On April 14 Harvard University released a letter from its President Alan Garber and Harvard’s Board of Overseers, refusing to comply with demands from the Trump administration. Harvard’s stance has dominated international headlines and became a focus for resistance from universities all over the country. They had seen Columbia University, threatened with the loss of $400 million in federal funds, agree to Trump’s imposed changes—and then receive only more demands.

TRUMP TRIES TO BLACKMAIL HARVARD

“The letter the Trump administration sent to Harvard on Friday demanded that the university reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is ‘viewpoint diverse,’ among other steps… Harvard, for its part, has been under intense pressure from its own students and faculty to be more forceful in resisting the Trump administration’s encroachment on the university and on higher education more broadly.”

An email to Harvard students, staff and alumni included the Trump administration’s five-page narrative of demands for all to read.

Garber’s response correctly noted:

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

2024 Harvard University Alumni Day Palestine Protest. Photo: Kevin Payravi, Wikimedia Commons.

However, neither President Garber’s letter nor 1,000-plus comments in the first hour after The New York Times report broke, said a single word about how pro-Palestinian students and faculty were threatened and doxed for their protests soon after Oct. 7, 2023. The continuing silence on Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza with the help of U.S. weaponry, reveals an anti-Palestinian bias at Harvard, as among most Americans, including major donors to the University. For example, why did Harvard halt its partnership with Bir Zeit University last month? (See this powerful story by Karameh Hawash Kuemmerle: “Harvard is turning its back on scholasticide in Palestine.”)

The ongoing protests represent a minority viewpoint on Israel’s war on Palestinians, despite the strong presence of Jewish students and faculty in those protests who reject the equation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. However, the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported that in March, 80 Jewish Harvard affiliates and faculty members had signed a statement drafted by Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff urging universities to denounce the arrest of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil and condemn Trump’s administration for using “Jews as a shield” in justifying attacks on campus free speech. The statement drew 3,000 signatures across the country.

Trump continues to double down on his punishment, cutting research grants, money to Harvard-supported teaching hospitals in the Boston area, and threatening to remove the tax-exempt status for the University. Meanwhile, overwhelming applause pours in to Harvard from people all over the world, lapsed alumni are reviving their donations, large and small, and other universities have been sparked with hope that they too can join the fight.

–Alumna