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Tensions are rising across American academia as the Trump administration froze over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts at Harvard University after its leaders refused to make key policy changes the White House also is demanding of other elite US colleges.
Harvard refused to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, ban masks at campus protests, enact merit-based hiring and admissions reforms, and reduce the power of faculty and administrators the Republican administration has called “more committed to activism than scholarship.”
“The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber wrote Monday of the Ivy League school near Boston.
Harvard appears to be the first elite US university to rebuke the White House’s demands, which Trump officials say aim to combat antisemitism following contentious campus protests in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The White House is also rooting out DEI practices – designed to advance racial, gender, class and other representation in public spaces – it decries as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”
Universities have a responsibility to uphold civil rights laws and stop harassment of Jewish students, the Trump administration wrote Monday regarding the Harvard funding freeze without citing any examples.
“It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support,” the Health and Human Services Department’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said. President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to tax Harvard as a political entity.
Trump officials also have moved to revoke the visas of more than 525 students, faculty and researchers at over 80 US universities and colleges. Some are high-profile cases involving alleged support of terror organizations, while others involve relatively minor offenses, such as years-old misdemeanors.
For its part, the Harvard funding freeze is a “frontal,” “punitive” and “unlawful” attack by the Trump administration, ex-Treasury Secretary and former Harvard President Larry Summers told CNN.
“One should not comply with a government that is being extra-lawful,” he said Tuesday, adding the final call on funding may come down to the courts. “Universities are in need of a great deal of reform, and it’s come too slowly, but that’s not a reason why the government can entirely suspend the law and make up self-serving political demands and impose them on universities.”
The impacts from Monday’s freezing are already being felt at the university. Dr. Donald E. Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, among other roles, has received two stop-work orders on two contacts for the Center for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, his assistant told CNN. One of the terminated contracts is worth over $15 million, The Harvard Crimson reported.
Sarah Fortune, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health, received a stop-work order for her tuberculosis research, which is believed to be part of the funding freeze at the school, according to a source at the school with knowledge of the information. The research is part of a $60 million National Institutes of Health contract involving Harvard and other universities across the US, the source said. CNN has reached out to the university for comment.
Here is how universities across the country are responding to the White House’s demands for institutional policy changes.
Columbia University was one of the first colleges targeted by the Trump administration, which on March 7 announced $400 million in federal grants and contracts was being pulled from the university over what White House officials described as the school’s failure to stop antisemitism amid last year’s campus protests.
In a second letter the following week, it outlined specific changes it wanted to see after discussions with university officials, including that the school enforce its disciplinary policies, implement rules for protests, ban masks used for the “purpose of concealing one’s identity,” announce a plan to hold student groups accountable, empower its law enforcement and review its Middle East studies programs and admissions policies.
After about two weeks of back-and-forth, the Ivy League school in New York set out an action plan for changes that appear intended to address the administration’s concerns. Its board of trustees endorsed the changes as in line with the school’s values and mission.
“Members of our community and external stakeholders have raised concerns about a multitude of issues, such as antisemitism, discrimination, harassment, and bias,” the trustees wrote. “We take these concerns seriously, and we are committed to creating a better environment on campus. We are confident that building on the progress and ideas outlined today will help us achieve these goals.”
Three federal agencies called the policy changes a “positive first step.”
After the government’s announcement about Harvard’s funding, acting Columbia University President Claire Shipman said her university has continued “good faith discussions” with the Trump administration to restore their working relationship.
No agreements have been made, she wrote, and Columbia would reject any “heavy-handed orchestration” in which “the government dictates what we teach, research, or who we hire,” or “would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution.”
“Like many of you, I read with great interest the message from Harvard refusing the federal government’s demands for changes to policies and practices that would strike at the very heart of that university’s venerable mission,” Shipman wrote. “In this moment, a continued public conversation about the value and principles of higher education is enormously useful.”
Stanford University in California is among those the Department of Education has said it is investigating “for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.” While school officials did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions about the status of that probe, they have expressed support for Harvard’s decision.
The strength of the nation’s universities “has been built on government investment but not government control,” Stanford University President Jonathan Levin and Provost Jenny Martinez told the student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, in a statement.
“The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study.”
In a show of solidarity, Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber said “Princeton stands with Harvard” in a LinkedIn post Tuesday, and encouraged everyone to read the Harvard president’s letter in full.
The Trump administration suspended $210 million of Princeton University’s research grants as the school is investigated for antisemitism on campus, the Ivy League school’s president announced in early April.
The grants came from NASA, the Defense Department and the Energy Department, Princeton said. The Commerce Department last week announced Princeton would lose nearly another $4 million in federal funding for climate research programs.
“The full rationale for this action is not yet clear,” university President Christopher Eisgruber wrote to the New Jersey university’s community after the first grant suspensions.
Eisgruber has been outspoken about his concerns with the paused funding as it remains unclear whether the sides are in discussions.
Before Princeton’s funding was suspended, Eisgruber called the Trump administration’s actions “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s,” in an op-ed in The Atlantic about the situation at Columbia.
“I believe it is essential for us to protect academic freedom,” Eisgruber told The New York Times after Princeton’s funding was cut off. He was unwilling to make any concessions to the government, he added, noting Trump officials hadn’t asked for anything specific.
Cornell University and Northwestern University
The Trump administration last week froze more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University, an Ivy League school in New York state, and $790 million in federal funding at Northwestern University near Chicago, a White House official told CNN.
“The money was frozen in connection with several ongoing, credible, and concerning Title VI investigations,” a Trump administration official said, referring to a federal statute that prohibits discrimination in programs and activities that get federal funding.
Neither university was made aware by the government that the funding was frozen until it was reported by the news media, both said in statements last week, though Cornell got more than 75 stop-work orders from the Department of Defense, it said.
“We are actively seeking information from federal officials to learn more about the basis for these decisions,” Cornell said in a statement.
Northwestern has “fully cooperated” with investigations from Congress and the Department of Education, it said.
“Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease,” the school said in a statement. “This type of research is now at jeopardy.”
Cornell University on Monday announced it is joining a lawsuit challenging the Energy Department’s proposed cuts to indirect costs like facilities and utilities, which appears separate from the frozen funding.
CNN’s Jeff Winter, Samantha Waldenberg, TuAnh Dam, Yash Roy, Emma Tucker, Gloria Pazmino, Karina Tsui and Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when $210 million of Princeton University’s research grants were suspended. The university’s president announced the suspensions April 1.
