The gowns and mortar boards were out in customary force at Harvard last week for graduation day. Founded in 1636, 140 years before the United States itself, the university knows a thing or two about how to do pomp and ceremony.
But this year’s rituals played out under a cloud with Harvard, along with several other universities in the US, having come under sustained attack from theTrump administration.
Trump has claimed his escalating battle with America’s oldest, wealthiest and most prestigious university is about tackling campus antisemitism, foreign influence and “woke” or “leftist” ideology in academia. Others see a more sinister authoritarian agenda, where the goal is to enforce deference from America’s largest institutions. Bring down the oldest of them all, the theory goes, and the rest will surely follow.
The Trump administration is using the full force of the government to try to turn the screw on Harvard financially, freezing $3bn in federal funding and cancelling remaining contracts with the university worth $100m.
With a $53bn endowment fund, Harvard is better placed than other universities to weather the storm. But a key battleground could be the administration’s attempt to stop Harvard from enrolling international students, who make up more than a quarter of the university’s overall numbers and are a vital source of revenue. A legal challenge is ongoing but if Trump wins, the move could be both financially and academically devastating.
Can Harvard hold out? For our cover story this week, Washington bureau chiefDavid Smithreports on a tussle that could strike at the heart of American democracy.
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