Tony is a former student of the International Human Rights Clinic.
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” wrote the Trump administration in an April 11th demand letter to Harvard president Alan Garber and lead member of the Harvard Corporation Penny Pritzker. The letter is signed by the commissioner for the General Services Administration, and counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
Today, April 14th, students at the university saw that letter along with President Garber’s internal response in a school-wide email: “The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government.”
Trump’s demand letter directly names several Harvard Law School affiliates. His administration explicitly calls out the International Human Rights Clinic as one program that “fuel[s] antisemitic harassment or reflect[s] ideological capture.” Other university programs named include entire schools – the Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, and Medical School – as well as the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (whose two directors Harvard recently let go).
It is not clear what “ideological capture” means here. Some of the Clinic’s recent events include a talk on reparations for Haiti, hosting the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, and a panel on the use of missile weapons in Ukraine.
The letter also names student-run organizations active at HLS. It calls on Harvard to discipline all active members of the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Graduates Students 4 Palestine, Law Students 4 Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild.
A 3L in one of the groups, who asked to remain anonymous, called the Trump administration’s letter a “baseless attack against students who support Palestinian activism and freedom.” “It’s telling that [Garber] didn’t outline specific actions the university will take to protect students,” she told The Record, and expressed some fear that Harvard could use the opportunity to investigate Palestine-activist groups more closely.
President Garber’s internal response to the demand letter continued: “It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.” This is a change from Garber’s last email regarding changes under the Trump administration, in which he wrote that Harvard would engage with Trump’s antisemitism task force.
The letter continues to emphasize Harvard’s difficult legal position. The schools’ federal funding “depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws,” writes the Trump letter. It is certainly correct that the federal administration can withhold funding from Harvard for failing to uphold its obligations under, among other things, Titles VI and IX. But these obligations also mean that Harvard must respect students’ First Amendment rights, including protest or speech on controversial issues.
Garber’s response is the strongest students have seen from the administration, and will likely add further fuel to Trump’s ire. Last week, a group of Harvard professors as members of the American Alliance for University Professors (AAUP) sued the Trump administration for these types of funding threats. AAUP also sued earlier this month over deportation threats.
The mood at Harvard may be dominated by finals and Ames, but Garber’s defiance of Trump’s demands has already invited retaliation from the federal government. On the evening of Harvard’s response, Trump froze $2.2 billion in funding.