Harvard's Powerful Leader Faces Intense Scrutiny in Trump Fight

New York Times

26-07-2025

In the high-stakes negotiations between the Trump administration and Harvard University, the White House and a growing number of people at Harvard have at least one shared goal.
They want Penny Pritzker, the head of the university's top governing board, out.
Ms. Pritzker holds a powerful post as the leader of the Harvard Corporation that in normal times is also a quiet one. The corporation is the equivalent of a board of trustees at any other academic institution and is mostly focused on fund-raising, strategy and picking the university's president.
But for Harvard, these are far from normal times. The government has cut billions in federal funds to the school and tried to ban international students — a quarter of its enrollment — from attending. The school has sued the government twice in the last several months, even as it tries to negotiate an end to a conflict that has forced painful belt-tightening. As Harvard's problems pile up, Ms. Pritzker's leadership has been called into question.
On campus, prominent professors and donors are wondering whether she should go. And two Trump administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as delicate negotiations continue, say the hope is that the government's pressure campaign on the school will lead to her ouster.
Ms. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, has donated $100 million to Harvard for a new economics building. She has close ties with the Democratic Party and her family has a history of bad blood with President Trump. She has also faced criticism over her handling of the controversy surrounding Harvard's former president, Claudine Gay, who resigned under pressure last year.
Now, some people tied to the school say that Ms. Pritzker has become a distraction that seems to be hurting rather than helping the university's efforts to beat back an onslaught of Trump administration attacks. They suggested that she could be a concession whose resignation could help Harvard's efforts to negotiate with the White House, if she would only agree to leave.
A dozen people, including friends, professors, alumni, major donors and Trump officials, discussed Ms. Pritzker's role and future at the school. Several asked not to be identified because they worried about endangering Harvard's talks with the administration.
One administration official said that Ms. Pritzker's resignation has not been explicitly included as part of any offers. But unofficially, Trump officials have discussed a desire for her to leave to show Harvard's commitment to making changes.
Some argued that there was a legitimate need to add fresh attitudes and skills to the board, though they conceded that such a move could be misconstrued as capitulation.
'The corporation should be accountable for some of the problems that have existed, and the chair of the corporation would be a natural person to be subject to turnover at a time like this,' said Dr. Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of the Harvard Medical School who has criticized both the Trump administration's interference in higher education and universities over free speech concerns.
A prominent academic at Harvard suggested that Ms. Pritzker's departure would be a small price to pay. Unlike many of the demands that the Trump administration is making of the school, losing the board's leader would not compromise Harvard's academic freedom.
But since the corporation is a self-appointing body, any change in its membership would have to come from within.
Ms. Pritzker also retains many supporters at Harvard, who say she has led the school well through multiple crises. They point to her business and political expertise, and argue that a more reserved leadership style is what the post calls for at the moment.
Jason Furman, who worked with Ms. Pritzker at the White House during the Obama administration and is now an economics professor at Harvard, said he believed the Harvard community is enthusiastic about its current leaders.
'A year ago, there were many people that were upset with the leadership, and now people are just generally quite unified,' he said, and 'quite reflexively against the idea that you would do something for Donald Trump.'
Ms. Pritzker, 66, declined to be interviewed for this article. A spokesman for Harvard declined to comment.
As the battle between Harvard and the White House enters what could be its final phase, Ms. Pritzker is in the fray, a close business associate said. She talks to Dr. Alan Garber, Harvard's president, every day, sometimes more than once a day, this associate said. And as the head of a corporation with the power to hire and fire the president, Ms. Pritzker has an outsize influence.
Friends said she was unlikely to give in.
Vivian Riefberg, who has known Ms. Pritzker since they met as freshmen at Harvard in the late '70s, said Ms. Pritzker cares most about 'seeking constructive engagement.'
'Some people like a fight. She likes to make a difference,' said Ms. Riefberg, a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
Ms. Pritzker was elected to the 13-member corporation in 2018. The members are quaintly known as 'fellows,' and she became the first woman to lead the board in 2022.
Her first major decision was picking Dr. Gay as Harvard's president. Ms. Pritzker stood at the new president's side throughout the inauguration ceremony in 2023, beaming through her blocky glasses as speakers celebrated Dr. Gay as Harvard's first Black president.
Three months later, Dr. Gay's tenure ended. She had flubbed a question in a congressional hearing about whether calling for genocide against Jews broke Harvard's rules. Dr. Gay was also accused of plagiarism. In the firestorm that followed, Bill Ackman, the Pershing Square hedge fund founder and a Harvard graduate, criticized Dr. Gay — but also Ms. Pritzker, for not doing due diligence before hiring her.
After Dr. Gay resigned, Mr. Ackman called for Ms. Pritzker and other members of the corporation to follow suit.
In May, Mr. Ackman again posted a call for Ms. Pritzker to step down. While she might be 'a fine person,' he wrote on X, 'she has led Harvard during a period of substantial damage to the institution's global reputation, the explosion of antisemitism on campus, and dramatic deterioration in Harvard's financial wherewithal.'
Harvard has defended itself vociferously, though its leaders have said that they recognize that there are problems with antisemitism on campus and have been working to address them.
The Trump administration has taken note of Mr. Ackman's criticism, however. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, sent a letter to Harvard saying that it should no longer seek grants from the government 'since none will be provided.'
In her letter, Ms. McMahon cited Mr. Ackman. She also wrote, 'The Harvard Corporation, which is supposed to competently and professionally manage Harvard's vast academic, financial and physical resources, is run by strongly left-leaning Obama political appointee Penny Pritzker, a Democrat operative, who is catastrophic and running the institution in a totally chaotic way.'
Many at Harvard believe that being so conspicuously branded as allied with one political party has become a handicap for Ms. Pritzker.
She was the national finance chair of Barack Obama's first presidential campaign, and secretary of commerce in the second Obama administration. Her brother, JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, has established himself as an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump and is expected to run for president in 2028.
Ms. Riefberg, her college friend, said Ms. Pritzker was able to transcend partisan politics. She recalled that she had been almost unanimously confirmed by the Senate as commerce secretary in 2013. (Senator Bernie Sanders was the lone dissenter.)
The Pritzker family's conflicts with the president precede the current battle between Harvard and the government. Her uncle, Jay Pritzker, who established the Hyatt hotel chain with Ms. Pritzker's father, feuded with Mr. Trump over a hotel deal made in the '70s.
'There I was, at the lowest point of my financial life,' Mr. Trump told The New York Times in 1993, 'and they tried to force me to default or sell my hotel cheaply.'
Mr. Trump promised to exact revenge. 'I always said, the first time I got back on my feet, the Pritzkers would be the first people I'd go after,' he told The Chicago Tribune in 1993. (Mr. Trump later sold his interest in the hotel.)
As Mr. Trump attacks Harvard, alumni, faculty and donors have suggested that convincing taxpayers of Harvard's importance in American society has never been more urgent. But some complain that Ms. Pritzker has stayed out of the public eye.
One alumnus who attended a dinner with her at the Harvard Club in New York remembers that she let Dr. Garber do all the talking and said little beyond hello, goodbye and thank you.
In April, when the Trump administration issued a series of demands of Harvard, including exercising some control over hiring, teaching and admissions, it was Dr. Garber who signed a public letter saying that Harvard would fight.
'An elite institution like Harvard benefits from public support and is vested with public interest,' said Lloyd Blankfein, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs and a Harvard graduate. 'Leadership and oversight here comes with high profile. Don't take the job if you're not prepared for that. Shyness is not a virtue.'
Members of a presidential advisory group on antisemitism remember that Ms. Pritzker did respond after several of them threatened to resign. Beaming into a video meeting from an airplane, Ms. Pritzker, who is a practicing Jew, according to her friends, assured them that their suggestions were being heard.
Ms. Pritzker's allies say that it is more effective for Harvard to unite behind one voice, in this case, Dr. Garber.
'She does not pick fights for the sake of fights or headlines or fun and excitement,' said Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who got to know Ms. Pritzker during the first Obama presidential campaign.
Dr. Furman, the economics professor, said she was acting appropriately in her role. 'You hear from the C.E.O., you don't hear from the chairman,' Dr. Furman said. As head of the board, he added, 'you're not supposed to be the face, but you're supposed to be a very, very key person in shaping the decision.'
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist who has been sharply critical of the Trump administration and urged Harvard to fight back, said Harvard's leadership was perceived by many faculty members to be more attentive to donors and outside interests than to faculty and students.
Still, he said, 'I don't think the federal government should be using its leverage to force out the leadership of a private university. That's authoritarianism.'
Supporters say she brings her considerable business knowledge to the table, noting she rose to the top in male-dominated industries. Ms. Pritzker, who graduated from Harvard in 1981, is now the head of PSP Partners, a private investment firm, and she is worth $4.1 billion.
Harvard's corporation is stuffed with eminent figures from Big Law, big business and elite academia. Perhaps not accidentally, however, the corporation's politics have shifted somewhat. This year, Kannon Shanmugam, who clerked for Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court justice, replaced Ted Wells, a lawyer and Democratic Party donor.
So far the shift has not seemed to help Harvard's case. In recent days, the Trump administration has only escalated its attacks on the school.
The fight with the Trump administration has convinced some people at Harvard that its governance model might need radical change.
'It might not be enough for Penny Pritzker to leave Harvard,' said Kit Parker, a bioengineering and applied physics professor on Harvard's Council on Academic Freedom, a group dedicated to supporting diverse points of view.
'It might need to be something much bigger,' he said. He added, 'It's hard to hold any one person responsible for what has happened at Harvard over the last 10 years.'
Changing the board, he said, 'might be the one thing they can agree on without anyone losing face.'
Kirsten Noyes, Susan C. Beachy and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. Michael C. Bender and Stephanie Saul contributed reporting.