CNN
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Harvard University rejected the Trump administration’s demands for policy changes at the school on Monday, putting nearly $9 billion in federal funding at risk.
The university received a letter from a federal task force last week outlining additional policy demands that “will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.”
“We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber said in a statement. “The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.”
The Trump administration has threatened numerous colleges across the U.S. with funding cuts if changes in school policy weren’t made, and Harvard’s move appears to mark the first time an elite university has rebuked the White House over those demands.
Among the mandates in the administration’s letter are the elimination of Harvard’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning masks at campus protests, merit-based hiring and admissions reforms and reducing the power held by faculty and administrators “more committed to activism than scholarship.”
The proposed changes are the latest effort of the federal task force to combat antisemitism on college campuses after a spate of high-profile incidents around the country in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “Harvard or any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding.”
Garber said the majority of demands “represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”
“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,” Garber said.
Harvard staff respond — and file suit
The Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors, along with the national organization, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday in conjunction with a request from the professors for an immediate temporary restraining order to block the government from cutting off Harvard’s federal funding, CNN previously reported.
The lawsuit says the cancellation of federal funding “is imminent,” citing how the Trump administration already slashed the funding of other higher education institutions such as Columbia University, which was the first college targeted, with $400 million in federal funding cuts.
“What the President of the United States is demanding of universities is nothing short of authoritarian,” Harvard Law School professor Nikolas Bowie said Monday on CNN’s News Central.
“He is violating the First Amendment rights of universities and faculty by demanding that if universities want to keep this money, they have to suppress our speech and change what we teach and how we study,” Bowie said.
The demands in the administration’s earlier letter also include “full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security, which enforces immigration policy, and federal regulators to ensure “full compliance,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by the The Harvard Crimson, a student-run newspaper.
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The letter was received days after the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and the US General Services Administration announced they are reviewing $8.7 billion in grants and more than $255 million worth of contracts between Harvard, its affiliates and the federal government, according to a news release.
CNN’s Emma Tucker and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional details.
