It has been a rough week for the Crimson. After Harvard President Alan Garber refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demand for a change in leadership, the White House said it would cut around $9 billion from the school’s funding. But that’s not all – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) froze funding to Harvard and four other universities. The institution’s financial cloud did come with a silver lining – a spike in private donations to spite Trump – but then more bad news. The commander-in-chief then threatened over the weekend to cut yet another billion in funding.
Trump Pulls More Harvard Funding
On Monday, April 14, Garber sent an email to the Harvard community addressing the list of demands made in the first week of April by the Trump administration. The government threatened to cut another $9 billion or so in funding unless the school complied with required changes in its leadership structure, admissions, and hiring. As Liberty Nation News previously reported, the president demanded in March that Columbia University “place the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership – ceding power over the department to an outside party – for at least five years.” Columbia gave in; Harvard, which received a similar ultimatum, did not.
“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,” the missive read.
Hours after a formal rejection was sent by Harvard attorneys to the government, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism released a statement of its own, reading in part:
“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”
It came with an announcement that $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and another $60 million in multi-year contract value would be frozen.
On April 16, just a day after the Harvard response, the NIH also announced it would stop paying grants and contracts to Harvard and four other universities – Brown, Northwestern, Cornell, and Weill-Cornell Medical School. It froze grants to Columbia a week earlier.
Private Schools, Public Purse?
Private donors have stepped up to make up some of that loss, however. The Harvard Crimson reported Friday that, between Garber’s Tuesday email and 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, the university received nearly 4,000 online gifts totaling $1.14 million. The Harvard College Fund reportedly received 47% of that money, while another 14% went to Garber’s unrestricted fund.
Harvard saw massive donor losses last year amid the backlash to the school’s response to the war between Israel and Hamas. “While no high-profile donors have indicated that they plan to resume their donations, the surge indicates that small-dollar donors are flocking back to Harvard,” The Crimson’s report continued. Around 80% of the donations were less than $250, but since Wednesday, the school has averaged 88 online donations per hour, according to MassLive.
But with or without the mega-donors, Harvard has a bit of a hypocrisy problem. Recall in the university president’s declaration of defiance that Harvard is a “private” institution. That’s the argument he makes for why the government can’t tell them what to do, right? The only problem is it this “private school” has been dipping into the public purse. And those who stick their hands in government pockets to grab those sweet tax dollars often find themselves shackled to further regulation. That’s the trade-off: Public funding brings rules for its use.
To truly understand this situation, it’s crucial to get one point: President Trump isn’t ordering the administrations of Harvard, Columbia, or any other university to do anything. He’s simply explaining that failing to follow federal rules means losing those federal funds. Students and faculty at these universities are free to curse Israel, embrace DEI, and be as biased in their teaching as they like – they’ll just have to do it on their own dime.
