Negotiate or fight? Trump has colleges right where he wants them.

Politico

4 hours ago

President Donald Trump's campaign against two of the planet's best-known universities is laying bare just how unprepared academia was to confront a hostile White House.
Schools never imagined facing an administration so willing to exercise government power so quickly — targeting the research funding, tax-exempt status, foreign student enrollment and financial aid eligibility schools need to function. That's left them right where the president wants them.
Even as Ivy League schools, research institutions, and college trade associations try to resist Trump's attacks in court, campus leaders are starting to accept they face only difficult choices: negotiate with the government, mount a painful legal and political fight — or simply try to stay out of sight.
Groundbreaking scientific research, financial aid for lower-income students and soft power as an economic engine once shielded schools' access to federal funds. Trump has now transformed those financial lifelines into leverage. And the diversity and independence of U.S. colleges and universities — something they've seen as a source of strength and competition — is straining efforts to form a singular response to the president.
'Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on the part of universities,' said Lee Bollinger, the former president of Columbia University. 'It feels now like there has been a naïveté on the part of universities. There's been no planning for this kind of thing.'
Schools are accustomed to tension with their faculty, governing boards, legislatures and governors. But punishments for resisting the Trump administration plumbed untested levels of severity this week when the president issued an executive order to bar foreign students from entering the country to study at Harvard University as his administration threatened Columbia's academic accreditation.
Even though Project 2025 — The Heritage Foundation's roadmap for a second Trump administration — previewed some of the tactics the administration would use, many school leaders may have underestimated the president's determination.
'It just seemed inconceivable that we would be in this position of having massive amounts of federal funding withheld, threats to have legislation that attacks your tax status, and now these new issues with international students,' Bollinger said.
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday night that blocked Trump's directive to restrict Harvard's access to international students.
But the administration is brandishing its response to Harvard's resistance as a warning to other schools who might resist, as federal officials pressure schools to negotiate the terms of a truce over the administration's complaints about campus antisemitism, foreign government influence and its opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
'We've held back funding from Columbia, we've also done the same thing with Harvard,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon told House lawmakers this past week.
'We are asking, as Columbia has done, to come to the table for negotiations,' she said, just hours before telling the school's accreditor it was violating federal anti-discrimination laws. 'We've also asked Harvard. Their answer was a lawsuit.'
A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
'What we've seen so far when it comes to Harvard is the playbook for holding these radical schools accountable is way deeper than anyone anticipated or expected,' a senior White House official told POLITICO.
'You're starting to get to the bone, so to speak, of holding these people accountable,' said the official, who was granted anonymity to freely discuss White House strategy. 'Harvard knows they cannot endure this for long, they just can't. They're going to have to come to the table, and we'll always be there to meet them. But this was a test case of what to do.'
The university described Trump's latest foreign student order this week as 'yet another illegal retaliatory step.' A federal judge in May blocked a separate administration attempt to prevent Harvard from enrolling international students.
Harvard is still locked in a legal fight over more than $2 billion in federal grants the White House blocked after the school refused to comply with demands to overhaul its admissions and disciplinary policies. Trump announced plans to cancel Harvard's tax-exempt status in early May, then later floated redistributing billions of dollars in university grants to trade schools.
'It is not our desire to bring these schools to their knees. The president reveres our higher educational facilities. He's a product of one,' the White House official said. 'But in order to hold these people accountable, we will be unrelenting in our enforcement of the law and hitting them where it hurts, which is their pocketbook.'
Many institutions have chosen a more muted response following months of conflict, including major public institutions in states that have also grown reliant on the full-freight tuition paid by international students.
'Universities don't have as many degrees of freedom, at least in the public sector, as you might think they do,' said Teresa Sullivan, the former president of the University of Virginia. 'One reason they seem to be relatively slow to act is there's a certain disbelief — can this really be happening?'
'We seem to be in uncharted territory, at least in my experience,' Sullivan said. 'All of a sudden, the rules don't seem to apply. I think that's disconcerting. It shakes the ground beneath you, and you don't necessarily know what to do next.'
Still, some higher education leaders are trying to confront the government. More than 650 campus officials have so far signed onto a joint statement that opposes 'the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.'
Sullivan and a group of other former presidents used an op-ed in The Washington Post to argue the Trump administration's offensive 'won't be confined to Harvard University.'
Trade associations including the American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities have joined schools in a lawsuit to block some of Trump's research funding cuts.
The Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a collective of school leaders, has also sued to challenge the Trump administration's attempts to target the legal status of thousands of foreign students.
'Your first obligation as president is you don't want to hurt the institution you represent,' Sullivan said of the relative silence coming from non-Ivy League institutions. 'These days it's hard to tell what hurts and what doesn't. I think that's the motive. The motive is not cowardice.'
Schools still face a choice between negotiating with the government — and risk compromising on their principles — or inviting Trump's rage by putting up a fight.
'Every school has had an option to correct course and work with the administration, or stand firm in their violations of the law,' the administration official said. 'They have an option, they know very well what to do.'
The real question, according to Bollinger, the former Columbia president, is how far the White House will go and how much resistance the schools are willing to put up.
'The power of government is so immense that if they want to destroy institutions, they can,' he said. 'What you do in that kind of environment is you stand on principle.'