The Attempt by Harvard University to resist the efforts of the Trump administration to take control of this academic and research institution which has tremendous power in American society, and to set forth a structure whereby the Federal Government (which refers to the private consulting firms and private intelligence firms that actually run the Trump administration and not to the qualified professionals within what is left of the government) could well end up developing into the equivalent the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 by what would become Confederate forces. That was most definitely what Trump’s strategists like Stephen Miller intended. You might notice that the letter was received at Harvard on 164th anniversary of that act.

We know the billionaires want to create a civil war between factions of the little people (especially the little people who think that they are not little like the president of Harvard) so as to avoid the people rising up against the billionaires and demanding that their ill-gotten wealth be seized.

Trump Declares that Harvard Will Lose Its Tax Exempt Status

I want to share the letter sent to Harvard by the Trump team (I want to say the Thiel and Adelson team) the response to the Trump administration from Harvard University, and the letter from Harvard’s president to the faculty of Harvard.

I have no interest in defending Harvard. Harvard refused to take a stand against the abuse of the term “anti-semitism” to suppress free speech, and it has refused to allow a discussion about the 9.11 incident, the counterfeiting of money by the Federal Reverve, the COVID 19 reign of terror, or many other state crimes. It has a parasitic relationship with the military industrial complex.

See my letter to President Garber of Harvard from May 7, 2024:

Response to Harvard President Garber’s Orders That Protesting Students be Placed on “Involuntary Leave”

By Emanuel Pastreich, May 07, 2024

Harvard is a pawn of investment banks. The Harvard endowment is referred to by bankers as “a fund with a little university attached on the side.” Nevertheless, Harvard offers much to the world, even if private equity has distorted its mission.

Trump is not trying to return Harvard to its mission of pursuing scientific truth and scholarly integrity, but rather he is trying to make it conform with his demands for subservience so as to make it easier to make such demands of other institutions and thus establish a complete dictatorship.

We will have to oppose this take over eventually, so we might as well do it now. As Hillel the Elder said, “If not now, when? If not me, who?”

We can denounce the deep corruption at Harvard while defending its academic value. we can demand a change in Harvard’s mission while standing up to dictatorship just as we can walk and chew gum.

Please do take the time to read these critical documents as they give a sense of how the fight may play out. Perhaps it will be a fight between elites seeking benefits (like the fight in the Civil War between the Vanderbilts and the plantation owners) and at the same time be a fight between citizens and the new oligarchs, a fight against slavery—even if that is not what the Trump administration or Harvard had intended. History is not made by them, however.

***

Trump Administration Letter to Harvard 

Letter Sent to Harvard 2025-04-11

Dr. Alan M. Garber

President

Harvard University Office of the President

Penny Pritzker

Lead Member,

Harvard Corporation

Harvard Corporation Massachusetts Hall Cambridge, MA 02138

Dear Dr. Garber:

The United States has invested in Harvard University’s operations because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence. But an investment is not an entitlement. It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights laws, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor, both of which are antithetical to ideological capture. Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the University to its promise.

We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government. If acceptable to Harvard, this document will constitute an agreement in principle, which the parties will work in good faith to translate into a more thorough, binding settlement agreement. As you will see, this letter incorporates and supersedes the terms of the federal government’s prior letter of April 3, 2025.

Governance and leadership reforms. By August 2025, Harvard must make meaningful governance reform and restructuring to make possible major change consistent with this letter, including: fostering clear lines of authority and accountability; empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and, from among the tenured professoriate and senior leadership, exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter; reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty; reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship; and reducing forms of governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization that interfere with the possibility of the reforms indicated in this letter.

Merit-Based Hiring Reform. By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.

Such adoption and implementation must be durable and demonstrated through structural and personnel changes. All existing and prospective faculty shall be reviewed for plagiarism and Harvard’s plagiarism policy consistently enforced.

All hiring and related data shall be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by the federal government during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028.

Merit-Based Admissions Reform. By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof, throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs.

Such adoption and implementation must be durable and demonstrated through structural and personnel changes. All admissions data shall be shared with the federal government and subjected to a comprehensive audit by the federal government—and non-individualized, statistical information regarding admissions shall be made available to the public, including information about rejected and admitted students broken down by race, color, national origin, grade point average, and performance on standardized tests—during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028. During this same period, the dean of admissions for each program or school must sign a public statement after each admissions cycle certifying that these rules have been upheld.

International Admissions Reform. By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism. Harvard will immediately report to federal authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security and State Department, any foreign student, including those on visas and with green cards, who commits a conduct violation. As above, these reforms must be durable and demonstrated through structural and personnel changes; comprehensive throughout all of Harvard’s programs; and, during the reform period, shared with the federal government for audit, shared on a non-individualized basis with the public, and certified by deans of admissions.

Viewpoint Diversity in Admissions and Hiring. By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. This audit shall begin no later than the summer of 2025 and shall proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate.

The report of the external party shall be submitted to University leadership and the federal government no later than the end of 2025. Harvard must abolish all criteria, preferences, and practices, whether mandatory or optional, throughout its admissions and hiring practices, that function as ideological litmus tests.

Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.

If the review finds that the existing faculty in the relevant department or field are not capable of hiring for viewpoint diversity, or that the relevant teaching unit is not capable of admitting a critical mass of students with diverse viewpoints, hiring or admissions within that department, field, or teaching unit shall be transferred to the closest cognate department, field, or teaching unit that is capable of achieving viewpoint diversity.

This audit shall be performed and the same steps taken to establish viewpoint diversity every year during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028.

Reforming Programs with Egregious Records of Antisemitism or Other Bias.

By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.

The programs, schools, and centers of concern include but are not limited to the Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Religion and Public Life Program, FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic.

The report of the external party shall include information as to individual faculty members who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7, and the University and federal government will cooperate to determine appropriate sanctions for those faculty members within the bounds of academic freedom and the First Amendment.

The report of the external party shall be submitted to University leadership and the federal government no later than the end of 2025 and reforms undertaken to repair the problems. This audit shall be performed and the same steps taken to make repairs every year during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028.

Discontinuation of DEI. The University must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name; demonstrate that it has done so to the satisfaction of the federal government; and demonstrate to the satisfaction of the federal government that these reforms are durable and effective through structural and personnel changes.

By August 2025, the University must submit to the government a report—certified for accuracy—that confirms these reforms.

Student Discipline Reform and Accountability.

Harvard must immediately reform its student discipline policies and procedures so as to swiftly and transparently enforce its existing disciplinary policies with consistency and impartiality, and without double standards based on identity or ideology.

Where those policies are insufficient to prevent the disruption of scholarship, classroom learning and teaching, or other aspects of normal campus life, Harvard must develop and implement disciplinary policies sufficient to prevent those disruptions. This includes but is not limited to the following:

Discipline at Harvard must include immediate intervention and stoppage of disruptions or deplatforming, including by the Harvard police when necessary to stop a disruption or deplatforming; robust enforcement and reinstatement of existing time, place, and manner rules on campus, including ordering the Harvard police to stop incidents that violate time, place, and manner rules when necessary; a disciplinary process housed in one body that is accountable to Harvard’s president or other capstone official; and removing or reforming institutional bodies and practices that delay and obstruct enforcement, including the relevant Administrative Boards and FAS Faculty Council.

Harvard must adopt a new policy on student groups or clubs that forbids the recognition and funding of, or provision of accommodations to, any student group or club that endorses or promotes criminal activity, illegal violence, or illegal harassment; invites non-students onto campus who regularly violate campus rules; or acts as a front for a student club that has been banned from campus.

The leaders or organizers of recognized and unrecognized student groups that violate these policies must be held accountable as a matter of student discipline and made ineligible to serve as officers in other recognized student organizations. In the future, funding decisions for student groups or clubs must be made exclusively by a body of University faculty accountable to senior University leadership.

In particular, Harvard must end support and recognition of those student groups or clubs that engaged in anti-Semitic activity since October 7th, 2023, including the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Graduates Students 4 Palestine, Law Students 4 Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the National Lawyers Guild, and discipline and render ineligible the officers and active members of those student organizations.

Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.

Harvard must investigate and carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years, including the Harvard Business School protest of October 2023, the University Hall sit-in of November 2023, and the spring encampment of 2024. This must include permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student, and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings, as warranted by the facts of individual cases. o The Harvard president and police chief must publicly clarify that the Harvard University Police Department will enforce University rules and the law. Harvard must also commit to cooperating in good faith with law enforcement.

Whistleblower Reporting and Protections.

The University must immediately establish procedures by which any Harvard affiliate can report noncompliance with the reforms detailed in this letter to both university leadership and the federal government. Any such reporter shall be fully protected from any adverse actions for so reporting.

Transparency and Monitoring.

The University shall make organizational changes to ensure full transparency and cooperation with all federal regulators. No later than June 30, 2025, and every quarter thereafter during the period in which reforms are being implemented, which shall be at least until the end of 2028, the University shall submit to the federal government a report—certified for accuracy—that documents its progress on the implementation of the reforms detailed in this letter.

The University must also, to the satisfaction of the federal government, disclose the source and purpose of all foreign funds; cooperate with the federal government in a forensic audit of foreign funding sources and uses, including how that money was used by Harvard, its agents, and, to the extent available, third parties acting on Harvard’s campus; report all requested immigration and related information to the United States Department of Homeland Security; and comply with all requirements relating to the SEVIS system. We expect your immediate cooperation in implementing these critical reforms that will enable Harvard to return to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence.

Josh Gruenbaum

Commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service

General Services Administration

Sean R. Keveney

Acting General Counsel

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

Thomas E. Wheeler

Acting General Counsel

U.S. Department of Education

***

Harvard’s Response 

Dear Messrs. Gruenbaum, Keveney, and Wheeler:

We are writing in response to your letter dated April 11, 2025, addressed to Dr. Alan Garber, Harvard’s President, and Penny Pritzker, Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation.

Harvard is committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry in its community. Antisemitism and discrimination of any kind not only are abhorrent and antithetical to Harvard’s values but also threaten its academic mission.

To that end, Harvard has made, and will continue to make, lasting and robust structural, policy, and programmatic changes to ensure that the university is a welcoming and supportive learning environment for all students and continues to abide in all respects with federal law across its academic programs and operations, while fostering open inquiry in a pluralistic community free from intimidation and open to challenging orthodoxies, whatever their source.

Over the past 15 months, Harvard has undertaken substantial policy and programmatic measures. It has made changes to its campus use policies; adopted new accountability procedures; imposed meaningful discipline for those who violate university policies; enhanced programs designed to address bias and promote ideological diversity and civil discourse; hired staff to support these programs and support students; changed partnerships; dedicated resources to combat hate and bias; and enhanced safety and security measures.

As a result, Harvard is in a very different place today from where it was a year ago. These efforts, and additional measures the university will be taking against antisemitism, not only are the right thing to do but also are critical to strengthening Harvard’s community as a place in which everyone can thrive.

It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long Messrs. Gruenbaum, Keveney, and Wheeler April 14, 2025 Page 2 recognized by the Supreme Court.

The government’s terms also circumvent Harvard’s statutory rights by requiring unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms that the government has not proven through mandatory processes established by Congress and required by law. No less objectionable is the condition, first made explicit in the letter of March 31, 2025, that Harvard accede to these terms or risk the loss of billions of dollars in federal funding critical to vital research and innovation that has saved and improved lives and allowed Harvard to play a central role in making our country’s scientific, medical, and other research communities the standard-bearers for the world.

These demands extend not only to Harvard but to separately incorporated and independently operated medical and research hospitals engaging in life-saving work on behalf of their patients. The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.

Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle. Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.

***

Letter to Faculty from the President of Harvard

The Promise of American Higher Education

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,

For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields.

These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. In recent weeks, the federal government has threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses.

These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history. New frontiers beckon us with the prospect of life-changing advances—from treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, quantum science and engineering, and numerous other areas of possibility. For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation.

Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to “maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.” It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

I encourage you to read the letter to gain a fuller understanding of the unprecedented demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community. They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views. We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.

The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.

Our motto—Veritas, or truth—guides us as we navigate the challenging path ahead. Seeking truth is a journey without end. It requires us to be open to new information and different perspectives, to subject our beliefs to ongoing scrutiny, and to be ready to change our minds. It compels us to take up the difficult work of acknowledging our flaws so that we might realize the full promise of the University, especially when that promise is threatened.

We have made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism. Over the past fifteen months, we have taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus. We plan to do much more. As we defend Harvard, we will continue to:

nurture a thriving culture of open inquiry on our campus; develop the tools, skills, and practices needed to engage constructively with one another; and broaden the intellectual and viewpoint diversity within our community;

affirm the rights and responsibilities we share; respect free speech and dissent while also ensuring that protest occurs in a time, place, and manner that does not interfere with teaching, learning, and research; and enhance the consistency and fairness of disciplinary processes; and

work together to find ways, consistent with law, to foster and support a vibrant community that exemplifies, respects, and embraces difference. As we do, we will also continue to comply with Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ruled that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act makes it unlawful for universities to make decisions “on the basis of race.”

These ends will not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate. The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community. Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere. All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity—and with faith in the enduring promise that America’s colleges and universities hold for our country and our world.

Sincerely,
Alan M. Garber

*

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

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