The Cost of Harvard’s Intransigence
President Trump announced this week that the federal government will pursue a billion dollar lawsuit against Harvard University, accusing the institution of attempting to avoid a settlement through a job training proposal he described as “wholly inadequate” — alleging that the university’s actions rise to the level of criminal misconduct.
The conflict between Trump and Harvard intensified in 2025 as the administration launched investigations into alleged antisemitism and ideological bias on campus. In response to Harvard’s refusal to implement proposed reforms, including changes to hiring and admissions practices, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal research funding and, in May, barred the university from enrolling students on foreign visas.
In September 2025, a federal judge reversed the funding freeze, ruling it violated constitutional free speech protections and federal law, but also reiterated Trump’s claim that the White House had a “legitimate interest” in combating antisemitism and criticizing Harvard’s past tolerance of hateful speech and behavior.
Alan Garber, who assumed the Harvard presidency amid campus turmoil following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, has pushed back against the Trump administration’s methods and conditions of compliance. During an interview on NBC Nightly News, he stated that generally the administration wants to review who Harvard hires on its faculty — suggesting that it has implications for what kinds of views can be expressed on campus. In addition, he said the administration also wants to be able to tell Harvard who it needs to fire as well as intervene in its admissions process.
The Harvard president’s remarks are a combination of hyperbole, misinformation, and misdirection. President Trump’s initiatives with Harvard are aimed at balancing faculty appointments with regard to political ideology as opposed to today’s categorical bias against conservative and liberal scholarship. And yes, it does have to do with “what kind of views” can be expressed on Harvard’s campus — political discourse should be well-rounded.
Moreover, absolutely, people should be relieved of their employment if prejudice and racism are part of their speech and behavior on campus, especially if that speech and behavior is derived from substandard scholarship. Finally, the Trump administration does want to intervene in the admissions process by requiring greater transparency to ensure students are not being selected by race, gender, or other non-meritocratic qualifications. After all, the university receives enormous federal assistance through research grants and other funding and the public has a stake in ensuring people are treated fairly.
The Ivy League institution, through the office of its president, has already admitted culpability as to the Trump administration’s assertions of antisemitism on its campus. Despite President Garber’s remarks against the Trump administration, he has repeatedly discussed institutional failures on the part of Harvard in public statements and interviews. In a March 2025 letter to the Harvard community-at-large, Garber wrote that antisemitism “is present on our campus,” adding, “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president.”
In The Harvard Crimson, Garber said the university “went wrong” by allowing faculty activism in classrooms, stating that such conduct chilled free speech and debate on campus. He has also acknowledged complaints about ideological imbalance, saying his administration has heard that “conservatives are too few on campus and their views are not welcome,” conceding that, “insofar as that’s true, that’s a problem we really need to address.”
But for Harvard the arrogant intransigence in denying the anti-Semitism and ideological bias it tolerates … has already cost it plenty.
Consider the numbers: Jonathan Turley notes that, “In a country with a plurality of conservative voters in the last election, less than 9 percent of the Harvard student body is conservative. Less than 3 percent of the faculty identified as conservative.”
In response to a New York Times report which alleged Trump was reducing his previously negotiated $500 million demand from Harvard to a non-cash arrangement, Trump posted on Truth Social:
Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of “nonsense” to The Failing New York Times. Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly! They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful. It was merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed.
Dr. Alan Garber, the President of Harvard, has done a terrible job of rectifying a very bad situation for his institution and, more importantly, America, itself. He was hired AFTER the antisemitism charges were brought — I wonder why??? We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.
As The Failing New York Times clearly stated, “Some connected to the University, however, think Harvard has no option but to eventually cut a deal … Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.
Harvard’s attorneys have issued a terse response to the administration’s demands, writing that it is unfortunate that the Trump administration’s correspondence disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that invade university freedoms of speech and privacy.
At the same time, several other Ivy League schools, including Columbia University and Brown University, have reached agreements with the administration and accepted certain government demands. Columbia agreed to pay more than $220 million from its $15.9 billion endowment to the government, and Brown said it will pay $50 million from its roughly $8 billion endowment to support local workforce development.
Cornell has agreed to settle over alleged “use of DEI rubrics in faculty hiring, racial identity-based scholarships, and alleged anti-Semitic discrimination in campus programs and policies. The $60 million settlement, which barely impacts the university’s $11.8 billion endowment, includes a $30 million payment to the federal government over three years and $30 million for “research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers.”
Northwestern university agreed in November to pay the federal government $75 million from its $14.3 billion endowment over three years to restore $790 million in frozen federal research funding.
President Trump was telling the truth in his Truth Social post when he said even the New York Times conceded that “Harvard has no way out” of making a deal with the White House — their culpability is glaring. There is no question that the cost will be easily absorbed by their $56.9 billion endowment. But for Harvard the arrogant intransigence in denying the anti-Semitism and ideological bias it tolerates, in and out of the classroom, has already cost it plenty in terms of its credibility in the court of public opinion.
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