Standing Up: You Can Do it Even When You're 389 Years Old.
Harvard is the US's oldest and richest university. In dealing with Trump, it first tried 'obeying in advance.' Today it decided instead to stand up and stand firm.
Famous statue of a seated John Harvard, by Daniel Chester French, in Harvard Yard. The toes of John Harvard’s shoes are shiny because of the endless stream of visitors rubbing them for good luck, presumably with the admissions office. On April 14, 2025, the university’s leaders stood up and took a bold step in keeping with the institution’s status, power, and stated values. (Harvard Gazette photo.)
Today, as a real-time Resistance Chronicle, I want to note a potentially significant shift in America’s institutional response to Trumpism. It was principled, it will be costly, and it deserves attention. It is an example we need in our times.
I’ll set this out as a three-act drama, plus a back-story prologue. And at the end, a note about an upcoming item.
Prologue: Night of the Executive Orders.
Starting just hours after he was sworn in, Donald Trump has been Sharpie-signing Executive Orders non-stop. As he finishes each one, he holds it up proudly to the camera, sometimes pausing to ask an aide what the order says or does.
These orders, plus the Doge rampages, have disrupted the lives of individuals—through deportation, prosecution, outright firing. They have also damaged, dismantled, or politicized many public and private institutions, including those most responsible for America’s past centuries of well-being, influence, and growth.1
In a post last week, I mentioned some ways American individuals were rising up in response. These recent events have ranged from the millions of Americans who marched through their hometown streets, to the voters who turned out for a Wisconsin state-court race, to the solo US Senator who held the floor for 25 hours to alert the nation to its predicament, and drew more than 350 million TikTok viewers while doing so.
As for private institutions, it’s been a quickly changing situation. These are the companies and entities that the Trump team cannot fire or dismantle directly (as they have fired a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and dismantled USAID). But Trump and Doge can do nearly as much harm indirectly: Cancelling contracts. Launching lawsuits and DOJ investigations. Denying visas. Imposing tariffs. And in other ways making commercial life near-impossible.
Under this pressure, or threats of pressure, some prominent institutions have obeyed or surrendered in advance. As a reminder:
In the legal world, Paul, Weiss and Skadden Arps have been most notorious, as explained here.
In the tech world, practically all have knuckled under. The list of companies and CEOs who gave $1 million or more to Trump’s second inauguration starts with Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Apple, and Uber but does not end there.
In the media world, the White House Correspondents Association cancelled the (brilliant) comedian Amber Ruffin for its dinner, out of fear she would give offense. ABC paid $15 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump, despite legal merits overwhelmingly on its side, reportedly out of fear of corporate damage of an extended fight with Trump.
I won’t clog up this post with further discouraging examples from politics, education, or the media.
Instead I’ll set up Act One by saying there have been some encouraging examples of institutions not obeying but “Uniting in Advance.” Rather than going quiet and allowing others to be picked off, they have tried to connect others for a unified stand. For instance:
The heads of three major foundations, jointly writing an article called “Unite in Advance” in the Nonprofit Quarterly, with a how-to list for their sector. These leaders are Tonya Allen, of the McKnight Foundation; Deepak Bhargava, of the Freedom Together Foundation; and John Palfrey, of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. I quote from their valuably specific three-step action plan below.2
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which was founded before the US Constitution was written, put out a statement last week in defense of the academic, judicial, scientific, and humane values now under direct attack. (Quotes and details below.3) The American Library Association has sent guidance to its members about working with their communities, and with one another, in the face of destructive cuts, notably to IMLS. Every organization that speaks up, makes it easier for others to do so. Update And this ‘Education for All’ network of mainly community-college leaders uniting against anti-DEI orders.
A handful of academic leaders, notably and early Christopher Eisgruber, of Princeton, and Michael Roth, of Wesleyan, who (as described in my earlier post) spoke when most of their colleagues were quiet, on why educators should stand together when education itself was under attack.
Act One: Obeying in Advance.
From the start, the Trump team attacked higher education by cutting off its overall funding. Then it went after universities one by one. Early in March, it went after Columbia. By the end of the month, Harvard’s turn had come. On March 31 the university got a letter saying that as much as $9 billion of its federal funding, especially for medical research and its hospitals, might be “reviewed.” The supposed reason was to punish Harvard for its tolerance of antisemitism.
As a former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, pointed out in a NYT essay, the antisemitism rationale was an insultingly bogus pretext. That’s not what the Trump attack on higher ed has ever been about.
Unfortunately, in response to this initial Trump threat, the current president of Harvard responded as if the criticism had been offered in good faith and could be taken at face value. In a public letter titled “Our Resolve,” current Harvard President Alan Garber wrote this (emphasis added):
The government has informed us that they are considering this action [the funding freeze] because they are concerned that the University has not fulfilled its obligations to curb and combat antisemitic harassment. We fully embrace the important goal of combatting antisemitism, one of the most insidious forms of bigotry…
We still have much work to do. We will engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.
The letter drew widespread condemnation, because of its credulous approach to Trump’s patently phony rationale. (I am sure it had some admirers too.) Why would the nation’s greatest educational institution “engage” with a “task force” clearly bent on doing it harm? The title of Larry Summers’s op-ed, which sub-tweeted Garber though not addressing him directly, was “If Powerful Places Like Harvard Don’t Stand Up to Trump, Who Can?”
Act Two: This Is Why You Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists.
Harvard offered to “engage” with the Trump team. Three days ago it learned just what that would mean.
Last Friday, the Trump team sent an official demand message to Alan Garber and Penny Pritzker, head of Harvard’s governing board. It’s a breathtaking document. You can see it as a PDF from this link. But you can think of it as the kind of message a parole officer would send to someone late for a check-in, or a boss to someone in deep trouble with HR.
Think of the way Donald Trump spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. Think of the way Kristi Noem talks in front of groups of imprisoned immigrants. That is the way leaders of this Trump “task force” addressed the officials at Harvard. And think of the way Trump craves adulation from Cabinet Secretaries during their televised Cabinet sessions. That is the response apparently expected from a groveling Harvard.
The letter is five full pages of things that Harvard “must” do. How they must screen all applicants for their political views. How they must transfer professors out of a department, to ensure “viewpoint diversity” there. (But must also immediately abolish all DEI programs.) How they must exclude any international applicant who might be “anti-American.” How they must share all hiring, promotion, and admissions data with federal authorities. How they must expel anyone wearing a mask on campus. How they must let federal regulators look over their shoulders at everything they do.
Everything about it is a demand. “Engagement” is submission. Harvard’s zip code might as well change from 02138, in Cambridge, to 33480, at Mar-a-Lago.
Act Three: Redemption.
Not everyone gets a second chance to do the right thing. Alan Garber did. And he took it.
Today Garber sent out another open letter, in response to the administration’s demands.
The title line was “The Promise of American Higher Education.”
And the contents boil down to, Go to Hell!