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The oldest and wealthiest university in America — long a training ground for cultural elites — is quickly becoming a face of the resistance to President Donald Trump.
Harvard University vowed this week to fight a wide-ranging set of demands from the Trump administration, pitting the biggest name brand in American higher education against the White House and setting up a remarkable clash of power that could wind up in court.
The fight is quickly escalating. Federal officials have frozen more than $2 billion in grants to the university after it refused to comply with policy changes requested by the Trump administration, including to crack down on student protests, change admissions and hiring practices and submit to government audits. Trump on Tuesday suggested on social media that Harvard could lose its tax-exempt status and instead “be Taxed as a Political Entity.”
Harvard, fueled by a massive endowment valued at more than $53 billion and a powerful alumni network, is now uniquely positioned to become the most prominent U.S. institution yet to actively fight Trump’s efforts to bend elements of American civil society to his will.
“Harvard — by virtue of its resources, its history and its commitment to free speech — is in a position to defend itself,” said Steven Hyman, who previously served as Harvard’s provost, the top academic officer at the school.
While the clash has been brewing for months as the Trump administration targeted other elite schools, this week represents a remarkable inflection point in Trump’s campaign to target institutions his administration sees as hostile — and in the 388-year-old history of America’s wealthiest university.
“Politicians have traditionally, bottom line, been proud of the fact that American higher education was the envy of the world,” said Thomas Parker, a Harvard alum who is a senior associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a Washington-based advocacy organization. “It is unprecedented for the view to be the opposite.”
The blitz against the country’s top universities is being led by some of the most powerful people in the West Wing, including Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser; Vince Haley, director of the Domestic Policy Council; and May Mailman, a senior policy strategist and graduate of Harvard Law School.
Harvard now must decide whether to negotiate with the Trump administration or fight back in court. The university is being represented by two lawyers with significant street credibility on the right: William A. Burck, who has represented many Trump allies in legal disputes, and Robert Hur, a Harvard alum who authored a report on former President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents that conservatives cited as evidence of his mental decline during the 2024 campaign.
The clash is putting a spotlight on Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, who was thrust into the school’s top job last year after his predecessor, Claudine Gay, resigned amid a plagiarism scandal and concerns about her handling of campus antisemitism.
A 69-year-old lifelong academic with degrees in both economics and medicine and a reserved demeanor, Garber is hardly a natural fit to become a resistance leader. But his response to Trump this week is being hailed by Democrats and many on Harvard’s campus as an example of how to fight the president’s aggression.
Garber wrote in a statement Monday that the Trump administration’s demands to the school violate “Harvard’s First Amendment rights and [exceed] the statutory limits of the government’s authority.”
“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,” he wrote.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Harvard “has not taken the administration’s demand seriously.”
“All the president is asking is, don’t break federal law, and then you can have your federal funding,” she said. Leavitt added that Trump “wants to see Harvard apologize” for “the egregious antisemitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish American students.”
Many on the left now hope Harvard’s resistance will spur a new wave of pushback from institutions the administration is seeking changes from. But the funding freeze could create significant issues for the university, even despite its wealth — and it’s unclear if others will follow suit.
“Historically, universities in general have been pretty good at fending off government intervention,” Parker said. “What I’ve been asking myself lately is, Harvard has made this historically important and grand gesture — but where’s everybody else? Where’s the coalition?”
