Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect via Brian Snyder
Harvard University President Alan Garber has told faculty that he will not settle the institution’s dispute with the Trump administration by shelling out $500 million, the Harvard Crimson reported on Monday, contradicting a New York Times article which claimed that the move is impending.
Rather, Harvard has resolve to continue on fighting the federal government in court, the Crimson said, even as it faces a $1 billion shortfall caused by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the confiscation of $3 billion in taxpayer-funded research grants and contracts previously awarded to the university. Amid this cash crunch Harvard has resorted to leveraging its immense wealth to borrow exorbitant sums of money.
In March it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of an ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” It offered another $750 million in bonds to investors in April, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
According to the Crimson, Garber insists that the Times report is erroneous.
“In a conversation with one faculty member, [he] said that the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’ and claimed that the figure was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials,” the Crimson said, noting that the Times believes its reporting is on the mark. “In any discussions, Garber reportedly said, the university is treating academic freedom as nonnegotiable.”
Garber’s apparent assurances to faculty that the university will not concede to Trump for financial relief comes as it takes conciliatory steps that seem aimed at reversing an impression that it is doctrinally far left, as well as anti-Zionist. In July, it announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions and shuttered its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, transferring their staff to other sections of the university. These moves came after it “paused” a partnership in March with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. Some reports, according to the Crimson, suggest that Harvard may even found a “new conservative research institute” in any deal with the Trump administration.
Other Ivy League schools have made similar steps while resolving their funding disputes with the US federal government.
On Wednesday, Brown University announced that it agreed to pay $50 million and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism. The government is rewarding Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million in federal research grants and contracts it impounded.
Per the agreement, shared by university president Christina Paxson, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”
Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.
Only days ago, Columbia University agreed to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon commented on the resolution, saying it is a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”
Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practicers, and DEI programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race.”
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon continued. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
As Harvard debates its future, it continues to be a theater of an unrelenting debate on the Israel-Hamas war and the US-Israel relationship. On Saturday, pro-Hamas protesters instigated their arrests by local law enforcement during an unauthorized demonstration at Harvard Square.
“At least three protesters were pushed to the ground and handcuffed by police officers,” the Harvard Crimson reported on Sunday. “Several protesters were seen pouring water on their eyes, which were red and apparently irritated by a chemical agent.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Post Views: 30