Harvard's challenge to Trump administration could test limits of government power

On 1 broadside is Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, with a marque truthful almighty that its sanction is synonymous with prestige. On the different broadside is the Trump administration, determined to spell farther than immoderate different White House to reshape American higher education.

Both sides are digging successful for a clash that could trial the limits of the government’s powerfulness and the independency that has made U.S. universities a destination for scholars astir the world.

On Monday, Harvard go the archetypal assemblage to openly defy the Trump administration arsenic it demands sweeping changes to bounds activism connected campus. The assemblage frames the government’s demands arsenic a menace not lone to the Ivy League schoolhouse but to the autonomy that the Supreme Court has agelong granted American universities.

“The assemblage volition not surrender its independency oregon relinquish its law rights,” the university’s lawyers wrote Monday to the government. “Neither Harvard nor immoderate different backstage assemblage tin let itself to beryllium taken implicit by the national government.”

The national authorities says it’s freezing much than $2.2 cardinal successful grants and $60 cardinal successful contracts to Harvard. The clasp connected backing marks the seventh clip the Trump medication has taken specified a measurement astatine 1 of the nation’s astir elite colleges, successful an effort to unit compliance with Trump’s governmental agenda. Six of the 7 schools are successful the Ivy League.

No assemblage is amended positioned to enactment up a combat than Harvard, whose $53 cardinal endowment is the largest successful the nation. But similar different large universities, Harvard besides depends connected the national backing that fuels its technological and aesculapian research. It’s unclear however agelong Harvard could proceed without the frozen money.

Already, Harvard’s refusal appears to beryllium emboldening different institutions.

After initially agreeing to respective demands from the Trump administration, Columbia University’s acting president took a much defiant code successful a field connection Monday, saying immoderate of the demands “are not taxable to negotiation.”

In her statement, Claire Shipman said she work of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”

“Harvard is evidently a peculiarly almighty institution. And its determination has imaginable to galvanize different universities into immoderate benignant of corporate pushback,” said David Pozen, a Columbia instrumentality prof who argued that the government’s demands are unlawful.

Ultimately, the struggle could beryllium settled successful national court. A module radical has already brought a ineligible situation against the demands, and galore successful academia expect Harvard to bring its ain lawsuit.

In its refusal letter, Harvard said the government’s demands interruption the school’s First Amendment rights and different civilian rights laws.

For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the archetypal large hurdle successful its effort to unit alteration astatine universities that Republicans accidental person go hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.

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