Trump Retaliates Against Harvard Over DEI Refusal, Freezes $2.2 Billion in University Grants

The Trump administration retaliated Monday to Harvard’s decision to not comply with its DEI demands as they relate to hiring and enrollment at the university.

Federal officials said in response to President Alan Garber’s decision to hold firm against its demands, the administration will freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants and $60 million in multiyear contract value for the Ivy League institution.

Garber announced that the school would not comply with President Donald Trump’s demands to discontinue diversity programming, limit student protests and provide full transparency to federal regulators in exchange for its $9 billion in federal funding, making it the first university to explicitly refuse the Trump administration’s threat to remove funds.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” a joint task force statement read.

Garber’s Monday email marked the most forceful condemnation yet from any Ivy League official against the Trump administration’s now months-long campaign against higher education. Of the 10 universities that have had their federal funding cut or challenged, Harvard is the only to blatantly reject these demands.

The university president sent an email to the “members of the Harvard community” Monday, positing that the school will not submit to Trump’s requests because they violate the university’s First Amendment rights.

“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 wrote in a statement to university affiliates. “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Just two weeks prior, three federal agencies announced a review into roughly $9 billion in Harvard’s federal funding. Last Friday, the Trump administration sent its formal demands from the university, threatening to end existing partnerships over “accusations of antisemitism on our campuses,” the email read.

Other demands from the administration called for the university to ban masks, screen international students that might be “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” and to commit to a full cooperation from the Department of Homeland Security.

“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 continued. “It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner.”

The demands also called for the Ivy League school to forbid the recognition of pro-Palestine student groups and expel students involved in an Oct. 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student. While the administration calls for Harvard to shutter all DEI programs, it called for the school to audit itself, on its own dime, for “viewpoint diversity.” The administration did not define what it meant by the term, but it has generally referred to seeking a range of political ideologies, including conservative perspectives, on more liberal-leaning campuses.

Protestors gathered in Cambridge on Saturday, just one day after Trump’s onslaught of demands, to urge the university to resist Trump’s influence on the storied higher education institution.

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