced it would review almost £6.78 billion in Harvard’s federal funding. A group of Harvard professors sought to file a temporary restraining order in a federal court in Massachusetts Friday to block the administration from stripping the school’s funding.
Harvard appears to be the first elite U.S. university to push back against the White House’s demands. Six other schools have faced similar funding threats as a result of the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus antisemitism. Columbia University saw £301.12 million in federal funding cut amid similar accusations, but later acquiesced to the Trump administration’s demands in an effort to win them back.
Stanford’s president and provost both expressed support for Harvard’s decision to push back against the Trump administration’s demands.
“Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending,” Levin and Martinez wrote in a statement shared with The Stanford Daily.
Earlier this month, Princeton also saw several dozen of its federal research grants frozen. In response, the school’s president said it would “cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism.”
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