By Kaelin Rapport and Christian Collins

The Trump Administration’s unprecedented and illegal action to revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students gives the university an opportunity for true leadership by using its name, reputation, and resources to influence policies that affect all postsecondary students. The administration has already declared war against American higher education and marginalized students, with Harvard becoming a specific target for being among the first to publicly resist this encroachment. Harvard’s actions will have consequences not just for the school or the Ivy League, but for institutions of higher education across the country,  including state schools, minority-serving institutions, and community colleges.

The administration has used a number of tactics to intimidate Harvard: weaponizing claims of antisemitism to threaten funding cuts and a revocation of the university’s tax-exempt status; demanding policy changes that include stopping all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; imposing harsh penalties on student and faculty protestors; and halting Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which would jeopardize the legal status of approximately 27 percent of the university’s students. The university has since sued the administration over this action, which was blocked by a federal judge. 

In deciding how to best protect itself against President Trump, Harvard must first acknowledge its role in designing the coffin the administration is trying to bury it in. Harvard’s administrators only publicly responded to the administration when its funding was threatened. In doing so, the university is falling into the same appeasement trap as Columbia University. Prior to its public response, Harvard had already punished students who expressed First Amendment rights, failed to uphold equity as a core institutional value by renaming diversity offices, and ended affinity group celebrations at graduation.  

The actions of the president and federal agencies threaten the foundations of American democracy and academic integrity, setting a dangerous precedent that schools with fewer resources will be hard-pressed to overcome. These attacks have gained legitimacy because they mirror how Harvard treats its own campus, like ignoring its Jewish students denouncing their political exploitation to derecognize pro-Palestine student organizations and forcing its own standard about what constitutes Jewish identity onto their own students.   

Harvard can defy these demands by utilizing their endowment in alliance with peer institutions and civil rights organizations, with the same urgency that these partners are supporting Harvard in protecting its own independence and academic integrity. The Ivy League collectively held over $190 billion for fiscal year 2024; Harvard’s own endowment is $52 billion. Though significant portions of endowments cannot be easily liquidated or used outside of specific purposes, there are enough resources to support litigation strategies, legislative advocacy, and public messaging highlighting that the country depends on the services provided by higher education institutions. 

In the immediate term, Harvard and its donors could effectively put those resources and partnerships to use by uniting behind opposition to the harmful education policies currently included in the reconciliation bill. Lawmakers are preparing to ram through a devastating suite of federal policy changes to trap future students with low incomes into student debt through changes to student loans, reopen pathways for for-profit colleges to exploit student veterans, and cut aid for nearly two-thirds of current Pell Grant recipients.

Though Harvard has significant power thanks to its reputation, that power withers without meaningful action from the school to redress its own war on students. Institutions of higher education must be willing to protect the rights and well-being of students and faculty now, or risk losing the trust of future cohorts who will no longer view higher education as a safe or inclusive learning environment. If students are not confident that they can exercise their First Amendment rights on campus without punishment or surveillance, how can they be confident that they will be safe from further escalations by the Trump Administration? 

Complacency to President Trump’s demands paves the way for the erosion of public trust in higher education across the United States, a mistake that American institutions have repeatedly committed in the past and seem eager to continue to make. Harvard’s past actions have emboldened the administration’s efforts to erode academic freedom and weaken educational institutions nationwide, but Harvard still has the opportunity to position higher education as a core pillar of American democracy.