Harvard University’s defiance of the Trump administration Monday brought instant repercussions for the institution — and a burst of jubilation from some on campus and in the broader education world who’ve clamored for an elite school to take a stand.
“If Harvard can’t do it, then who can?” said Michael Bronski, a professor in the university's Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality program. “It’s always right to make the most moral decision, and we’ll see what the outcome is.”
Harvard's lawyers sent a letter Monday rejecting a list of demandsthe Trump administration had sent the school as part of an ongoing review of several universities over allegations of antisemitism.
In a statement posted online, Harvard President Alan Garber referred to the demands as “an attempt to control the Harvard community” and vowed to fight back. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” he wrote.
The administration’s sweeping demands would have required the university to restrict the acceptance of international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions” and report to the Department of Homeland Security any foreign-born student who violates Harvard’s code of conduct, among other measures.
While the Trump administration reacted within hours by freezing over $2 billion in grants and contracts to Harvard, the university’s stance was widely applauded within the academic world after weeks of unprecedented government actions against higher education institutions.
“They clearly did not just the right thing, but the necessary thing, and my guess is that a lot of other institutions will follow suit,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, a higher education membership association.
Harvard — founded a century before the United States — is by far the wealthiest university in the country and the most influential in the world. It boasts more alumni who’ve become U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, living billionaires and Nobel Prize winners than any other school.
Maya Jasanoff, a history professor at Harvard, said the scope of the demands left the university with no choice but to reject them.
“It had the potential to interfere with every single aspect of everything that we do on campus: what I assign, what I say, what I write about, what I think about practically, who is in my classroom, who are my colleagues, everything,” Jasanoff said.
