This is the first part of a four part series.
Current events in time become history. But current events are fleeting, and this week’s issue of the moment may next week be forgotten. So many current events have come upon America even just in the new Trump presidency that every day seems to open new issues and chase yesterday’s news into obscurity. A very important current issue that will not be forgotten is the Trump Administration’s assault on Harvard University and through it on all of American higher education. The choice of Harvard upon which to declare war is no accident. While the outcome of the Trump-Harvard War is not yet known, one should not be surprised that Mr. Trump chose Harvard.
Just a few days ago, at the annual Harvard commencement, one can view in the media the students’ vociferous support for Harvard’s Jewish president, Alan Garber, and specifically support for his defense of Harvard’s standing up in favor of maintaining Harvard’s independence and its diverse and international student body. President Garber did not directly address Mr. Trump or his Administration, but he received sustained applause when he referred to the university’s global reach, referring to it “just as it should be.” The Latin Salutorian, Aidan Scully, laced his oration with references to Mr. Trump. “I say this: … Neither powers for princes can change truth and deny that diversity is our strength.” (I apologize if I have the translation inaccurate.) Another student, Thor Reimann, told his classmates, “We leave a campus much different than the one we entered, with Harvard at the center of a national battle of higher education in America. Our university is certainly imperfect, but I am proud to stand today alongside our graduating class, our faculty, our president with the shared conviction that this ongoing project of Veritas [“Truth,” Harvard’s ancient motto] is one that is worth defending.”
In a succession attacks against Harvard, a tax-exempt and entirely private institution legally denominated as “The President and Fellows of Harvard College” but including numerous schools and divisions, the Trump Administration announced the cancellation of $100 million in contracts with the university. The Administration also halted all visas for international students and told Harvard to reduce its enrollment of international students. Citing the exercise of free speech in protests on campus as proof of “anti-Semitic violence and harassment,” the Administration demands that the university make all sorts of leadership and organizational changes, revise its admissions requirements, and evaluate its faculty and students to assure that its “radical left wing” culture can be modified in a direction defined by the Trump Administration.
Harvard has sued in at least one case to block the contract cancellation and has so far persuaded a federal judge, as of this writing, to halt the ban on admitting international students. The issue, at its simplest, is between Harvard’s institutional independence, its faculty’s freedom to teach, and its students’ freedom to learn, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Trump Administration’s control of Harvard based on the assertion that Harvard harbors antisemitism throughout its campus life and therefore requires governmental interference. Dr. Abraham Verghese, of Stanford Medical School and a nationally renowned expert on infectious diseases who came to the United States many years ago as an immigrant from Ethiopia, was the keynote graduation speaker. He noted that more attention is now being focused on Harvard than perhaps ever before in its almost four-century history since its founding in 1636 as the New World’s first college shortly after the Pilgrims landed on “Plymouth Rock.” Verghese praised Harvard for “courageously defending the essential values of this university and indeed of this nation.” He said the entire world is watching Harvard and its students to see whether they will stand up for the university’s liberal values — liberal as defined by Merriam-Webster to mean “to be open to ideas and ways of behaving that are not conventional or traditional; broad-minded; tolerant” — or succumb to the Trump Administration’s power. Harvard, with by far the largest endowment of any university in the country (around $53 billion — much of it restricted by the donors), is both an attractive target and the paramount critical defender of all of American higher education.
What is Harvard’s position against the Administration? We will need to await further court filings by Harvard in the case of the President and Fellows of Harvard College versus the Department of Health and Human Services, technically the federal agency responsible for the Administration’s actions to date. (Case No. 1:25-cv-11048; D. Mass., filed April 11, 2025.) Surely, we will see Harvard make the case that it has a large and powerful alumni body consisting of thousands of individuals world-wide, many in positions of power and influence in every walk of life. Harvard surely will display its power through its alumni who are safeguarding democracy and justice, promoting diversity, pluralism, freedom of speech and conscience, economic progress, and scientific innovation. Harvard will show that there is barely any aspect of our national life that is not touched by, if not founded on, Harvard.
Harvard will make the case that the Administration is unlawfully asserting control over the basic functions of a private institution, one that has been built for almost four centuries by private philanthropy and private tuition. It will be shown that there was no due process in the government’s taking of private property and property rights without due process and without just compensation as mandated by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. The government is using its power to harm Harvard out of anger and spite. The withholding of contracts necessary to support medical research, among so many other functions, imperils scientific progress and harms the health of every American. It will be shown that people will die — and perhaps already have died — as a result of the Administration cutting off funds relied on by Harvard to continue its research into solving all manner of health problems.
The Administration, Harvard will surely argue, strikes at the heart of liberty and truth, ideas at the core of Harvard’s mission and proven lived-experience since 1636. It will be emphasized that Harvard alumni have throughout history improved humankind and the world. From the College to the Law School to the Medical School to the Business School and throughout the university, alumni have included eight American Presidents (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama), many foreign heads of state, Nobel Laureates in almost every field, U.S. Supreme Court Justices, giants contributing to education, the arts, business, and economic progress. The alumni are both Republicans and Democrats, Jews and Christians, Muslims, and adherents to many other religions. They are urban and rural and live in almost every country of the globe. What alumni and alumnae have in common is that, whatever one’s field, a Harvard diploma admits the alumnus or alumna to “the fellowship of educated men and women,” as College graduates are instructed upon receiving their diplomas. The missions of component schools include, among others, those such as “educating leaders who make a difference in the world” (Business School); “enhancing justice” (Law School); “expanding opportunities and outcomes for learners everywhere” (Education School); and “alleviating suffering and improving health and well-being for all” (Medical School).
These missions of Harvard’s component schools manifest in all of the diverse endeavors of learned women and men everywhere the overall mission of the university summed up in its one-word motto: “Veritas” — Truth. The university’s Statement of Values includes the “Conscientious pursuit of excellence … to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to prepare individuals for life, work, and leadership.” Harvard makes as strong as could be made of an argument for the university being left alone to continue to cultivate free of expression and academic inquiry just as they are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Harvard will demonstrate that, despite room for improvement in navigating a very difficult balance between free expression and security for all students, it condemns and has taken extraordinary action to root out antisemitism and does not need government help. Four of Harvard’s last six presidents have been Jewish—amazing for an institution that was founded in part on the education of Puritan clergy and political leaders! Even if Trump’s claim that antisemitism flourishes at Harvard were true, and even if that were grounds for governmental intervention in a private institution, the Administration has given the university no due process or opportunity to be heard in order to show that the Administration’s claim is false.
This is the first part of a four part series. Stay tuned next week for the next part of the history column.
