On April 2025, the Trump administration demanded sweeping changes to Harvard University:
- Eliminating DEI programs
- Ensuring “viewpoint diversity” in faculty hiring and admissions
- Restricting international students deemed “hostile to American values”
- Auditing academic units for ideological balance
…just to name a few. Following a rejection from the university, the administration froze $2.3bn in federal funding, followed by Harvard’s filing of a lawsuit against the administration. The Harvard-Trump standoff reminds us to interpret issues from diverse angles. Hence, this commentary blends elements of autonomy, experimentation, polarization, and economic leverage to explore incentives and reactions holistically.
A complex landscape
In 15th-century early modern Europe, a staggering 1.8 million women and girls became subjects to a global satanic witch hunt, where 50,000 innocent people were tortured and executed. The phenomenon followed the introduction of the printing press, which catalyzed the dissemination of scientific facts, but also of religious fantasies. Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of the Witches) became the most famous book of the decade – a DIY guide instructing honest Christians to expose witches – seeing more popularity and trust than Copernicus’ On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres – one of the founding texts of the modern scientific revolution.
This historical case sees various parallels with our modern experience. Just like how witches were identified as satanic, Harvard has now become antisemitic, elitist, and overly DEI-driven. This seemingly simple narrative spreads rapidly within populist media, creating a mechanism that dismisses the nuances of the situation.
In 2025, merely 17% of U.S. adults have “a great deal” of confidence in higher education (Gallup 2025). Tapping into the statistic, Trump’s initial criticism targeted Harvard’s mismanagement of antisemitism on campus. This followed Hamas’ attack in October 2023, where a coalition of over 30 Harvard student organizations, led by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), signed statements, performed rallies, walkouts, and a series of controversial protests that would eventually contribute to President Claudine Gay’s resignation in early 2024. But today, Trump’s demands have exceeded this stage, positioning Harvard as an elitist threat to equal opportunity — a rejection of a more “merit-based” and “equitable” society.
Adding to the standoff’s complexity is the administration’s letter request to Harvard on April 11th, which “unnamed administration officials told the Times… was sent by mistake and was ‘unauthorized,’ despite carrying the signature of top officials in three federal agencies .” Such behavior marks a vague but emotionally driven narrative, leaving confused readers with the question: Is the standoff a reflection of chaotic policymaking or strategic governance?
Harvard as an experiment: power struggle over academic autonomy
One explanation would be that the standoff is Trump’s experiment to amplify his authority over liberal academia. It is clear that the administration’s actions have reached beyond simple protest concerns into targeting entire university operations, aiming to steer Harvard’s ideological output, challenging its role as an independent arbiter of knowledge. But why Harvard?
Harvard, as the nation’s wealthiest private university, is the basecamp for liberal values and a symbol of intellectual greatness. Its status effectively amplifies the standoff’s visibility to the world, making it a lightning rod for populist attacks. Harvard’s compliance would symbolize Trump’s success in reshaping education and the downfall of Biden’s progressive dominance in areas like DEI and free speech.
By leveraging federal funding cuts to compel compliance, the administration tests its ability to realign education with conservative values. Conversely, Harvard’s lawsuit argues the demands’ violation of First Amendment rights and Title VI procedures, framing the conflict as a defense of academic freedom against government intrusion. Harvard’s stance has received substantial support, with over 150 universities and college presidents co-signing a letter on May 1st, condemning political interference in higher education.
Trump’s response mirrors his defiant approach to the 2025 China tariffs. His Truth Social posts threaten to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, echoing his tariff rhetoric of dialing Xi Jinping; his insistence for China to “pay” tariffs despite consumer costs parallels his revolutionary demands to universities despite multiplier consequences to ground-breaking scientific, medical, and technological research.
So why cut funding from the incubators of America’s future? The administration’s seemingly absurd decisions may reflect a broader strategy of political signaling. Using his controversial persona as strength, Trump’s disruptive and bold style galvanizes his base, who see him fighter confronting elite privilege disconnected from ordinary people.
Cultural signaling to polarize society
Cultural signaling amplifies divisions by reinforcing group identities – conservative vs. liberal, populist vs. elite, anti-academia vs. pro-science – turning everything into a political battleground.
The further we look into the future, the more we realize that the standoff is a zero-sum game. Trump’s actions rally conservative supporters who see universities as indoctrinating students with progressive ideologies, using words like “not American” and “sickness” to alienate liberals. On the other hand, liberals frame Trump as increasingly authoritarian, defending academic freedom and scientific inquiry. Both Trump and Harvard play to their respective bases, further dividing society into opposite ends, eroding trust on both sides. This mutual signaling glosses over logic and underlying moral issues like antisemitism and warfare.
Whilst this angle accounts for Harvard’s agency in shaping the narrative, it illuminates a more dangerous world where no winner takes all. “We avidly consume and share information based on how compelling the story is, not on whether it reflects reality,” writes Yuval Harari in his 2024 book Nexus, highlighting the power of narratives to deflect attention from the more nuanced causes of an issue, further polarizing society. Targeting Harvard was a deliberate strategy for political gain, and Harvard is left “no choice” but to oppose.
A moral and economic crisis
Globally, the standoff reflects a surge of populist leaders and right parties in Europe and globally, which similarly challenge elite institutions. Yet this mechanism is somehow paradoxical, with populism exploiting grassroots support to challenge elites, yet relying on elite tools – federal agencies, executive orders – to do so, revealing its dependence on the very system it critiques.
From a different angle, the government uses the nation’s budget deficit to partially justify its demands. The U.S. faces a projected $1.9 trillion budget deficit in 2025 (per Congressional Budget Office estimates), pressuring the government to cut spending or reallocate funds. By framing Harvard as mismanaging funds or enabling antisemitism, the administration justifies the freeze as a responsible economic move, appealing to taxpayers wary of subsidizing elite institutions.
Bloated defense contracts, subsidies for declining industries, inefficient bureaucracies…can’t we cut funding in those areas? These questions only reflect an administration prioritizing cultural symbolism and political leverage rather than logical appeal.
This raises the question of institutional legitimacy, where neither universities nor the state are trusted to act in the public’s interest. Harvard ALI Social Impact Review suggests public skepticism towards academia, growing due to perceived threats of biases or disconnect from societal needs. Globally, this erosion of trust disrupts universities as diverse media courts and harbingers of frontier knowledge for the world. This leaves universities vulnerable to power struggles against populist strategies that exploit public cynicism, a feedback loop where distrust fuels conflict, and conflict fuels distrust.
Sarah Fortune is a professor and the chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s School of Public Health, is among the world’s leading experts on tuberculosis, the No. 1 infectious cause of death globally. Fortune told CNN that the stop-work order was imposed halfway through a seven-year project timeline, risking the loss of “irreplaceable longitudinal data.”
Personally, I was born at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2008, an affiliated hospital of Harvard, which receives significant federal research grants. Over the last few months, over $110 million worth of grants across Harvard’s affiliate hospitals, including BWH, MGH, Boston Children’s, and others, have been cut, halting studies and loss of expertise. As our environment polarizes, we should ponder how we can rise above divides to restore the science that binds us.
Written by Julia Jiang
