The US Joint Task Force to combat antisemitism froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University on Monday in response to the Ivy League school's rejection of the federal government's antisemitism policy demands as an unprecedented surrender of control to Washington.
Harvard University President Alan Garber announced in a Monday statement that the institution had rejected a series of demands in a Friday antisemitism task force letter that conditioned continued financial relationships with the government, replacing an earlier April 3 proposal.
"We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement," said Garber. "The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."
The degree of intervention would violate Harvard's First Amendment rights as a private institution, Garber argued, which the university's attorneys noted in a Monday letter to the antisemitism task force were freedom of speech rights long recognized by the Supreme Court for academic institutions.
'No government should dictate what private universities can teach'
"No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," said Garber.
Garber and Harvard's attorneys argued that the administration's proposal had gone beyond the powers of the federal government, including the statutory limits under the Title VI discrimination prohibitions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Harvard's attorneys told the task force that the government's terms "circumvented the statutory rights by requiring unsupported and disruptive remedies for alleged harms" unproven by mandatory processes.
The attorneys' letter also charged that the federal government had made the demands in disregard of Harvard's reforms over the last 15 months to address antisemitic discrimination, including new disciplinary and security measures. Garber said that Harvard did "not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism" and planned to adopt new policies to ensure that protests will be held in a time, place, and manner that don't disrupt studies.
Taking action against campus discrimination would "not be achieved by assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate," said Garber, who argued that while some of the President Donald Trump Administration's demands sought to combat antisemitism, most represented a desire for governmental control of the university.
