Harvard students sign open letter urging university to hold line in negotiations with Trump administration

Boston Globe

07-07-2025

Harvard didn't immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the letter, which was
The letter came less than two weeks after President Trump
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In its letter, the student group said that if 'a deal is indeed close to being reached, we sincerely hope that it is because the Trump administration has backed down, not because Harvard has caved.'
The implications go well beyond
Harvard, the students said.
'As the leading university in this country and worldwide, and as a robust cornerstone of American civil society, the responsibility of standing up to tyranny is ours,' the letter said.
The
students said they want Harvard and institutions facing similar threats to 'reject any unreasonable or unlawful demands' from the Trump administration.
'The law is on our side,' the letter concluded. 'The truth is on our side. Even the ever-elusive court of public opinion is on our side. And so long as we maintain our moral clarity, history will be on our side too.'
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Jordan Schwartz, a spokesperson for the group, said by email Monday that 286 people had signed the letter,
including 37 who had 'chosen to remain anonymous due to the political climate.'
While Harvard
Harvard says it has arrived at these changes — which range from new disciplinary procedures and reckonings over campus antisemitism to rhetorical shifts away from diversity, equity, and inclusion — on its own terms. A Harvard spokesperson pointed out that some of its actions predate Trump's pressure campaign against the university.
Harvard came to the negotiating table after months of impasse, the Globe
In doing so, Harvard will have to navigate a difficult landscape. Its unwillingness to submit to Trump has been popular among many of its students and supporters, and Harvard's leadership has been reluctant to cede control to Trump on issues it sees as core to academic freedom: admissions, hiring, and viewpoint diversity.
Trump administration officials have said they are eager to talk with Harvard, hoping to make a legacy-defining deal with the nearly 400-year-old university it claims has become a bastion of leftist ideology. Harvard has sued the administration over cuts to federal funding and efforts to prevent it from hosting international students, which a judge blocked last month.
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In April, the Trump administration's antisemitism task force
Harvard's
The administration's task force has said its demands came in response to
The task force called for Harvard to review programs it claimed had 'egregious records of antisemitism or other bias' by commissioning someone outside the university to, for instance, find faculty members who 'discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students' or 'incited students to violate Harvard's rules' by August 2025.
The panel also told Harvard to change its student discipline procedures, including by retroactively punishing protest leaders over the past two years and banning masks that can conceal protesters' identities.
But some of the task force's asks also appeared to go beyond the scope of tackling antisemitism. The group, for instance, called for extensive reforms to admissions and hiring practices, including to make admissions 'merit-based,' scrutinize prospective international students more intensely, and expand 'viewpoint diversity.' It also demanded Harvard's 'full cooperation' with the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration seeks to detain and deport immigrants in large numbers, and it called for the university to shutter programs and remove policies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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As the conflict has escalated in recent months, some Trump administration officials
Harvard has made several changes relevant to Trump's demands, but has said it has done so in line with Garber's
On Monday, Schwartz said his group hasn't heard back from the university since sending the letter last week.
'Nor do we necessarily expect to,' he said by email. 'Especially during the legal fight (and potential negotiations), they would not want to publicly take a stance on this letter, which we completely understand. The goal of this letter is primarily to show our admin what students want them to do and to let them know that we have their back. The best response they could send us wouldn't be a letter of reply, but to keep standing up for us in the courts and at the negotiating table.'
Material from prior Globe stories and Globe wire services was used in this report.
Travis Andersen can be reached at