Editorials

The Irish Times view on Trump’s attack on US universities: freedom of thought under threat

With the support of many of the other great US colleges, Harvard has become the first university to refuse to comply with the administration’s requirements

An American flag flies over the John Harvard statue at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The university is resisting demands from the Trump administration. Photograph: Sophie Park/The New York Times
An American flag flies over the John Harvard statue at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The university is resisting demands from the Trump administration. Photograph: Sophie Park/The New York Times
Thu Apr 17 2025 - 20:20

Columbia University, desperate to hold on to $400 million in federal funding, has capitulated completely to the onslaught by the Trump administration on the US’s elite universities.

Ostensibly, the issue is its failure to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism on campus, but the Trump agenda is far more ambitious. It is a determination to bring academia under state control and to eradicate a culture he spuriously claims has allowed an intolerant left to take over campuses. The central focus is enforcement of his obsessive campaign against the promotion of diversity and equality in hiring and curricula.

Encouraged by Columbia’s surrender, the administration has turned its guns on the richest of the country’s universities, Harvard, with its $53 billion endowment. Trump now faces an institution willing, and able, to fight back in defence of what it rightly sees as a cornerstone of American democracy, academic independence and freedom. On Monday the administration announced it would freeze some $2.2 billion in Harvard federal grants and contracts, jeopardising vital scientific and medical research and teaching. The tax authorities are also reported to be “investigating” its tax-free status.

Harvard is being asked to reduce the power of students and lecturers over its affairs; to report foreign students for “conduct violations” to federal authorities; and to bring in outsiders to ensure that faculties are “viewpoint diverse”. All forms of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes in hiring, admissions, and teaching must be eliminated, the government says.

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With the support of many of the other great US colleges, and under intense pressure to resist from its own students and staff, Harvard has become the first university to refuse to comply with the administration’s requirements. It sets up an important showdown that will certainly end up in the courts. It is yet another front in Trump’s culture wars to try to remake the US and control public discourse. The prospect of universities being cowed into submission is deeply worrying.