Harvard’s $9 billion scramble to avoid becoming the next Columbia

Harvard President Alan Garber has spent the past few weeks trying to keep his school from becoming the next Columbia.

As he watched Trump pull federal funds from his school’s Ivy League peer over antisemitism concerns, and impose far-reaching demands, Garber made a flurry of moves of his own. The school dismissed leaders at its controversial center for Middle Eastern studies, reinforced intellectual diversity guidelines across programs and unwound a partnership with a university in the West Bank.

Nonetheless, Harvard now finds itself in the hot seat. On Monday, the White House targeted the university with a review of $9 billion in federal funds as part of Trump’s rapidly escalating campaign against what he views as left-wing ideology and antisemitism on campuses.

This effort has kicked into a higher gear. Princeton University said Tuesday the Trump administration is suspending “several dozen” research grants. Chris Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, said in an email to students and staffers that “the full rationale for this action is not yet clear.”

In a recent Atlantic magazine essay, Eisgruber described the Trump administration’s “attack on Columbia University” as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”

A White House official called the Princeton measure a proactive pause in funding pending an investigation into alleged antisemitism. In March, Princeton was among 60 colleges and universities the Education Department said it would investigate for similar allegations.

Last month, Trump made Columbia exhibit A. He pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts from the school, then set out demands as a precondition to start talks about restoring the money. Columbia largely agreed but then provoked the Trump administration when its interim president, Katrina Armstrong, played down the changes in faculty meetings. She stepped down as president soon after.

Garber assumed Harvard’s presidency after his predecessor, Claudine Gay, was pushed out. Gay faced criticism for her handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, including a letter signed by student groups calling Israel “entirely responsible” for the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

Jewish students and faculty argued anti-Zionism had metastasized into antisemitism on campus, and that a fear of challenging progressive orthodoxy stymied discussion. Garber announced a task force addressing antisemitism, and another combating anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias.

The Trump administration’s disdain for many elite institutions extends beyond the protests to the view that universities suppress conservative ideas. At a 2021 speech to the National Conservatism Conference, Vice President JD Vance, who at the time wasn’t in public office, said: “I think if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Meanwhile, the public mood toward elite universities with large endowments—Harvard’s is north of $50 billion—is sour.

Garber has removed diversity, equity and inclusion statements for faculty hiring and launched an intellectual-vitality program, aimed at expanding open dialogue. Progress in changing the culture will be measured in years, not months, organizers say.

After Trump’s election, Garber needed Harvard to move faster. On Inauguration Day, the university announced the settlement of two lawsuits accusing it of tolerating antisemitism.

Yet in March, Trump named Harvard as among 10 schools that would be investigated by a newly created government task force on antisemitism.

Within days, the school forced out the leadership at its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Former Harvard President Larry Summers on X has accused the center of failing to properly represent the Israeli perspective in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last week, Harvard’s Divinity School, which had also drawn criticism over Israeli-Palestinian programming, announced a restructuring following leadership departures in January.

That same week, Harvard’s School of Public Health let its partnership with a controversial West Bank school, Birzeit University, lapse. Conservative lawmakers wrote Garber last year calling Harvard’s relationship with the school “extremely concerning,” citing Birzeit’s student government support for Hamas.

Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote to the community outlining new reviews of faculty and programs to ensure rigor and quality, while also focusing “on building a pluralistic culture that is accountable to our values.” The effect, say some faculty at the school, will be to root out professors teaching what they see as biased perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Many Harvard professors, meanwhile, are urging Garber to resist what they view as political attacks on American universities. In a letter to the school’s governing board, they say “bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and inquiry” are at stake.

“I think (Garber) is caving, and every person on the faculty that I’ve spoken to thinks the same thing,” said Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard who helped draft the letter. “I don’t think any serious person believes that the Trump administration actually cares about antisemitism.”

On Monday, after the Trump administration announced a review of Harvard’s federal funding, Garber took a considered approach in a letter to the school community.

He struck a personal note when conveying the importance of fighting antisemitism. “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president,” he wrote, “and I know how damaging it can be to a student who has come to learn and make friends at a college or university.”

Garber also emphasized the stakes. Harvard’s federal grants and contracts are spread among the school and affiliates, including Boston-area hospitals. Cutting federal funds, he wrote, would “halt lifesaving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation.”