Good morning, and welcome to Thursday, April 17. Rick Seltzer wrote today’s Briefing. Julia Piper compiled Transitions. Get in touch: dailybriefing@chronicle.com.

Jockeying for position

Days after the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion because Harvard University rejected its demands, a fuller picture of the clash between Cambridge and Washington is coming into focus.

The Trump administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. That’s following through on a threat from the president, but authority to evaluate charitable organizations’ tax-exempt status is supposed to rest solely with the IRS. No evidence has been presented that Harvard violated restrictions on political activity.

Harvard was already bracing its budget for confrontation with the feds. Though it has massive borrowing capacity, the university’s expenses are also enormous. Spending from its $53-billion endowment can be complicated by donor restrictions and investments that are hard to turn into cash.

• Administrators told researchers to ratchet back spending if their grants were frozen by the Trump administration. That includes stopping hiring, spending only on essential needs, and pausing equipment purchases, STAT reported. One scientist told The Boston Globe that macaques used in a tuberculosis vaccine study might have to be killed because researchers can’t use federal funding to care for them.
• Harvard Medical School leaders said cuts including layoffs are on the way, The Harvard Crimson student newspaper reported.
• But the real pain won’t come this year. The federal funding that’s now frozen had been expected to arrive over several years, not all at once. “The hard cuts would likely not be this fiscal year, but the following year,” Sally Bednar, a college consultant and the former head of the higher education team at Wells Fargo, told the Globe.

President Trump lobbed partisan insults at the university in a social-media post Wednesday morning.

• “Everyone knows that Harvard has ‘lost its way.’ … Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders.’”

But Harvard has high-profile defenders. Among them is Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Kerr’s father was assassinated in 1984 when he was president of the American University of Beirut.

• “It’s crucial for all of our institutions to handle our own business the way they want to and they should not be shaken down and told what to teach, what to say by our government,” said Kerr, who wore a Harvard shirt after Tuesday night’s game, according to SFGATE. “Way to go, way to stand up to the bully.”
• “There has never been a set of government demands on a private university of this magnitude with an aggressive presidential administration that wants to make points, that is not committed to a good faith negotiation, just to assert its own control,” Steven Pinker, a psychology professor and co-president of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, told WBUR.
• “The Trump team is shooting first and investigating later,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote. “At least the Biden and Obama administrations did investigations before bringing down a Title IX hammer.”
• “This should be the turning point in the president’s rampage against American institutions,” J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appeals court judge, told The New York Times.

More details emerged about Friday’s demands that flipped Harvard from negotiating to “no.” The university and the Trump administration entered discussions in March with common ground, The Wall Street Journal reported. Both wanted a mask ban and no more diversity, equity, and inclusion in admissions or faculty hiring. But Harvard officials were surprised when the administration responded to a request for detailed requirements with demands that included federal oversight of admissions, hiring, and employee ideology.

• Even a veteran of the first Trump administration acknowledged the demands go beyond fixes for the antisemitism allegations that supposedly started the government’s inquiry. They “reflect a far wider cultural concern within the conservative movement about what is rotten in higher education,” Kenneth L. Marcus, the Education Department’s civil-rights head during the first Trump term, told The New York Times.

The bigger picture: Harvard has earned attention with its prominent stand. But keep an eye on the Trump administration’s next potential targets, as Robert Kelchen suggests in The Chronicle Review:

• “With some careful financial management and some painful decisions, these wealthy colleges can likely hold the line over the next few years. I am much more concerned about the implications for blue-state public flagships, which are next in line, but the administration may rethink its efforts if the juiciest targets are able to successfully fight back.”

📚 For more from The Chronicle Review: Harvard Had No Choice: Giving in to the Administration’s Demands Would Have Been Ruinous

Stat of the day

More than 4,700

That’s the number of international student records terminated in the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database since President Trump took office, Science reported.

More than 180 colleges have told students their records have been terminated from the federal immigration database in recent weeks.

It’s often unclear why. But some cases appear tied to protest participation, expressing political views, legal infractions, and even cases when charges were dismissed.

• “A mistake made in high school came haunting me all over again,” one researcher who had a misdemeanor dismissed over a decade ago told Science.

Termination from the federal database could expose students to deportation proceedings, even though it doesn’t mean they must leave the country immediately. The government has frequently contacted affected students to tell them that their visas have been revoked and they could be deported.

Legal challenges have been rolling in, Bloomberg reported. Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue the government isn’t following legally required processes or upholding their due-process rights.

The Trump administration has turned past practices on their head. Previously, records in the immigration database were only changed after removal proceedings were initiated against a visa holder — and that visa holder would have had a chance to challenge charges in court.

📧 For more from The Chronicle: Eighty-six colleges and higher-ed associations signed on to an amicus brief that argues for blocking large-scale deportations, Karin Fischer reports in the Latitudes newsletter.

Quick hits

• Shutdown or online transition in South Carolina? Limestone University needs to find $6 million in additional financial support in order to avoid closing or moving to a fully online model, leaders said on Wednesday. The private institution’s board will meet next week to consider its future. Limestone has long struggled to overcome financial challenges. (WYFF, The Chronicle)
• Private institution makes cuts: Jacksonville University, in Florida, is laying off 40 faculty members and eliminating majors as it works to save $10 million, become financially sustainable, and match its offerings with market demands. (WJXT)
• Florida universities can police immigration: At least 10 institutions in the State University System of Florida have reached agreements with the federal government that empower campus police officers to question and detain undocumented immigrants. Campus police forces haven’t typically played a role in immigration enforcement, but Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has ordered law-enforcement agencies to work with federal authorities. Some faculty members worry the agreements will expose students to profiling and make them feel unsafe on campus. (Inside Higher Ed)
• Fire shutters tribal-college campus: Diné College, in Arizona, moved students enrolled at its main campus to remote learning for the rest of the week after a Monday blaze devastated its student union. High winds and smoldering debris continued to make conditions dangerous. Investigating authorities identified a possible suspect. (Diné College, The Durango Herald)
• Researcher resigns amid plagiarism allegations: Rachel Hardeman, a well-known public-health researcher, will leave the University of Minnesota on May 14. The university’s School of Public Health announced the move four days after one of Hardeman’s former colleagues publicly accused the researcher of stealing from a dissertation prospectus for a 2019 grant submission. Hardeman denied the allegations, saying she quickly corrected a failure to attribute when she learned of it. (Minnesota Public Radio)
• For-profit gives up the ghost: Paier College told the State of Connecticut that it’s withdrawing its authorization to operate after it lost its accreditation. The institution had vowed to appeal after regulators closed it last fall for violations including unpaid bills and a lack of faculty members. (WFSB)
• Loan servicer snaps up software company: Nelnet said its acquisition of Next Gen Web Solutions will diversify its revenue sources, allowing it to offer services like financial-aid exception processing, scholarship management, and work-study administrative support. (Nelnet)

Transitions

• Jorge G. Gonzalez, president of Kalamazoo College, will retire in June 2026.
• Claudia V. Schrader has been named president of City University of New York, York College, after serving as interim president since January 2024.
• Khalilah Doss, vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Middle Tennessee State University, has been named vice president for student affairs at California State University at Fullerton.
• Christa J. Porter, interim dean of the Graduate College at Kent State University, has been named vice provost and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

Correction: In Tuesday’s newsletter, it was incorrectly stated that Karen Marrongelle would be appointed president of Montana Technological University. Her new position will be chancellor of the university.

To submit a new-hire announcement, email people@chronicle.com. You can also find Transitions online here.

Footnote

Researchers have reason for heartburn about the future of innovation in this country. But at least one institution has not been impeded from continuing its long, proud history of pushing beyond the bounds of what experts once thought was wise or possible.

I speak, of course, of Mark Light Shakes, a milkshake vendor at the University of Miami’s home baseball games. The man behind the stand, Mitch Freedman, is celebrating a 40-year tenure mixing up chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and coffee shakes, as well as some more … experimental varieties.

Novelty shakes regularly pay tribute to opposing teams’ locales. Past offerings include a cannoli flavor for New Jersey squads, which doesn’t sound bad. But how about Maine lobster?

Seafood shakes probably sailed through peer review compared to flavors Freedman debuted this year. When Villanova University came to town, he tested Philly cheesesteak, complete with Cheez Whiz. Then last weekend came the pimento cheese shake: a vanilla dairy base, potato chips, and the namesake cheese spread, all topped with a small sandwich.

What a study in heterodox gastronomy.