If Harvard Bends to Trump, It’s Already Lost

It’s no secret that the next four years will be turbulent for higher education, and for us.

During his campaign, President Donald Trump pledged to abolish the Department of Education, weaponize the college accreditation system, and end federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Now, Trump’s opening volley of directives — apparently instructing universities to monitor the political speech and beliefs of international students, targeting DEI, and suspending federal research funding — aim to make good on these threats.

As the poet Maya Angelou reminds us, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Republicans have vowed to target Harvard and a handful of other elite universities, invoking the specter of a hefty endowment tax to compel acquiescence. And indeed, one of Trump’s first DEI-related orders directed federal agencies to specifically pursue institutions of higher education with endowments above one billion dollars.

How should Harvard respond? Unfortunately, thus far, University administrators seem to be favoring the path of anticipatory obedience.

To wit: In January, the University hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm linked to top Trump officials, presumably to reassure legislators of Harvard’s collaboration and thus forestall punitive measures.

And a day after the presidential inauguration, to settle two Title VI lawsuits accusing Harvard of tolerating antisemitism, Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

The IHRA definition was never intended for use in university disciplinary procedures. Don’t take our word for it — that characterization comes from Kenneth S. Stern, the lawyer who led its drafting two decades ago; he has since critiqued the definition’s function as a “blunt instrument to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.”

Not to mention, the University’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, led by our scholarly experts, did not advocate adopting the IHRA definition — or any other — in its preliminary recommendations. (How and whether to define antisemitism remains a subject of live debate among Middle East scholars; for example, Omer Bartov, a leading Israeli-American historian of genocide, called Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition “shameful” and “cowardly.”)

But vocal, and influential, opponents of campus protests did. And in the end, the Office of General Counsel’s judgment was allowed to supersede that of our scholarly experts — another indication of the sorry state of shared governance at Harvard.

Some colleagues argue that the IHRA definition poses no threat to academic freedom, given that the policy updates apply to harassment and bullying and not to speech. We disagree. The possibility of formal sanction is only one dimension of the policy’s chilling effect. As anyone who has been at Harvard since Oct. 7, 2023 must be aware, the suppression of speech occurs when political speech is redefined as interpersonally or socially aggressive or as provoking discomfort.

This new policy, with its excessively broad definition, not only reconfigures the field of formal disciplinary processes but also encourages self-censorship and the informal suppression of speech. We ourselves have already heard from one untenured faculty member wondering not only whether they can still put books like Edward Said’s “Orientalism” on a syllabus – they can, of course – but, more worryingly, whether doing so is worth the potential risks.

The Office of Community Conduct’s FAQ about the changes does not reassure, stating: “Ordinarily, it will not violate the NDAB Policies for members of the Harvard community to make controversial statements in the course of academic work or in scholarship; express disagreement with another person’s political views; or criticize a government’s policy or the political leaders of a country.”

Ordinarily. That word affords discretionary latitude — the sort that provides precisely the opportunity for abuse of which Stern warns.

Which members of our community, and which opinions, are likeliest to be viewed as “controversial” and targeted accordingly? And when that occurs, what specific guarantees of their academic freedom and speech rights can faculty and students expect? The recent cancelling of a panel on wartime health care in Gaza at Harvard Medical School — for, apparently, being one-sided — suggests an answer.

We fear that University administrators may be using the current climate as a pretext for tamping down the active campus debates that have attracted the disapproval of outspoken donors and congressional committees alike. As New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg observed, the forces working to disrupt the norms of academic freedom and institutional independence at Harvard may in fact be “pushing on an open door.”

Anticipatory obedience, however, is not how to best weather the coming storm.

We have already seen the benefits of a more courageous approach. During the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment, for example, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 declined to involve police, despite demands for an aggressive response like that deployed at more than 50 other colleges.

Given the urgent public safety threat our community now faces, with Trump threatening to seek the deportation of international students with criminal charges or records stemming from pro-Palestine protest activity, we see even more clearly the stakes of calling the police on students – and the wisdom of President Garber’s restraint in that moment. It is essential that the University maintain this stance going forward.

Recall, too, that in 2020 Harvard and MIT joined forces to sue the Trump administration over a policy that aimed to strip visas from international students during the Covid-era pivot to online instruction – and they won.

In sum, we urge Harvard to refuse the illusory safety of anticipatory obedience and the moral compromises it will inevitably demand. The University must not simply survive the next four years, but must do so with its values intact.

Walter Johnson is the Winthrop Professor of History and a professor of African and African American Studies. Richard F. Thomas is the George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics. Kirsten A. Weld is a professor of History. They are members of the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors-Harvard Faculty Chapter.