By Sarah Caldwell
“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,” wrote Harvard University president, Alan Garber. This statement came as part of a press release published on April 14 by Harvard University confirming that they would be refusing to accept the Trump Administration’s demands, putting nearly $9 billion in federal funding at risk.
In an April 11 letter to Harvard’s President, the Trump administration demanded that the university shut down all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, report foreign students if they commit conduct violations, and be subject to an audit looking into whether the student body and staff is ‘viewpoint diverse’. If these demands were not met, the administration would immediately cut $2.2 billion in grants.
“Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/support ‘Sickness?’” The President tweeted in response to Alan Garber. “Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
Harvard plans to challenge the demands on the grounds of violating the university’s First Amendment rights. In particular, the Trump Administration’s demand that the university have an outside auditor review its faculty and its admissions decisions for what the administration calls ‘viewpoint diversity’; this specific request signals that the administration wants more conservative viewpoints represented.
This demand, Harvard lawyers plan to argue in court, will rob the university of its right to free speech and drive the administration’s widespread plans to implement censorship, curriculum control, and patriotic education demands.
Other universities such as Cornell and Northeastern are undergoing similar battles. Cornell is facing a funding freeze of $1 billion and Northeastern $750 million as both schools fight civil rights investigations fabricated by the Trump Administration. UPenn is facing a funding freeze of $175 million for allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. These are only three of over 50 colleges currently under attack by the Administration’s Department of Education crackdown against ‘DEI’.
This has spurred a tidal wave of action across the country as universities look for ways to unite against the federal government’s intervention. The Big Ten, America’s most infamous sports rivalry league of large midwestern state schools, created a ‘mutual academic defense compact’ late last week. The compact allies the universities in public defense: if the Trump Administration attacks one school the rest will come to their aid, with resources like lawyers, experts, advocacy, lobbying, public relations, etc.
Columbia University, however, found itself the first target of such funding freezes receiving a letter from the Department of Education on March 7. This letter, addressed to interim President Katrina Armstrong, outlined the administration’s demands for the university and threatened to withhold $400 million in federal funding, over half of which comes from pivotal NIH grants, which would be cut if the university failed to accept the demands by March 20.
Columbia has since acquiesced, promising to “ban some masks on campus, hire 36 ‘special officers who will have the ability to remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them,’ and place the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost,” according to the Columbia Spectator.
The university found itself at the forefront of the Trump Administration’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism because of its status as the epicenter of American college Pro-Palestine protests and encampments. These demonstrations only escalated after the detainment of Columbia University graduate student and green card holder, Mahmoud Khalil.
Khalil was a widely respected negotiator between pro-Palestinian students and Columbia’s Administration, particularly during last spring’s encampments on campus. He was unlawfully arrested on March 8, 2025. Khalil was the first in a terrifying trend of pro-Palestine international students to be unlawfully detained by ICE this academic term.
The US has since revoked at least 300 foreign students’ visas claiming that these students are ‘pro-Hamas’ and ‘causing chaos’. But the Trump Administration’s threats to American universities go beyond DEI initiatives and contentious protests, they threaten the very foundation of higher education and its culture of innovation.
The United States holds 4% of the world’s population and 25% of its GDP, but America has 72% of the world’s top 25 universities by one ranking and 68% by another. The prestige and competitive advantage of American Universities is one of the country’s greatest strengths, and arguably, its greatest resource.
The freezing of research grants and loans, in the range of billions of dollars, will completely disrupt (and in many cases end) ongoing research and programs. Essential research and programs handling climate change, new disease control, inequitable economic trends, and much more. The implications could be drastic according to some estimates.
But can schools like Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell, with endowments in the tens of billions, not pay for this themselves? According to higher education finance expert and professor, Robert Kelchen, endowments like these are often spread amongst tens or thousands of different accounts that have contract-binding funding targets such as very specific scholarships or initiatives. “[Endowments are] not something you can use to plug a general budget deficit,” Kelchen shared. “There are some funds that are unrestricted, but it’s a relatively small amount [of them].”
So what does this mean for American college culture? As students lose access to scholarships and Pell grants and student visas, professors find their curriculum censored and their research defunded. All while schools are forced to end equitable acceptance practices and DEI initiatives and ban students from exercising their right to free speech and protest on campus. It could be the end of American college life as we know it.
Nevertheless, students continue to protest for justice across the country, and administrators and professors alike are unifying in support of a common goal. At the end of his open letter to the Harvard community, President Garber writes, “We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist.
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