Donald Trump last week participated in a town hall-style event hosted by NewsNation, at which sports pundit Stephen A. Smith spoke about the president’s offensive against Harvard and asked the president to respond to allegations that it represented “an attack on academic freedom.”
Trump apparently misunderstood the question. “Well, I say this: We had riots in Harlem, in Harlem, and frankly if you look at what’s gone on — and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side,” the Republican replied. Trump added that, as far as he’s concerned, he “got a very high Black vote.”
Even by 2025 standards, this was quite bizarre, not only because Trump seemed to confuse Harvard and Harlem, but also because he tried to recover by pointing to anti-Harvard “protests” in New York that never actually happened in reality.
Evidently, however, the administration appears undeterred. The Associated Press reported:
Harvard University will receive no new federal grants until it meets a series of demands from President Donald Trump’s administration, the Education Department announced Monday. The action was laid out in a letter to Harvard’s president and amounts to a major escalation of Trump’s battle with the Ivy League school.
The announcement was accompanied with a strange and poorly written letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon, sent to the university’s president.
As for how we arrived at this point, if you’re new to the story, the simmering dispute between the school and the administration reached a boiling point on April 11, when Harvard received a series of outlandish written demands from the Trump administration, including a “request” to install outside auditors who would monitor the school’s academic departments.
The university realized that failure to comply with the ridiculous demands would result in governmental punishment. But left with little choice, Harvard balked anyway.
The retaliation was swift: Immediately after Harvard said it would not comply with the apparent extortion attempt, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to Harvard. (There are federal requirements in place when imposing financial penalties like these, and the Republican White House appears to have ignored those requirements.) The Department of Homeland Security secretary also canceled nearly $3 million in agency grants to Harvard, and at Trump’s behest the IRS reportedly began scrutinizing the university’s tax-exempt status — and according to the president, Harvard’s tax exemption is in real jeopardy.
Last week, the administration went further, with the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services announcing an investigation into dubious allegations of discriminatory practices at the Harvard Law Review.
And this week, the Department of Education upped the ante, declaring that Harvard will be ineligible for any federal grants, regardless of merit, until the university succumbs to the White House’s absurd demands. To the extent that the White House cares about public attitudes, the American mainstream does not appear to be on board with these tactics. The latest Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll asked respondents whether they support “increasing the federal government’s role in how private universities operate.” Despite the rather anodyne phrasing, the results were lopsided: 70% of Americans said they oppose the White House’s efforts against universities, while only 28% approved. (Click the link for more information on the poll’s methodology and margin of error.) The same national survey asked about Trump and his team’s ongoing clash with Harvard University, and as the Post’s report on the polling results noted, “About 2 in 3 Americans say they take Harvard’s side of this confrontation.” Whether the university has similar success in persuading the judiciary remains to be seen. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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