Harvard University President Alan M. Garber said the school would not comply with President Donald Trump’s demands to keep its federal funding.
“No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” wrote Garber.
Well, Garber, if you want to be a private university, then you don’t need funding.
Harvard’s endowment is $53.2 billion. It doesn’t need my money:
An endowment fund is a collection of financial assets that the school can periodically pull from to cover an array of costs while intentionally growing the fund over time. In other words, a school’s endowment is a “super-charged rainy-day fund,” says Andrew Gillen, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Texas Public Policy Foundation.Endowments are “under the control of either the university, or a group closely tied to the university,” he explains. “The idea of the endowment is to generate a continuous source of resources for the university to spend.”
At the end of March, the Education Department, HHS, and General Services Administration (GSA) started reviewing $9 billion in federal funding to Harvard.
Representatives from those departments sent Garber a letter on Friday that “incorporates and supersedes the terms of the federal government’s prior letter of April 3, 2025.”
The requirements include:
“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” whined Garber. “It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”
Weird what happens when you take money from the government.
And no, from what I can tell, it does not exceed the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.
Harvard College Dean of Students Thomas G. Dunne already said that the diversity offices haven’t planned on cutting any programs.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and its Harvard chapter sued Trump’s administration over the funding threats.
Our brilliant Jane Coleman has done a great job keeping tabs on AAUP.
The groups asked the Federal District Court in Massachusetts to implement a temporary restraining order.
“This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus,” the groups claimed.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY