The past year at Harvard has been turbulent, to say the least. Soon after the Trump administration took office, the federal government launched a broad assault on higher education, citing concerns about bias and antisemitism. Universities across the country have grappled with threats over federal research funding, student visas, and tax rates. And while Harvard has embraced campus reform, it rejected a set of unprecedented government demands last spring—prompting the Trump administration to use every lever at its disposal to turn Harvard into an example.
The impasse has played out in a dizzying swirl of announcements, lawsuits, injunctions, and appeals. How has the government’s multipronged assault affected Harvard, and where do things currently stand? Here’s an update.
Civil Rights and University Governnce
The Trump administration’s actions began on January 21, 2025, with an executive order targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs nationwide. The administration invoked Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which prohibits “discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin” at institutions that receive federal funding—to declare DEI programs illegal.
The government also cited the incendiary nationwide campus protests that followed the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza—warning Harvard and 59 other colleges that they were under investigation for possible Title VI violations due to their alleged failure to protect Jewish students.
The government entered discussions with a number of universities—and made multimillion-dollar settlements with several of them. But when Harvard rejected the government’s sweeping demands for federal oversight, the administration used every form of federal power to pressure the University into capitulating.
KEY DATES:
• March 31, 2025: Citing a federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism investigation into antisemitism at Harvard, federal agencies place $9 billion in federal funding (presumably including research grants for affiliated hospitals) under review. In a letter to the University community, President Alan M. Garber states his resolve to address discrimination: “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president, and I know how damaging it can be to a student who has come to learn and make friends at a college or university.”
• April 11, 2025: A letter from the Trump administration demands federal oversight of Harvard’s hiring and admissions practices and student discipline, changes to the University’s governance structure, and quarterly reports to the government. (The government later says the letter was sent in error.)
• April 14, 2025: In a letter to the University community, Garber rejects the government’s demands, which he calls “assertions of power, unmoored from the law, to control teaching and learning at Harvard and to dictate how we operate.” He continues: “The work of addressing our shortcomings, fulfilling our commitments, and embodying our values is ours to define and undertake as a community.”
• September 29, 2025: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights threatens “suspension and debarment” of Harvard for its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students.
THE IMPACT:
The federal civil rights actions laid the groundwork for the Trump administration’s efforts to curtail billions of dollars in federal grants and funding—an effort that continues, though the government has shifted tactics as it has hit legal roadblocks. Harvard’s resistance to the government’s demands earned it acclaim from many across higher education, along with a substantial increase in donations.
CURRENT STATUS:
The government continues to assert that Harvard has shown “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism. But Harvard points to a long list of actions it has taken over the past year to change the campus climate, including promoting respectful dialogue and clarifying rules around protest and dissent. Harvard implemented recommendations from University reports on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias, such as instituting training on antisemitism; creating new courses related to Jewish culture and history; and dismissing faculty leaders of programs that some accused of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. The University also renamed and refocused its DEI offices to emphasize pluralism.
Federal Research Funding
The government has linked its ongoing Title VI investigations to the federal grants Harvard receives from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health to advance scientific research—all awarded through a competitive process, based on the merits of the science, that has been in place since the 1940s.
KEY DATES:
• April 14, 2025: The same day the University refuses the government’s April 11 ultimatum, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism unilaterally halts the unspent majority of $2.2 billion in multiyear research grants and $60 million in active contracts.
• April 21, 2025: Harvard sues the Trump administration, arguing that the government’s funding freeze violates the First Amendment and sidesteps established procedures for addressing alleged civil rights violations.
• September 3, 2025: U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs issues a scathing 84-page ruling in Harvard’s favor, saying the Trump administration’s actions violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act and used antisemitism as a “smokescreen” for ideological retaliation. Her decision, which the government has appealed, restores the previously awarded grants.
• March 20, 2026: The government files a new lawsuit alleging that Harvard has violated Title VI by showing “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism. The suit seeks to rescind restored grants along with all federal funding, which would include Pell Grants and federal student loans.
THE IMPACT:
Universities across the country have grappled with the loss of federal grants, but Harvard, which expends roughly $700 million per year through federal grant funding, is particularly vulnerable. Even before the sudden suspension of research funding, financial pressures, including a looming, substantial increase to the endowment tax, had been mounting. The past year saw a salary freeze for all non-union employees, a hiring moratorium, and layoffs across schools and divisions. Harvard deployed emergency funds to keep critical research going.
Several schools also reduced admissions of Ph.D. students, including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which instituted a controversial 50-percent reduction for the 2026-2027 academic year. The FAS has since announced a donor-led matching fund, aiming to raise $100 million to support 50 Ph.D. fellowships in perpetuity.
CURRENT STATUS:
Harvard’s existing federal grants were restored because of Burroughs’s ruling, but the University’s success in securing similar levels of grant funding in the future is uncertain. Meanwhile, the government’s March 2026 lawsuit awaits a hearing in the court of U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns, J.D. ’76; Harvard’s response is due this spring. A group of about 120 Jewish faculty and staff members, representing diverse points of view about the campus turmoil after October 7, 2023, signed an open letter this March saying the suit “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism to justify what can only be described as an authoritarian assault on institutions of higher education.”
Taxes and Tax Exemption
After Harvard refused to accede to the government’s demands last April, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said it would order the Internal Revenue Service to begin the process of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, which would make charitable contributions to the University taxable and could force the University to pay state property and sales taxes (Harvard currently makes payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to Cambridge and Boston). Later in the summer, Congress took up a bid to raise the tax on investment gains for all university endowments.
KEY DATES:
• July 3, 2025: As part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Congress approves an increased tax on endowment investment gains that raises Harvard’s rate from 1.4 percent to an anticipated 8 percent beginning in the 2027 fiscal year.
THE IMPACT:
The increased tax will cost the University an estimated $300 million each year—another significant blow to its budgets.
CURRENT STATUS:
There is no evidence the IRS ever took steps to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status (in a manner many believe would have been illegal). But the combined financial impacts of federal policy changes and the endowment tax hike have been felt in belt-tightening and layoffs across the University. Last fall, the FAS cited the tax among the reasons it will suspend all non-essential capital projects and change its administrative structure to make operations more sustainable.
International Students
In the spring of 2025—at the same time as it was targeting University governance and research funding—the Trump administration suggested that international students are a security risk and that their enrollment displaces deserving U.S. citizens.
KEY DATES:
• May 22, 2025: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security revokes the certification that allows Harvard to host international students, who represent about a quarter of the student body.
• May 23, 2025: Harvard sues the federal government, calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” and immediately wins a temporary restraining order.
• May 29, 2025: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructs consular officials to review Harvard visa applicants’ social media accounts for expressions of antisemitism, and to flag private accounts as suspicious. This practice is soon extended to non-Harvard visa applicants. The same day, opening his Commencement address, Garber welcomes graduates “from around the world, just as it should be.”
• June 4, 2025: U.S. President Donald Trump issues a presidential proclamation specifically targeting Harvard, attempting to bar its international students from entering the U.S. on national security grounds. Harvard amends its earlier complaint to encompass the proclamation, and a federal judge blocks Trump’s order within hours.
• June 20, 2025: Judge Burroughs issues a preliminary injunction barring the government from revoking Harvard’s visa certification.
THE IMPACT:
Citing the value of diverse perspectives, Harvard developed contingency plans for international students that include enrollment at other institutions, remote instruction, and legal efforts to aid students seeking visas. So far, those plans haven’t been deployed; when a new academic year began in September 2025, international student enrollments remained in line with prior years across the University.
CURRENT STATUS:
The government has appealed the court’s injunction against Trump’s June 4 proclamation, arguing that the U.S. president has “unreviewable” executive authority over immigration for national security purposes. On January 20, 2026, a coalition of 22 higher education associations filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard. Oral arguments are expected later in 2026.
U.S. Military Education
Accusing Harvard of “hate-America activism,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, M.P.P. ’13, declared this winter that his department will end its support of professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs at Harvard.
KEY DATES:
• February 6, 2026: Hegseth announces the move in a video posted on X. The military sent officers to Harvard “hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” he says. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard—heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”
THE IMPACT:
The Defense Department never publicly defined the scope of Hegseth’s decision, but it seems to focus on graduate-level training and leadership programs for active-duty service members, many of them housed at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).
CURRENT STATUS:
On March 4, 2026, HKS Dean of the Faculty Jeremy Weinstein alerted active-duty service members who have applied to HKS that the school would offer two contingency plans for those admitted: the opportunity to defer their admission for up to four years or to receive expedited consideration for admission at four peer institutions.
Admissions Data
In a court filing this WINTER, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged the University has withheld applicant-level data it says the government is entitled to access to verify compliance with a Supreme Court ruling banning race-conscious admissions. The agency did not accuse Harvard of violating that ruling but asked for data including applicants’ race and ethnicity, grade point averages, financial aid offerings, and their high school and zip code demographics.
KEY DATES:
• February 13, 2026: The Justice Department files a complaint in federal district court asking a judge to compel Harvard to hand over individual student files. Harvard responds that it has provided thousands of pages of data “in good faith.”
• March 23, 2026: The Department of Education announces a civil rights investigation into “whether Harvard continues to use illegal race-based preference in admissions.” The University calls the move one of “the government’s latest retaliatory actions against Harvard for its refusal to surrender our independence and Constitutional rights.”
THE IMPACT:
While data from recently admitted classes support the view that Harvard is complying with the law, applicants may not want their admissions packets subjected to federal scrutiny; some legal analysts have said that passing on personally identifiable information could violate federal privacy laws.
CURRENT STATUS:
Harvard is expected to respond to this latest lawsuit this spring.
