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Harvard University said it had rejected White House demands to “control” its community, making it the first major US higher education institution to publicly resist pressure from Donald Trump’s administration.
The government threatened to withhold about $9bn in federal funding from the university unless it complied with demands to overhaul governance, student discipline, admissions and diversity policies.
Harvard’s president Alan Garber on Monday said he rejected demands made last week, which he denounced as seeking “direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard”.
Garber said the Trump administration on Friday night sent “an updated and expanded list of demands”, accompanied by a warning that the institution “must comply” in order to maintain its “financial relationship” with the government.
“We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” Garber said in a letter to the Harvard community published on Monday. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
“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”, he added.
The university’s lawyers argued the government’s demands contravene the First Amendment, “invade university freedoms” and “circumvent Harvard’s statutory rights by requiring unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms that the government has not proven through mandatory processes established by Congress and required by law.”
The Trump administration’s letter demanded Harvard reform its governance structure and admissions process — in part to prevent admitting international students deemed “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence” — and end its diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programmes.
The government also ordered the university to carry out “meaningful” disciplinary action for “violations” that occurred during protests on campus during the past two academic years, and expel students involved in the “assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student”.
A group of professors has sued the administration over its threat to withhold funding from Harvard — one of multiple attempts by faculty at elite US universities to push back against Trump’s attacks on their institutions.
The government has frozen federal grants for seven universities including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
On the campaign trail Trump promised to fine higher education institutions for their stance on “culture war” issues and their diversity initiatives.
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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