The Trump administration on Thursday accused Harvard University of failing to report large foreign donations to the federal government as required by law, part of a widening effort to target the institution after it refused to comply with President Trump’s demands.
In a letter to Alan M. Garber, the university’s president, the Education Department told Harvard to provide names of foreign donors and all records of communication with them from the beginning of 2020.
The department also asked for a swath of records pertaining to foreigners who had spent time at Harvard, including any students Harvard had expelled or those who had their credentials canceled, going back to 2016. The request included details on visiting researchers, scholars, students and faculty from other countries beginning from 2010, along with their last known addresses.
Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman, disputed the notion that the university had not been complying with laws requiring them to file reports disclosing foreign donations of more than $250,000.
“Harvard has filed Section 117 reports for decades as part of its ongoing compliance with the law,” he said in a statement.
The records request is the latest instance of the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Harvard into submission as it cracks down on a number of institutions of higher learning over diversity and equity initiatives and what it called a failure to address antisemitism on campuses.
In March, the Trump administration said that it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard, claiming that the university had allowed antisemitism to run unchecked.
The Trump administration then formalized its list of demands for the institution in a letter dated last Friday. The administration demanded, among other things, that the university change its admissions criteria to be solely merit-based, implement “viewpoint diversity” among the faculty, submit to an “audit” of its hiring practices, amend its disciplinary standards and report to the federal government whenever a foreign student engages in a conduct violation.
Mr. Garber refused to accede to any of the demands, writing in response that the administration’s order “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”
“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,” Mr. Garber continued.
The move was cheered by many of Mr. Trump’s critics, including former President Obama, who wrote on social media that Harvard had “set an example for other higher-ed institutions” to follow. And Harvard’s stance may inspire other universities under similar pressure.
Less than 12 hours after Mr. Garber issued his letter, Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, released a statement saying that the university would not comply with demands from the Trump administration that “require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy.”
Less than a month earlier, under Ms. Shipman’s predecessor, Katrina A. Armstrong, Columbia struck a deal with the Trump administration to avoid losing $400 million in federal grants. The agreement included changing its rules for on-campus protests and appointing a senior vice provost to oversee the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, after government officials demanded it be put in receivership.
The Trump administration’s response to Harvard’s defiance was swift. Just hours after receiving Mr. Garber’s letter, federal officials punished Harvard by freezing $2.2 billion in federal grants and have since been threatening to revoke the institution’s tax-exempt status.
Complying with the administration’s latest request could be a significant undertaking.
Harvard, by its own numbers, has more than 69,000 alumni who live outside the United States, in 202 countries. All of them are likely to have been solicited by the university for donations. Since Harvard technically cancels the credentials of any student who departs campus, whether by graduating or through expulsion, it is conceivable that the Trump administration’s demand for records could apply to nearly all of them.
The size of Harvard’s network of visiting scholars who are from or now reside in other countries was not immediately clear.
Vimal Patel contributed reporting.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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