Why Harvard Has No Way Out

New York Times

23-05-2025

The Trump administration's attempt to block international students from attending Harvard University was a sharp escalation in the showdown between the federal government and one of the nation's oldest and most powerful institutions.
It also showed how the younger side — the government — is the one with the upper hand.
Harvard has won praise for fighting back, and many legal experts believe the law is squarely on its side. But the administration holds the levers of power, and is methodically and creatively using them in a take-no-prisoners assault on the school.
To cut off the university's pipeline of international students — who make up about 27 percent of Harvard's enrollment — the government has turned to an obscure tactic it usually uses to shut down shoddy diploma mills.
'I was dumbfounded,' Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, told me. 'What's becoming increasingly clear is that this administration will use any tool that it can.'
A federal judge has already blocked the move for now, but my colleague Michael Schmidt, an investigative reporter who has been covering every twist in this story, tells me the damage may already be done. Today, he explained just how dire Harvard's predicament has become — and why the federal government's power over the nearly 400-year-old institution is even greater than he had appreciated.
JB: You have long covered the way Trump has used the power of the government to target his perceived enemies. How is this time different?
MS: There's been an audacity and creativity to the way that Trump has tried to use his power in the second term, and this is the latest example. Coming into this, we concentrated on his threats to lock up his enemies, like Liz Cheney or James Comey. The use of the government's power for purely political ends has manifested itself in ways that I think go beyond what we had imagined, and even beyond what Project 2025 contemplated.
Today, a judge temporarily blocked this Trump effort to bar international students from Harvard. Is that good news for Harvard? Is this over?
It's not over at all. For now, it allows foreign students to continue to attend Harvard. But what it doesn't remove is the question of what's going to happen.
If you're an international student at Harvard, are you going to be like, 'OK, cool, I'll just go to school in the fall, and I'll be checking the federal docket to see if the restraining order is still in place'?
I'd imagine that for international students, this makes the prospect of attending Harvard feel deeply uncertain — even unappealing. Where would the university find itself, even if it wins?
Even if Harvard runs the table in court, it's still persona non grata with the Trump administration, and that means that it's going to continue to face investigations, including from the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
Trump has stripped extensive federal funding from Harvard. Let's say a judge gives back all of that money for this year. Half of the university's research budget comes from the federal government. Where is Harvard going to get the money in the year after that, and the year after that? If you're a researcher, do you want to be doing research at a school where your funding is in question?
Harvard finds itself in this impossible position. If it continues to fight the administration, it will continue to get hit with these extraordinary uses of federal power to punish the university.
The federal government has more levers to use against an institution like Harvard than certainly I had appreciated. If you are persona non grata with Trump, he's got you by the lapels in a way that is extraordinary. And Harvard is feeling it. What we saw yesterday is just the latest pressure point.
What's happening at Harvard behind the scenes?
Harvard officials have privately determined they are in a major, major, major crisis with very few, if any, good off ramps.
If you're a law firm and you get hit with an executive order, you can go to court and get a restraining order. You can go back to work and things are semi-normal.
Harvard is much more complicated than that.
Is there anything happening behind the scenes to de-escalate this?
Harvard's board, as far as we know, won't let the university go back to the table. The board members don't trust that you can negotiate with Trump. And the things that Trump keeps hitting Harvard with are so destructive. How could you go back to the table?
This interview was condensed and edited.
The unwritten rules of a Trump dinner
Another way President Trump has flexed his power was his firing of the Kennedy Center's board members this year.
On Monday, he hosted the cultural center's new leadership in the State Dining Room of the White House, where my colleague Eric Lee captured this image.
Moments before, Eric said, Trump had been speaking, railing about the center's previous décor and programming ('Lesbian-only Shakespeare,' he claimed). He then invited Secretary of State Marco Rubio to speak — but suggested that the servers bring out the food at the same time, to move the evening along.
As Rubio competed with the sound of clanking plates and silverware, Eric noticed how everything around Trump seemed to stop. The staff put his food down first. Trump looked at his plate, not Rubio. Everyone around him waited.
'Nobody really started eating,' Eric told me, 'until Trump started digging in.'
Advice Britain never asked for
President Trump has a lot to say, and his words are often layered with meaning. My colleague Chris Cameron, a reporter in the Washington bureau, breaks down a Truth Social post the president made at 5:59 this morning.
President Trump is leveling his lance again at windmills.
On Friday, he criticized Britain for wind energy projects that now supply about a third of its power grid, writing on Truth Social that 'I strongly recommend' the island nation 'stop with the costly and unsightly windmills.'
His alternative? More oil drilling in the North Sea: 'U.K.'s Energy Costs would go WAY DOWN, and fast.'
He was nodding to a known predicament for the liberal government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which wants an ambitious transition to clean energy yet is wary of crippling the oil and gas industry.
But Trump's remarks also reflect his distaste for wind energy turbines. He has made numerous wild and false statements about them, claiming that they cause cancer, set off frequent blackouts and kill huge numbers of whales and birds.
How U write a commencement speech for the Trump era
The Trump administration's crackdown on universities has made the already delicate task of writing a commencement speech even more complicated. But the pop superstar Usher decided he could handle it.
My colleague Alan Blinder has a fascinating look at how Usher wrote the speech he delivered at Emory University last week, balancing a careful approach to the moment with his desire to let it burn.
'Education, which should be a fundamental right, is being politicized, minimized and, in some places, erased,' he said.
Read — and watch — more here.