On Monday afternoon, Harvard University became the first university to refuse to comply with a list of federal government demands because the school said they were unlawful.
The list of demands included reducing the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs, reporting foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities and bringing in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is “viewpoint diverse.” The Trump administration did not provide a definition of “viewpoint diverse,” the New York Times reported.
The Trump administration has been targeting universities in several ways. Officials have suspended millions of dollars in federal funds for research at universities nationwide and plan to “remake” higher education.
A lot of the issues the Trump administration has with Harvard is their belief that Harvard had not done enough to curb antisemitism on campus.
“Harvard is committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry in its community,” William A. Burck and Robert K. Hur wrote in a statement representing Harvard to the Trump administration. “Antisemitism and discrimination of any kind not only are abhorrent and antithetical to Harvard’s values but also threaten its academic mission.”
By the end of the letter to the Trump administration, Harvard officials concluded they were “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
More demands from the Trump administration included conducting plagiarism checks on all current and prospective faculty members, sharing all its hiring data with the Trump administration, providing all admissions data to the federal government, including information on both rejected and admitted applicants, sorted by race, national origin, grade-point average and performance on standardized tests. The Trump administration also demanded that Harvard immediately shut down any programming related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Because Harvard failed to comply, federal officials will freeze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard and a $60 million contract.
