President Donald Trump and his administration continue to threaten the federal funding of a growing list of higher education institutions. So far, the Department of Education (DOE) has threatened to revoke over $12 billion in funding across seven universities.
Columbia University was the first to lose funding after it received a letter from the Trump administration early last month with guidelines the administration says the university must follow in order to reinstate $400 million in federal grants and contracts. Columbia ultimately agreed to Trump’s demands, and to ensure their compliance, Trump is looking to impose a consent decree that would allow his administration to have judicial oversight over the university.
Harvard University, with its chart-topping $53.2 billion endowment, is the most recent institution impacted by funding cuts. On April 11, Harvard received a letter from the Trump administration outlining guidelines that it must follow to reinstate $9 billion in federal funding. Taking a different stand than Columbia, Harvard to responded Trump with a letter stating they would not comply with the demands.
Trump’s letter claimed that Harvard has “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” The letter stated that Harvard has not done enough to protect its Jewish students from antisemitism on campus. However, in the letter that Harvard sent in response, they said that they have taken measures to combat antisemitism and that the April 11 letter fails to recognize these actions.
“Harvard has made, and will continue to make, lasting and robust structural, policy, and programmatic changes to ensure that the university is a welcoming and supportive learning environment for all students and continues to abide in all respects with federal law across its academic programs and operations, while fostering open inquiry in a pluralistic community free from intimidation and open to challenging orthodoxies, whatever their source,” the letter said.
Harvard’s letter further states that Trump’s demands, which include certain admissions and hiring changes as well as discontinuation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, attack university freedoms outlined in the First Amendment.
In response to Harvard’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demands, the Trump administration froze over $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to the university. Trump has also asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
While it wouldn’t be the first time a university’s tax-exempt status was revoked — Bob Jones University had its tax-exempt status revoked in 1983 for engaging in unlawful racial discrimination policies — the process would not be easy or fast, according to National Public Radio.
What Universities are Doing
Harvard’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demands has since sparked broader action by universities to combat the president’s actions.
Previously, only a few universities had spoken out against the federal government’s efforts, including the presidents of Wesleyan University, Mount Holyoke College, Delta College, Trinity Community College and Princeton University. Rutgers University passed a resolution on April 6 to create a pact with the Big Ten universities in support of academic freedom, which has since been joined by the faculty senates of four other universities.
Fordham also took measures to respond to the president’s actions. On March 28, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution to protect academic freedom. The university also joined an amicus brief in the lawsuit AAUP v. Rubio, calling for a preliminary injunction to “safeguard academic freedom” among other actions. Additionally, on April 9, President Tania Tetlow met with student reporters to discuss a variety of national topics, including academic freedom.
Despite the actions that some institutions have taken, many faculty members and professors have criticized universities for not taking the necessary steps to respond to the Trump administration’s actions. Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor, spoke out against Trump’s actions in an article for The Guardian in which she calls on universities to do more to condemn the federal government’s recent moves.
“The use of federal funding threats to control universities should be a five-alarm fire for the thousands of other universities, and yet the response from the majority of academic leadership has been silence,” Teachout wrote in the article.
But now, more universities are joining the fight. Chapters across the country of The American Association of University Professors rallied in protest of Trump’s actions against higher education on April 17. Tom Beaudoin, professor of religion at Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education and the president of Fordham’s AAUP chapter, helped organize the New York City rally. Beaudoin said that Harvard’s refusal to comply with Trump’s demands opened the door for other institutions to protest the president’s actions.
“I think much of higher education was fearful and institutionally frozen in its tracks. You know that’s one response to a situation of endangerment is you freeze sometimes,” Beaudoin said. “We needed some flagship institutions that have great cultural capital, that have the highest cultural capital, in the country, to open the door to say no. To open the door to, at least side-stepping, if not directly pushing back on the incursion. And now Harvard has opened that door.”
Aside from refusing to comply with Trump’s demands, Harvard has taken several other actions against the Trump administration. After receiving the letter from Trump on April 11, Harvard’s AAUP chapter sued the Trump administration for his “unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus.”
The university also sued the Trump administration on April 21 to stop the freezing of research grants. The suit said that there is no connection between antisemitism and the allocation of the research funding that has been frozen. It further states that the funding freeze violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the First Amendment.
The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) wrote a public statement on April 22, calling for “constructive engagement” to improve higher education institutions. The statement also condemns recent government intrusion in education institutions. The document has been signed by the presidents of over 200 uinversities, including Tetlow.
As Trump continues to take actions against higher education, Beaudoin said institutions should work to form coalitions in order to preserve higher education.
“This is definitely the most dangerous time that I have been through. The most dangerous time for higher education,” Beaudoin said. “I feel committed to resist, committed to stay creative, committed to find allies, committed to my own and other replenishment in this time. I feel all of that as well. I don’t feel hopeless. I don’t feel disparing. I feel that we can endure and work to form coalitions across our differences.”
