All the Actions the Trump Administration Has Taken Against Harvard

Presidential threats. Onerous investigations. Extensive funding cuts.

The Trump administration has wielded all three against Harvard University in what began as the work of a task force the president commissioned to address antisemitism on campus — but has sprawled into a multifaceted pressure campaign that leverages the scope and power of the federal government.

The effort involves at least eight investigations spanning at least six agencies, including the Departments of Justice, Education and Health and Human Services. Some of those agencies, and others, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, have pulled or frozen grants from the school and its research partners, totaling nearly $4 billion.

The administration targeted Harvard — and other elite schools, such as Columbia University — as part of a broader political and legal strategy to reshape academia’s race-based admissions policies and perceived liberal bias. While not being officially framed as a personal vendetta for President Trump, the government’s increasingly punitive actions have come after Harvard resisted many of the changes his administration demanded to admissions, curriculum and hiring practices.

So far, the moves have not convinced the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to come back to the negotiating table, even if school officials have privately expressed concerns about the lasting damage that feuding with the administration could cause.

The university sued after the administration threatened to take away billions in federal funding and has pushed back strongly against the various investigations, denying allegations of wrongdoing and maintaining that it is committed to following the law.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” Harvard’s president, Dr. Alan Garber, wrote last month. “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.”

The origins of Mr. Trump’s strategy can be traced, at least in part, to his first administration, when the Justice Department joined a lawsuit against Harvard that argued that the use of race in admissions was discriminatory. Five years later, in 2023, as Mr. Trump was campaigning, the Supreme Court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, doing away with affirmative action. That decision has underpinned his second administration’s assault on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Here are all the major actions Mr. Trump’s second administration has taken against Harvard so far:

Demand letter

Curriculum changes, hiring overhauls and adjustments to admission policies that align with the Trump administration’s political agenda

• Date: April 11

• What happened: The administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism sent Harvard a letter outlining a list of 10 demands that went far beyond concerns about antisemitism and diversity policies. They included a ban on admitting students “hostile to the American values” inscribed in the Constitution; an audit of the political ideology of the student body and faculty to determine “viewpoint diversity”; and quarterly status updates from the school for the remainder of Mr. Trump’s term. Trump officials later said the letter had been sent by mistake.

• Status: Harvard announced on April 14 that it would not comply with the administration’s requests and sued the government on April 21 over its demands in federal court in Massachusetts.

Funding cuts and freezes

$2.2 billion in multiyear research grants, $60 million in contracts

• Date: April 14

• What happened: The task force announced the move to cancel this tranche of funding, mainly from the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s primary agency for biomedical and public health research, in retaliation for Harvard’s refusal to comply with its April 11 list of demands.

• Status: Terminated

$1 billion in National Institutes of Health funding for Harvard’s research partners

• Date: April 22

• What happened: The administration froze roughly 500 grants for Harvard-affiliated institutions from N.I.H, according to two senior officials at the health department who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Recipients of these grants include Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an internationally recognized teaching hospital in Boston known for its work on heart and vascular cancer.

• Status: Paused

Disqualified from all future federal grants

Date: May 5

What happened: The decision was relayed to Dr. Garber in a contentious letter signed by Linda McMahon, the education secretary, that made no mention of antisemitism or transgender issues. The missive overflowed with Mr. Trump’s familiar grievances and deployed some of his signature stylings, like the use of all-capital letters to emphasize words and social media to announce the move.

Status: Dr. Garber responded on May 12 with a letter that struck a more conciliatory tone, noting the school and the government’s “common ground” and “shared interest.” “We welcome the opportunity to share further information with you about the important work we are undertaking to combat prejudice and to pursue our mission of excellence in teaching, learning, and research,” he wrote.

$450 million in multiagency grants

• Date: May 13

• What happened: This broadside leveled no new accusations at Harvard. Instead, the task force combating antisemitism announced the termination of grants from eight federal agencies because, it charged, the school was a “breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination.” It did not identify the agencies involved.

• Status: Terminated

$60 million in grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Date: May 19

• What happened: The Department of Health and Human Services announced the cuts in a social media post, citing the college’s “continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination.”

• Status: Terminated

Investigations

Health department investigation into Harvard Medical School graduation ceremonies

• Date: Feb. 3

• What happened: Ten days before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to run the health department, the agency’s Office of Civil Rights opened a compliance review into Harvard based on a report in The New York Post about some students at medical school graduations, including Harvard, wearing buttons or scarves in support of Palestine.

• Status: The university provided the agency with video of the four-hour ceremony showing that some details in the story, based on an article in an Israel-based medical journal, were incorrect. The department responded on April 19 that it had expanded the scope of its investigation to include all activities at Harvard since Oct. 7, 2023, the date of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel. Israel’s response to those attacks prompted on-campus protests across the country, including at Harvard.

Education Department inquiry into allegations of harassment of Jewish students

• Date: March 10

• What happened: Harvard was among 60 universities warned by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights about potential enforcement actions connected to allegations of antisemitism and harassment toward Jewish students during on-campus protests of Israel’s military campaign.

• Status: The department did not cite any specific complaints, but its concerns about protests have since been included in other government investigations of Harvard.

Antisemitism Task Force review of all contracts for Harvard and its affiliates.

• Date: March 31

• What happened: Suggesting that the university had not done enough to curb antisemitism, the task force said it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts.

• Status: Broad threats to defund Harvard underpin the university’s lawsuit, which argues that the government was trying to use those dollars “to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard” in violation of the First Amendment.

Homeland Security investigation into international student enrollment

• Date: April 16

• What happened: Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, told Harvard in a letter that the university had “created a hostile learning environment for Jewish students” and threatened to disqualify the school from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

• Status: Ms. Noem requested a trove of detailed records about the student body, including information on the coursework of student visa holders to verify that they had taken enough classes to “maintain nonimmigrant student status.”

Education Department investigation into disclosures of foreign gifts

• Date: April 17

• What happened: The Education Department said the college had submitted “incomplete and inaccurate disclosures” of large foreign donations. Elite universities like Harvard have been attacked for more than a decade, mostly by Republicans, about the potential influence of foreign money, but Congress has not banned colleges from taking money from any foreign actors nor required universities to provide more detailed reports.

• Status: The department asked Harvard to provide an extensive list of documents and data.

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission inquiry into accusations of discrimination against white, Asian, male and heterosexual applicants

• Date: April 25

• What happened: Noting the increase among faculty of people of color, women and those identifying as nonbinary, as well as the decrease of white men in tenure-track jobs, the commission opened an investigation into the university’s hiring practices.

• Status: The ongoing investigation was opened at the urging of Andrea Lucas, the acting chairwoman of the E.E.O.C., an independent federal agency that enforces civil rights laws involving workplace discrimination. The agency has subpoena power, can seek to resolve disputes through mediation and can also reach settlements, as it has with several law firms the administration has targeted.

Joint agency investigation into accusations of racial preferences at the Harvard Law Review

• Date: April 28

• What happened: The Education Department and H.H.S. are reviewing the use of racial preferences at the student-run journal.

• Status: Ongoing

Education Department review of admissions policies

• Date: May 2

• What happened: In a letter to Dr. Garber, Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said that the agency was investigating whether the university was racially discriminating against undergraduate applicants. The letter did not refer to any specific complaint, report or other information that raised concern about the school’s admissions process.

• Status: The department is seeking a significant amount of data from Harvard.

Justice Department investigation into whether the school’s admission policies defrauded the government

• Date: May 12

• What happened: The Justice Department opened the civil investigation under the False Claims Act, a law designed to punish those who swindle the government. The government did not include a specific accusation of wrongdoing beyond a suggestion that the school was not complying with the 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious admissions practices. Harvard said that the university had complied with the ruling and was continuing to do so.

• Status: The university has 20 days to produce documents and 30 days to testify.

Threats From Trump

“What if we never pay them?”

• Date: April 1

• What happened: Mr. Trump privately floated the astounding proposal to withhold all federal funding from Harvard in a meeting with his advisers.

• Status: About one-third of Harvard’s total funding has been halted, and Ms. McMahon, the education secretary, said in an interview on May 16 that canceling the remainder remained an option to continue applying pressure on Harvard.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status.”

• Date: May 2

• What happened: Mr. Trump posted on social media that his administration would revoke the university’s tax-exempt status, an idea he had floated before. “It’s what they deserve!” he added. Harvard signaled it would challenge this, too, saying such a move would have no legal basis.

• Status: It is unclear whether the I.R.S. is in fact moving forward with revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, a change that could typically occur only after a lengthy process. Federal law prohibits the president from directing the I.R.S. to conduct tax investigations, and I.R.S. employees who receive such a command are required to report it to an internal government watchdog.

Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering President Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.

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