The Harvard University where musicians like John Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Yo-Yo Ma, and Virgil Thomson graduated, is the first school to reject Trump’s demands to make far-reaching changes to its governance, admissions and hiring practices.
The university’s response comes after the Trump administration announced an evaluation of nearly $9 billion in funding to Harvard and its affiliates.
Harvard will continue to combat antisemitism, and “Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community,” two attorneys representing the school wrote in a letter Monday, but the school “is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
Harvard is the first to rebuff the government’s efforts to subjugate the elite universities and swear them in to Trump’s restrictive policies, such as ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and preventing transgender athletes from competing on women’s teams.
“The First Amendment does not permit government officials to use the power of their office to silence critics and suppress speech they don’t like,” Andrew Manuel Crespo, a professor of law at Harvard and general counsel of the AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter, writes in a statement. “Harvard faculty have the constitutional right to speak, teach, and conduct research without fearing that the government will retaliate against their viewpoints by canceling grants.”
