In the battle between Harvard and the Trump administration, the goalposts keep moving

When the president of Harvard University gave his charge to this year’s graduating class, he spoke from experience. “My hope for you, members of the class of 2025, is that you stay comfortable being uncomfortable,” Alan Garber said last week. Uncomfortable situations have hung over Garber for much of the year, as the Trump administration has targeted Harvard for special scrutiny – while also sowing doubt the school could ever satisfy its mounting demands. Since its initial criticism of Harvard as a place where antisemitism was condoned or ignored during last spring’s pro-Palestinian protests, the government’s list of complaints about the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university has grown by the day. While some grievances – expressed in a mixture of open letters, court filings, social media posts, TV interviews and off-the-cuff remarks – have aligned with the school’s own concerns, the university says others have been trivial and unsupported. Across the board, the demands have been cheered by conservative figures and organizations who see elite US institutions of higher learning as home to radical ideas and anti-Jewish bias and thus easy and deserving targets. The drumbeat began March 31, when Trump officials sent Harvard a letter advising they would review all roughly $9 billion of the Ivy League institution’s contracts and grants: “The Federal Government reserves the right to terminate for convenience any contracts it has with your institution at any time during the period of performance,” wrote General Services Administration’s Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum. In announcements since, the White House has threatened to wipe out nearly every grant commitment and contract to the school. Almost every new volley has been accompanied by a fresh accusation – from campus crime to Communism to calculus – though few have been tied directly to how the money at risk is used. “This is, I think, part of the strategy they have been employing, which is a flood-the-zone strategy with a barrage of attacks and a sense of uncertainty about what’s coming next or how one could even respond,” Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, told CNN. Government’s list of demands on Harvard grows Moving the goalposts on Harvard began even before the federal spigot started to tighten. While the Trump administration opened its fusillade with claims Harvard allowed antisemitism to burgeon and broke civil rights law by promoting campus diversity, its initial list of demands in mid-April covered much more, including changes to the school’s governance, tightened oversight of its foreign students and increased “viewpoint diversity” in curriculum and hiring, with third-party auditing. The university, Garber responded, had been working for more than a year to address antisemitism concerns and would continue to “broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community.” But Harvard rebuffed the broad set of government conditions, prompting the Trump administration to announce a freeze of $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts, then the university to sue April 21. “All told, the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear,” the school said in the federal complaint: “Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.” Since then, the government has announced more funding and contracts would be taken away, with billions more under threat. “What is perplexing is the measures that they have taken to address these that don’t even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems. Why cut off research funding?” Garber told NPR last week. The government’s biggest body blow to Harvard came May 22, when the Department of Homeland Security announced it was revoking the university’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, making it impossible for international students to continue their studies there. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Harvard responded the next day with a second lawsuit against the Trump administration. Then, a day before the parties were due to square off on that matter in court for the first time, President Donald Trump proposed his own remedy, one that appeared to have no basis in law or regulations: an arbitrary limit on what percentage of Harvard’s student body should be international. “I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%,” Trump said Wednesday. International scholars account for 27% of Harvard’s student body, the school has said in court filings. Even many seasoned attorneys say they’re having difficulty trying to figure out the legal justification behind the White House’s moves. “It’s not exactly clear to me. It seems like the Trump administration’s position is, ‘We’re the executive branch we control these student visa programs … and if we want to revoke them, we can revoke them,’” said CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig, a former assistant US attorney. During the first hearing over Harvard’s foreign student access, a federal judge indefinitely blocked the government from enforcing its ban, saying the international program must remain “status quo.” Still, the Trump administration’s expansive moves to cut funding and deport international students at Harvard and beyond appear to be testing the limits of the “unitary executive theory,” a legal framework cited by both Republican and Democratic presidents. Under its most extreme interpretation, the theory suggests the president, as chief executive, has virtually unlimited power to control the actions of executive branch agencies. That includes the Department of State, which issues student visas; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which controls the deportation process; and the many agencies involved in doling out federal aid dollars. Garber believes the fight goes beyond the law. “They see this as a message that if you don’t comply with what we’re demanding, these will be the consequences,” Garber told NPR. “I don’t know fully what the motivations are, but I do know that there are people who are fighting a cultural battle,” he said. “I don’t know if that is what is driving the administration. They don’t like what’s happened to campuses, and sometimes they don’t like what we represent.” Administration sets out to ‘make our point’ While the Trump administration has repeatedly cited fighting antisemitism as the basis for most of its moves against Harvard and other colleges, when speaking outside court, federal officials have acknowledged their methods aim to inflict maximum pain. “We are going to go after them where it hurts them financially,” Leo Terrell, a civil rights lawyer who heads Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and even before Trump’s second inauguration was called “Harvard’s worst nightmare,” told Fox News last week. “There’s numerous ways – I hope you can read between the lines – there’s numerous ways to hurt them financially,” he said. That appears to be a key motivator of the government’s revocation of Harvard’s ability to host international students, “effective immediately.” While Harvard has not said how much tuition money the 6,793 international students enrolled there this year paid, the university charges undergraduates $86,926 in tuition and fees, including room and board. International students are frequently in graduate programs that charge higher tuition, and not all of them live in on-campus housing, so determining the exact cost of the loss of Harvard’s international students is difficult. Still, the publicly available figures suggest it could represent a loss to Harvard of hundreds of millions of dollars in the fall if the government is allowed to make good on its threat. When speaking about the funding freeze, the head of the Department of Education said federal dollars should be used to achieve Trump’s goals. University research should not only be within the confines of the law but also “in sync, I think, with the (Trump) administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish,” Secretary Linda McMahon told CNBC last week. “The president is looking at this as, ‘OK, how can we really make our point?’” McMahon said. “And what are the things that Harvard and other universities are doing that we have to call attention to?” Negotiation doesn’t always protect universities Although Garber has agreed in general terms to some White House demands – including renaming its diversity, equity and inclusion office – Harvard has won praise by being the only major US university to take on the White House in court. In contrast, Columbia University, whose graduate student Mahmoud Khalil became the first face of efforts to deport students linked to pro-Palestinian demonstrations, agreed to government demands including cracking down on campus protests and reviewing curriculum, all in an effort to get back $400 million in frozen federal funds. Not only did the administration not return that funding, it went on to formally find Columbia in violation of the Civil Rights Act, saying the university “continually failed to protect Jewish students.” “We saw two different approaches taken by the president of Columbia and the president of Harvard,” Pasquerella said. “The president of Columbia acceded to the demands, and yet they’re still under attack.” Given the Trump administration’s focus on eradicating DEI programs, universities across the board expected to see federal grants scrutinized for any connection to such efforts, said Toby Smith, senior vice president for government relations and public policy for the Association of American Universities. But cuts have gone far beyond that. “I think that’s something that people didn’t expect, that there would be no way to seek relief for things that, for the most part, are not focused on DEI,” he said. “That’s not the focus of the grant.” From crime to Communism to calculus If Harvard thought addressing antisemitism and DEI would alleviate the government’s concerns, Noem’s announcement about the eviction of international students suggested the White House had much more on its mind. The Department of Homeland Security missive bullet-pointed a dozen grievances, including claims based on a letter from Republican members of Congress that research collaborations with Chinese universities were “contributing to the military capabilities of a potential adversary.” An agency statement – with a title that began “Secretary Noem Doubles Down and Escalates Action Against Harvard” – went further, categorizing Harvard as “coordinating with Chinese Communist Party officials on training that undermined American national security.” Noem also singled out an increase in annual on-campus crime in 2023, citing police figures obtained by the student-run Harvard Crimson: The number of reported hate crimes doubled – from five to 10 – even as nearly half of all crime reported on campus was motor vehicle thefts, including scooters. And the Trump administration drilled down further on the university’s curriculum – not in politics but math. “Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics when it is supposedly so hard to get into this ‘acclaimed university’? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?” McMahon wrote in an open letter to Harvard without specifying who allegedly was refused. McMahon appeared to be referring to a class called Math MA5, which was introduced last year to address math deficiencies among students whose education was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, a Harvard official told the Crimson. The course covers the same material as the university’s existing introductory course, including “fundamental ideas of calculus,” plus more classroom time and review, its description says. In an Oval Office riff last week, the president said Harvard was teaching students that “two plus two equals four.” Although many conservatives have argued Math MA5 was developed due to “lowering academic standards” to achieve diversity goals, Trump appeared to suggest international students are to blame. “They’re bragging about teaching them basic mathematics, where did these people come from? So, we have to look at the list,” said Trump. President demands information the administration already has “The list” is a reference to the president’s social media demand that Harvard turn over the identities of its international students to the government. “We want to know who those foreign students are … We want those names and countries,” Trump said on Truth Social shortly after midnight on a Sunday morning in late May. Asking for names and countries was “an easy request they should be more than willing to provide,” a White House spokesperson told USA Today. Indeed, Harvard does it already – and has for decades. All international students in the US are listed in a government database called the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. Sponsoring schools must keep that database up-to-date with not only students’ names and countries but also “addresses, courses of study, enrollment, employment and compliance with the terms of the student (immigration) status,” according to the Department of Homeland Security’s website. Although the Trump administration accused Harvard of failing to fully comply with its more extensive records request on international student records – including any “dangerous or violent activity” and “deprivation of rights of other classmates or university personnel” – the government has never claimed in court the university failed to provide the basic identification information required in SEVIS. In an email to administration officials filed as part of its lawsuit, Harvard said it did not collect some of the information the administration wanted because it was not legally required and it had never received a similar request in more than 70 years. The school reported three international students who were disciplined this year, two for “inappropriate social behavior involving alcohol,” court records show. A final offer letter from Noem with steps Harvard could take – with a 72-hour deadline – to avoid losing SEVP status added even more demands, including footage of “any protest activity involving a nonimmigrant student on a Harvard University campus,” even if it was nonviolent and no crime was committed. Trump implied the demands for information were based less on evaluating Harvard’s compliance and more on giving the administration more fuel to deport students. “We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine … how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump posted on Memorial Day on Truth Social. ‘A warning to all universities’ Harvard is encouraging international students not to leave the school out of fear that they could lose their visas while the court case winds on. “You are integral to the fabric of our community, and we will keep fighting for your right to learn and thrive at Harvard,” the school’s International Office wrote Thursday to its students. As government demands on Harvard snowball, Noem wrote in late May: “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.” Whether Harvard can meet all the government’s demands – or is willing to do so – Garber knows his institution is being used as an example. “They said it, and I have to believe it. And I’ve repeated it myself,” he told NPR. “And that is how it’s understood by the other leaders of other universities that I’ve spoken to: It is a warning.”