For months, Harvard University’s resistance to many of the Trump administration’s escalating demands has served as a kind of beacon to higher ed. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but — go Harvard!” enthused a community-college administrator on social media in April, shortly after Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, rejected a list of orders from government officials.
“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” wrote Garber in a public message. A week later, Harvard filed the first of its two suits against the government, to preserve billions of dollars’ worth of grants and its ability to enroll international students.
Yet even as the university pursues its legal options, the institution appears open to a resolution. Harvard and government officials restarted talks last week, The New York Times and The Harvard Crimson reported. No details have emerged about what a potential settlement might look like, or how close such a settlement might be. (In a sign that the two sides remain at loggerheads on key issues, the Department of Health and Human Services told Harvard on Monday that the university’s alleged tolerance of campus antisemitism “is in violent violation” of Title VI, the federal antidiscrimination law.) But any agreement would reverberate across the sector just as loudly as Harvard’s resistance has.
In the short term, a deal would preserve some semblance of continuity on campus, no small matter as the university plans its fall course schedule and contemplates the loss of thousands of students and billions in grants. In the long run, a deal would avoid the uncertainty and expense of yearslong court battles that could reshape the relationship between higher education and the federal government on matters of academic freedom, civil rights, and institutional autonomy.
In the absence of more information, some faculty members within Harvard are fearful that the government isn’t negotiating in good faith, and that any agreement would only open the door to an unlawful power grab — although not everyone is so pessimistic. Outside of Harvard, expert observers of higher education also range between faith in what Harvard could accomplish in a settlement, and worry that any such deal may set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the sector.
Neither the university nor the White House responded to a request for comment.
Faculty in the Dark
The university’s court battles have been widely celebrated on campus, and they’ve galvanized much of the faculty. Steven R. Levitsky, a professor of Latin American studies, says many of his peers not only gave money to the university but also volunteered a portion of their salaries to help support the institution after the lawsuit was announced.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Levitsky says.
If Harvard reverses course, it would compromise that sense of common cause. “There will be a certain feeling of betrayal if they make a deal,” according to Levitsky.
Already, several Harvard professors say they’re concerned because they have not been given any information about possible negotiations or whether their perspective is being considered.
Claudine Gay wasn’t trained for what she faced, and Garber wasn’t either.
Ryan D. Enos, a professor of government, can’t envision any positive outcomes from settling with the Trump administration. “It’s shortsighted to think that anything good can come from trying to negotiate your way out of extortion with an authoritarian regime,” he says.
In addition to not trusting the government to negotiate fairly, Levitsky is also ambivalent about Garber’s ability to strike a deal that will preserve both Harvard’s integrity and that of higher education more broadly. Garber is thoughtful, pragmatic, and a good listener, Levitsky says, and the university could have done much worse in choosing a president. But he also isn’t thought of as a visionary leader, Levitsky says: “He’s not the guy who is going to lead us into the great battle for democracy. He’s not Lincoln.”
Levitsky, like many others inside and outside of Harvard, sympathizes with the herculean task before Garber. Taking on the regulatory apparatus of the federal government is well beyond what is expected of any university president.
“Claudine Gay wasn’t trained for what she faced,” he says, “and Garber wasn’t either.”
Other faculty members are more hopeful about a potential deal. Jeffrey D. Macklis, a neurobiologist, thinks an agreement that maintains Harvard’s academic freedom and restores research grants could “be a wonderful and a beneficial outcome for the nation and the world.”
The termination of Harvard’s government funding has been “devastating” for his lab, which examines brain development and had received grants to study the causes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and frontotemporal dementia, among other conditions. “That has canceled research that, in my view, is not Harvard research,” he says. “It’s research for which I was hired by the citizens of the United States.”
He trusts Harvard’s leaders. And he is unwilling to frame the interactions between his university and the government as a “fight.” “Is it a fight when a married couple or partner pair disagree on family priorities?” he said. “Maybe it is a discussion. Maybe it’s even negotiation. Maybe it is educating each other so that both parties understand with empathy the views of the other.”
Torn Between Faith and Skepticism
Outside of Harvard, higher-education leaders are also torn between faith in Garber and skepticism that the government would agree to a deal that preserves the sector’s independence and ideals.
Barbara R. Snyder, president of the Association of American Universities, says she believes Garber is working for a deal that will be good both for Harvard and all of higher ed.
Garber is willing to give and take, Snyder says, and can acknowledge that Harvard needs to change in some ways. She cites the president’s willingness to release scathing internal reports about antisemitism and Islamophobia at the university.
Garber’s long tenure as provost at Harvard — he served for a dozen years under three university presidents — is also a sign that he is trusted on campus.
“You don’t last in a role like that for that long,” Snyder says, “unless people trust that when you make a commitment, you keep it.”
Meanwhile, a leader in the field of Middle East studies — which, at Harvard and Columbia University, has been in the Trump administration’s crosshairs — gave Harvard mixed reviews for its track record on academic freedom. “It’s important to recognize when university leaders step up and take a stand,” Laurie Brand said in an interview earlier this month. “In the case of Harvard, it’s probably an imperfect stand.”
Brand, an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California, is chair of the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom. The association has opposed Harvard’s actions to clamp down on pro-Palestinian demonstrators and dismiss the directors of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Brand called such decisions “obedience in advance” to authoritarianism.
Still, she said: “That the university has largely held firm is extremely important.” In the weeks before the news that Harvard was reopening talks with the government, she contrasted Harvard’s approach with Columbia’s. “When Columbia basically caved into these demands, it just sent chills through all of us in the Middle East studies community,” she said.
“Harvard has dug in and has been willing, so far, to take a lot of punishment,” she said in early June, with some wonder. Maybe now it’s starting to change its mind.
