The Trump administration issued a list of demands to Harvard University April 3, sparking concerns from Harvard professors and students.
The list includes a commitment to “merit-based” hiring and admissions processes, removing DEI policies, reviewing programs and departments that “fuel antisemitic harassment” and cooperation with law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.
The list of demands comes after the Trump administration threatened to cut nearly $9 billion to Harvard on March 31.
$255 million worth of contracts between Harvard and the federal government are being reviewed by a federal antisemitism task force, the same committee that has cut hundreds of millions from other universities in recent weeks, including Columbia University and Brown University.
An additional $8.7 billion in grant commitments to Harvard is being reviewed by the federal government.
A week after the Trump administration announced funding reviews and just days after sending demands to Harvard, the university issued $750 million in taxable bonds as an alternative route to garner funding.
Since then, professors and students have voiced their opposition to Harvard’s potential acquiescence to these demands.
Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, said the university needs to push back against “authoritarian bullying” and lead the charge in standing up to demands and “illegal” funding cuts by the Trump administration.
“It’s very important that we as Americans resist authoritarian politics,” said Levitsky. “It’s important for Harvard to do it, because Harvard is the most prominent university [in] the country. People pay attention to Harvard, and many colleges and universities around the country are waiting to see what Harvard does.”
Levitsky said he is additionally concerned with the “intentionally vague” wording of these demands.
“Even if Harvard complies with the bulk of these demands, they’re going to raise the bar,” Levitsky said. “They’re going to come back in six months or nine months or a year and say you haven’t complied.”
The administration has been in conversation with professors who oppose submitting to Trump’s demands, he said.
“They’ve listened to us. They dialogued with us. They’ve been very open, civil, respectful and [able to] hear us out,” Levitsky said.
Rosh, an applied mathematics and economics student at Harvard who wished to keep his last name anonymous, said some of the demands are redundant.
A Supreme Court decision addressing a lawsuit filed against Harvard dismantled affirmative action in 2023. Rosh said “merit-based” admissions are already addressed in this lawsuit, but hiring practices aren’t.
“It might have more effect on the administrative side like hiring,” Rosh said. “I think it’s easier to do it when you have candidates coming from paid jobs and stuff [who are] more likely to complain about not getting something than a student.”
In terms of curbing antisemitism, Rosh said Harvard has done as much as it could.
“I don’t really know what else the school can do,” said Rosh. “They made the task forces, so at this point, it’s just like whether the [Trump] administration deems it enough.”
Elizabeth, a Harvard senior who preferred to use her middle name due to concerns about retaliation, said political speech on campus has been limited since the current Israel-Hamas conflict that began in 2023.
Elizabeth said while some student political groups previously pushed to “ensure the safety of Palestinian students on campus” or called for “resources for all these people being affected,” the focus of much of the current campus activism has shifted.
“Now, a lot of the protesting that we’re seeing on campus, it’s just like, can you allow our students to graduate if they have a political opinion that’s dissenting on this issue?” she said.
Addressing the potential for Harvard to stand up to these demands, Elizabeth said she saw part of the conflict as tied to investment in the university.
“A substantial portion of those [investors] are individual donors, which makes things complicated,” Elizabeth said. “When you have a donor saying, ‘I don’t want you to do X, Y, Z,’ it’s the job of the school to balance, like ‘do we still want to do innovation and be quiet about this certain thing so we can keep x billion dollars?”
Elizabeth said she thought the biggest concern with potential funding cuts was a decrease in graduate program acceptances and research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate students, noting that research funding for Harvard’s Department of Arts, Film and Visual Studies had been “slashed in half this year.”
Elizabeth said the Trump administration’s negative portrayal of DEI could also harm certain programs and people within the Harvard community, particularly those who have been historically marginalized.
“When people are referring to it in the way that the Trump administration refers to DEI, I think the chart is just being misappropriated to remove people of color or studies that are deemed as useless,” Elizabeth said.
Levitsky said he fears the demands and funding cuts demonstrate evidence of rising authoritarian tendencies within the current administration.
He said Harvard must “push back against authoritarian bullies using the power of the state” to interfere with institutional autonomy — whether in teaching, student disciplines or admissions.
“That’s stuff that authoritarians do,” he said. “That stuff doesn’t happen in democracies.”
Levitsky further emphasized the need for Harvard specifically to stand up to the Trump administration.
“If anybody is going to stand up, it has to be the strongest, the best endowed, the most privileged of our institutions, the strongest law firms, the wealthiest CEOs and the wealthiest universities,” Levitsky said. “If Harvard can’t, who can?”
