Thousands ask Harvard not to ‘give in’ and settle with Trump administration
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The letter, signed by more than 14,000 Harvard alumni, students, faculty and members of the public, comes as the school is at the negotiating table with the Trump administration.
PHOTO: SOPHIE PARK/NYTIMES
Vimal Patel
A coalition of groups at Harvard urged it to reject striking a deal with the Trump administration that would relinquish “the university’s autonomy in unconstitutional or unlawful ways”.
The letter, signed by more than 14,000 Harvard alumni, students, faculty and members of the public, comes as the school is at the negotiating table with the Trump administration.
The university is trying to restore the billions of dollars in research funds that the administration has frozen and put an end to attacks on several other fronts.
“A settlement with the Trump administration will have a chilling effect on the Harvard community and on all of higher education,” stated the letter, sent by Crimson Courage, a new alumni group that was formed to defend academic freedom.
It was addressed to Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber and the board that governs the university.
The government has targeted top universities, claiming that they have failed to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism and allowed diversity programming to flourish.
It has cut off or frozen research money, forcing universities to negotiate to turn the funding tap back on.
Several universities recently struck agreements with the Trump administration that could inform the terms of the negotiations.
Columbia University signed a deal
Brown University agreed to pay US$50 million to state workforce development programmes, along with other demands, to restore frozen funding.
The University of Pennsylvania recently struck a deal that limits how transgender athletes can participate in sports.
The Aug 14 letter urged Harvard to reject that trend.
“Columbia and Brown’s settlements represent a dangerous capitulation that risks eroding the foundation of American higher education,” the letter stated.
“They must not become a precedent guiding Harvard or other higher educational institutions nationwide.”
It added: “Do not give in.”
Harvard is the only university that has directly sued the administration, a move that had been praised by some who saw the elite school as one of the few powerful institutions standing up to the Trump administration’s conservative agenda.
That decision prompted a wave of donations.
But as the school has indicated that it is willing to make a deal with the government, professors have worried that if an influential university like Harvard turns over a large sum of money, it would have a cascading effect on higher education as a whole.
“At one level I understand why you do this,” said Dr Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, a faculty rights group.
“You need to run your institution. It needs to be financially whole.
“But at another level, I feel like in preserving the institution you’re selling out the sector,” he added.
Dr Wolfson said the “most powerful, well-heeled institutions of higher education in this country are cutting deals with the Trump administration that undermine the future of higher education”.
In July 2025, the administration accused Duke University of “systematic racial discrimination” and froze US$108 million in research funding, before issuing findings or even conducting an investigation.
The administration said recently that it was seeking US$1 billion from the
Governor Gavin Newsom of California and other political leaders in the state have said they would push back against President Donald Trump’s targeting of UCLA.
Earlier in the week, the governor criticised Harvard for negotiating with the Trump administration, suggesting that Dr Garber should resign for trying to work with the President. NYTIMES
