The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, reports Alan Garber has told faculty the Ivy League school is not close to a $500 million court settlement despite a New York Times story stating so.
The Crimson story, which cites three faculty members as sources, said Garber blames the Trump administration for telling the news media the Ivy League school was close to an agreement.
AFN recently reported attorneys for Harvard are suing the Trump administration to demand access to $2.2. billion in grants that were frozen when the school refused to comply with a lengthy list of demands from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Those demands, referred to as “reforms” in the five-page letter, include big, detailed changes to the campus such as screening prospective international students for anti-American views; adopt a hiring and promotion policy for faculty and staff that is not based on a person’s race or sex; and end all DEI-related programs, offices, and initiatives on campus.
Garber has been vowing since April that Harvard will not “surrender its independence” by agreeing to those demands, and the Crimson story reports he is under pressure from Harvard faculty and even Democrats in Congress to refuse any agreement with President Trump which would be seen as weakness.
Campus Reform editor Zachary Marschall, whose website has frequently reported on antisemitism, says the Crimson story suggests “disfunction” is going on behind the scenes on the campus.
“Harvard came off very gung-ho when it tried to challenge the Trump administration this year over the Department of Education's investigations into its failure to protect Jewish students,” he recalls, “but there was some setbacks on Harvard's part."
Marschall suspects Harvard is feeling pressure to reach a settlement after other campuses, such as Columbia, have done so. Columbia agreed in June to pay $220 million and adhere to a list of demands to restore federal research money.
“I think the radical anti-Trump element of Harvard's game plan was somewhat knocked off course,” he says, “but the faculty at Harvard is very leftist and has always been able to exhort a lot of power over whoever is president of the institution.”
