Harvard University Announces It Won’t Surrender to Trump
“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,” University President Alan Garber said in a statement.
On Friday, the university received a letter from the Department of Education detailing changes it deemed necessary to foster an “environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor,” worthy of maintaining a “financial relationship with the federal government.” The demands included discontinuing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, reforming its admissions process for international students, and dismantling programs with “egregious records of antisemitism,” among others. The letter came two weeks after three federal agencies announced a review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard.
“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge,” Garber said in his statement.
