Harvard says no to Trump

KARACHI: Harvard University President Alan M Garber announced in a message to affiliates on Monday afternoon that the university has refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to scale back its diversity initiatives and restrict student protests in exchange for continued federal funding.

The university had received a letter last week from a federal task force outlining new policy requirements linked to the funding. Garber in his message emphasised that 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”.

Reminding that “for three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields”, Garber said that in recent weeks the US federal government had threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, “over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses”.

The statement went on to say how these partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history and “for the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation”.

On Friday, the Trump administration issued a more detailed and targeted list of demands than those presented two weeks earlier, calling on Harvard to derecognise pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programmes for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in a 2023 altercation during a pro-Palestine protest at the Harvard Business School campus.

Speaking of this, Garber’s message said that: “Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to ‘maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government’. It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. 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.”

Garber wrote that Harvard’s motto “Veritas, or truth guides us as we navigate the challenging path ahead. Seeking truth is a journey without end.”

Some of the “unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community”, said the Harvard president, include “requirements to ‘audit’ the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to ‘reduc[e] the power’ of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Saying that the Trump administration’s prescription “violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI”, Garber has said that it also “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”

On anti-Semitism, the Harvard president wrote that Harvard had “made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism.

Over the past fifteen months, we have taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus. We plan to do much more.”