New Trump Administration Actions Vs. Harvard Further Threaten Science

Consider this round “whatever” in the ongoing Trump administration grudge match versus Harvard University. The latest big salvo from the federal government under President Donald Trump came on Thursday when the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. Trump followed up on May 25 by posting on Truth Social that he wants the “names and countries’ of all international students at Harvard. And guess what once again might be disproportionately negatively affected by more such federal actions against Harvard? Here’s a hint: it rhymes with science.

Trump Administration Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International Students

Currently, Harvard has 6,703 non-U.S. residents currently enrolled in its various schools with 331 of them at Harvard Medical School, 413 at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and 63 at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. That means about 12% of students potentially affected by the DHS actions are in the health sciences arenas. Add to that a sizable percentage of the 1,735 international students enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who are in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering and other STEM stuff.

In the sciences, international students play significant roles in not only paying tuition and filling classrooms but also contributing to scientific research and healthcare work. Many laboratories and research groups at Harvard and other academic institutions around the U.S. relay heavily on international students and trainees to do work. Such students also often assist with a lot of the work done in many healthcare settings because healthcare education and training can be euphemisms for do stuff that no one else is available to do. Moreover, after such international students complete their degree programs and training at Harvard, they may go to other countries to help set up and strengthen international collaborative scientific networks. Furthermore, students who originated from the U.S. can learn a thing or two or twenty from interacting with colleagues from other countries such as other perspectives and scientific techniques. So who knows how much this latest Trump Administration sanction may have on the advancement of science and healthcare.

Harvard Files Lawsuit, Judge Puts Trump Administration Sanction On Hold

Harvard University quickly filed a lawsuit the next day via a Boston federal court. The suit stated, “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission. Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard.” The lawsuit described the Trump administration’s actions as “clear retaliation.”

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs then quickly put a hold on the Trump Administration’s sanction pending how the lawsuit unfolds. This still leaves many of the International students currently at enrolled Harvard in limbo about their future. It also may leave a lot of scientific work in limbo. And in both cases limbo doesn’t refer to playing a fun dance game.

Having to effectively tell students, “Hey, we’re not sure how long you are even going to be around,” isn’t going to be the best motivator for them to plow ahead on their scientific projects. This uncertainty also isn’t going to be the greatest incentive for people from other countries to continue apply to scientific programs at Harvard and other U.S. universities for at least oh say the next 1335 days. Will international students then take their talents elsewhere? How will all of this affect the historical status of the U.S. as the place to get trained for science?

The Trump Administration Has Been Threatening And Withholding Harvard’s Funding

As mentioned earlier, this is just the latest escalation in an MMA-like battle between the Trump Administration and Harvard University. The main stated motivation behind the Trump Administration’s actions has been to force Harvard to do more about anti-Semitism on its campus. Of course, no one should argue that anti-Semitism and other types of racism aren’t still around and aren’t bad things.

But throughout this battle, science has been effectively held hostage. The biggest stick that the Trump Administration has been using has been threatening and withholding the federal funding that Harvard has been receiving. And a big bulk of this federal funding has been for science from agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In fact the largest chunk has been funding for the biomedical and health sciences.

There were warning shots that all this would happen even before Trump officially took office. Leo Terrell didn’t start leading the multiagency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism until after it was created by The Department of Justice in February. But in January, even before he began this role, Terrell retweeted—or perhaps re-X’d—a post on X that called him “HARVARD’S WORST NIGHTMARE.”

It became even clearer that it was Harvard’s federal funding that would have a big “X” on its back. On April 1, Trump reportedly said the following about Harvard: “What if we never pay them” and “Wouldn’t that be cool?” That was during a private conversation at the White House, which became rather public after Michael C. Bender, Alan Blinder and Jonathan Swan reported about it for The New York Times, That clearly would not be cool for the scientific researchers at Harvard and the many people and patients who benefit from such research.

Things Have Escalated After Harvard Rejected The Trump Administration

This battle began in earnest soon after that. On April 11, Trump Administration officials sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber and Lead Member of the Harvard Corporation Penny Pritzker. This wasn’t exactly a “how you doing” letter. Instead, it included a number of demands that would give the government unprecedented control over the university, its faculty and students. The letter also suggested that Harvard not complying with such demands would lead to the loss of government funding for all sorts of things, but in big part biomedical and other health research. This put science smack in the middle of such negotiations but not in a good way.

Then three days later, Harvard University delivered what was essentially a rejection letter to President Trump and his administration. This letter was basically a can’t-go-for-that-no-can-do latter from Garber. It stated, “The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.” It continued by saying, “And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

It looks like the Trump Administration didn’t exactly like getting rejected by Harvard. On that same day, April 14, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service posted the following on it’s website: “The Joint Task Force to combat anti-Semitism is announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60M in multi-year contract value to Harvard University.” Yes, this appeared on the HHS website because guess from where a big bulk of this frozen funding originated—HHS and its agencies like the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This included funding that supported research on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases life-threatening medical conditions like cancer—you know stuff that could make America healthy. (I’ve reached out to the representatives of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for further comment and will update this article accordingly.)

Additional Actions By The Trump Administration Have Threatened Science At Harvard

The Trump Administration has since tried to freeze or pull even more such funding, again a large bulk of which is funding for biomedical research. It’s also sought to revoke Harvard’s tax exempt status, which essentially could severely threaten Harvard’s other non-fderal government sources of funding for science. On May 2, Trump posted the following on Truth Social: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!”

Taking away Harvard’s tax exempt status would make it even more difficult in various ways for the university, its faculty members and its students to do, guess what, science. Losing tax exempt status would deliver the following three big blows:

• Cut into Harvard’s resources to support science: Doing proper science requires investment because doing stuff like cancer research isn’t going to pay off immediately, although it may pay off big time in the future in a dollars and sense type of way. With their tax exempt status universities like Harvard can afford to dedicate resources to things that won’t immediately make money. That will likely change should Harvard have to start paying a range of different taxes. Harvard will essentially have to function more like a standard corporation and focus more on immediate profit-making enterprises.
• Remove incentive for charitable contributions to science and health: This would make charitable contributions no longer tax-deductible and thus make it a lot less attractive for various organizations and individuals to donate to Harvard. And what again would be disproportionately affected? You got it, science, especially medicine, because a lot of biomedical researchers depend heavily if not entirely on what’s called soft money. Soft money isn’t cash made out of cashmere but instead refers to funding that the researchers must get from sources external to the university. Without federal funding, this soft money would have to come from foundations like the Gates Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and individual donors.
• Decrease financial aid and other support for students: “I’m going into scientific research to make a lot of money” is something you hear like never. Typically those going into research and many areas of healthcare are motivated by things other than money and choose to sacrifice earnings for lengthy educational and training periods. Therefore, those studying science depend a lot more on financial aid and other such support. If the sources of such support are no longer tax-exempt or tax deductible, they may no longer be quite as available.

What Happens At Harvard May End Up Affecting Other Universities Around The Country

If you aren’t affiliated with Harvard in any way (full disclosure: Harvard is where I got my undergraduate and medical degrees), you may feel that this whole Harvard situation won’t affect you in any way. But it could affect you significantly if you do science, like science or are affected by science in any way, which is anyone who has a head and a body. What is happening at Harvard right now probably won’t stay at Harvard.

As I’ve detailed previously in Forbes, the Trump Administration has already been terminating grants to scientific researchers around the country not just at Harvard. I’ve also written about how the National Institutes of Health already tried to drastically cut its funding of indirect costs across all academic institutions, again not just at Harvard. A judge did directly put a hold on this indirect cost move pending the outcome of, guess what, a lawsuit.

Before it went hard after Harvard, the Trump Administration did first target other institutions like Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. Back in March, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had sent letters to 60 schools, including Harvard, warning them that they are under investigation for potential Civil Rights Act violations, specifically “relating to anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination.” It’s just that Harvard was the first university to provide such public pushback to what the Trump Administration was doing. So, the question will remain: who’s next?

Therefore, what’s happening at Harvard may be a preview of what will be happening to universities across the country. Could withholding funding for science and those wanting to do science end up being a “trump card” in all sorts of negotiations that aren’t ostensibly about science? If science at Harvard ends up taking a huge body blow, will the same eventually happen to science across the country?