With Harvard, Trump administration is attacking all of higher education | Opinion
The Trump administration’s effort to destroy Harvard University must be seen as an attack on all of higher education.
President Donald Trump knows that if he can force Harvard to yield to his control, every university will receive the message that it must capitulate.
“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” said Kristi Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security.
The efforts against Harvard and other universities must be widely condemned and must be stopped.
The latest salvo by Trump was the announcement that Harvard can no longer enroll international students and that any international students there must transfer. Harvard, like most major universities — including my own, UC Berkeley — has a substantial number of international students. They comprise about 27% of Harvard’s student population, and the ban would have devastating financial consequences.
Education in American universities is enhanced by the presence of students from throughout the world. Trump’s action targeting international students would be a cruel maneuver to force students in the midst of college or graduate education to find someplace else to go to school.
This most recent action follows the Trump administration’s announcement in April that it was cutting off $2 billion in funds to Harvard unless it agreed to federal oversight of its admissions, faculty hiring and governance. Subsequently, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that the university would no longer qualify for federal grants.
Christopher Rufo, who is advising the Trump administration on matters of higher education, said that the goal should be to cause universities to “feel existential terror” and put them in “recession.” This is exactly what authoritarians in other countries have done in trying to control universities.
The demands that the Trump administration has made of Harvard are stunning and ones that no university can or should agree to. They include changes in how the university is governed, including “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty; reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship,” according to a letter sent to Harvard by Trump officials.
This letter also stipulated required changes in faculty hiring and student admissions, including mandating “viewpoint diversity in admissions and hiring.” The university “shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.”
“Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity,” according to the letter.
Although viewpoint diversity — like all efforts at diversity — is laudable, the government requiring that faculty be hired or students be admitted based on their views clearly violates the First Amendment. It would also give the federal government astounding control over critical aspects of the university that are protected by the First Amendment and academic freedom. The demand letter from the Trump administration also requires the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, requires a new system of student discipline and directs the university to punish students who had participated in particular demonstrations.
The Trump administration has no authority under any law to impose these requirements. The ostensible basis for the initial letter to Harvard was Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which says that recipients of federal funds cannot discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. The claim was that Harvard violated Title VI by being deliberately indifferent to antisemitism.
But virtually none of what the Trump administration has demanded is about alleged antisemitism on campus. It is about the using the enormous power of the federal government to try and devastate one of the most prestigious universities in the country to send a message to all other schools about what they face if they do not cower to what Trump wants.
Indeed, the Trump administration has followed none of the legal requirements under Title VI for a cutoff of funds. Under that law, there must be notice, a hearing and a finding of deliberate indifference before funds are cutoff. There must be 30 days notice to the House of Representatives and the Senate of the cutoff of funds and an opportunity to correct the violations. Any cutoff has to be limited to the program found to be in violation of Title VI. The Trump administration has done none of this.
What the Trump administration is doing is a direct assault on the independence of universities and on academic freedom. It is truly unprecedented in American history.
Harvard’s challenge to the cutoff of funds is already pending in federal court. On Friday, a U.S. judge issued a temporary restraining order pausing the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard’s international students.
But stopping Trump’s attack on Harvard is not enough. Members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — must denounce the attack on higher education. Leaders of every university must speak out.
The United States has the greatest university system in the world which is what attracts students from across the globe. Trump must not be allowed to destroy it.
This story was originally published May 24, 2025 at 5:01 AM with the headline "With Harvard, Trump administration is attacking all of higher education | Opinion."