After Harvard University pushed back against the Trump administration’s attempts to force the school to comply with sweeping political demands yesterday, the White House announced it would freeze more than $2.2 billion in Harvard’s funding—and threatened the university’s tax-exempt status.
What Happened at Harvard
The Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard on Friday that accused the university of what it claimed were civil rights violations and antisemitism and demanded unprecedented changes to the institution’s hiring and admissions practices. In response, lawyers representing Harvard sent a letter to Trump administration lawyers in which they said the university refused to comply with the demands and described them as going “beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
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The funding freeze jeopardizes vital research in public health and medicine, among other subjects. And Harvard-affiliated hospitals could bear the brunt of these effects. Nevertheless, Harvard’s pushback has garnered widespread praise from faculty members, scientists and public figures, including former president Barack Obama.
How Scientists Are Reacting
Some Harvard scientists expressed enthusiastic support for the institution’s response. “I’ve been waiting for a major university to take a stand like this. I am thrilled that mine did,” wrote Jeremy Faust, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in his newsletter Inside Medicine.
When Scientific American reached out to Faust for comment, he said he couldn’t speak for Harvard. “What I can say on behalf of myself is that I had been seriously considering submitting my first federal grant proposals until November [2024]. After the election, I abandoned those plans,” he says. “Any thought of soldiering on was quickly put aside in January and February, when we witnessed the unprecedented viewpoint-driven censorship across [the Department of Health and Human Services], with certain disfavored views being literally punished with the sudden pulling of promised grant funding along ideological lines.”
Other Harvard scientists also praised the university’s recent actions. “I certainly don’t speak for the community, but I suspect that a lot of my colleagues are quite excited that Harvard has a spine,” said George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, who leads synthetic biology at the Wyss Institute, to STAT.
Scientists at other institutions chimed in with support on social media. “First time you’ll hear this Yalie say: let’s go Harvard. Seriously: Yale stand up and lead,” wrote Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, in a post on Bluesky. Gonsalves was among about 900 faculty members who signed a letter to Yale’s president that called on the school to defend academic freedom.
Stanford University’s president and provost also issued a statement in support of Harvard’s actions. “Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending,” read the statement, which was published in the Stanford Daily. “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth,” it continued. “This strength has been built on government investment but not government control.”