On one side is Harvard, the oldest and richest university in the nation, with a brand that is so powerful that her name is synonymous with prestige. On the other hand, the Trump administration, which is determined to go on than any other white house, is located to form American university formation.
Both sides go into a collision that could test the limits of the power of the government and independence that has made us universities a goal for scientists around the world.
On Monday, Harvard was the first university to open the Trump administration openly because it requires extensive changes to limit activism on campus. The university frames the government’s demands as a threat not only for the Ivy League school, but also to the autonomy that the Supreme Court has granted American universities for a long time.
“The university will not hand over its independence or not hand over its constitutional rights,” the university’s lawyers wrote to the government on Monday. “Neither Harvard nor another private university can be taken over by the federal government.”
The federal government says that they freeze more than 2.2 billion US dollars of grants and shots of $ 60 million in Harvard. Financing marks the seventh time that the Trump government has taken such a step on one of the nation’s elite college to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda. Six of the seven schools are in the Ivy League.
No university is better positioned to run a struggle than Harvard, whose 53 billion dollars is the largest in the nation. But like other major universities, Harvard also depends on federal financing that his scientific and medical research is writing. It is unclear how long Harvard could continue without the frozen money.
Apparently Harvard’s rejection seems to encourage other institutions.
After he initially agreed on several demands of the Trump administration, the incumbent president of Columbia University accepted a defiant tone in a campus message on Monday and said some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation”.
In her explanation, Claire Shipman said that she had read “great interest” from Harvard’s rejection.
“Harvard is obviously a particularly powerful institution. And her decision has the potential to transfer other universities into a kind of collective pushback,” said David Pozen, a law professor of Columbia, who argued that the government’s demands were unlawful.
Ultimately, the conflict could be settled before a federal court. A faculty group has already presented a legal contestation of the claims, and many in science expect Harvard to initiate their own lawsuit.
In his letter of rejection, Harvard said that the government’s claims violated the rights of the first changes to the school and other civil rights laws.
For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in her attempt to force changes to universities, from which Republicans have become breeding sites of liberalism and anti -Semitism.
