American universities must buy their freedom

At the University of California in Los Angeles they thought they had gotten rid of it. During protests against the Gaza war in 2024, anti-Semitic slogans were sporadically shouted (“Fuck the Jews”), which had led to legal action from a number of Jewish students. The Justice Department, then still under President Joe Biden, also looked into it. The university reached an agreement with the ministry and settled the students’ case for $6.5 million.

But then came Trump. No agreement. He opened investigations to anti-Semitism on all ten campuses of the University of California (300,000 students) and threatened to freeze 17.5 billion in research funds. His Ministry of Justice is now demanding a fine of $1.2 billion and radical reform of university policy, in line with his cultural-political wishes: an end to diversity policy and everything that smacks of ‘woke’ ideology. Measures already taken do not matter. The studies are clearly politically biased. Nine lawyers from the team that vets Californian universities resigned out of conscience. They felt pressured to provide evidence of anti-Semitism that they had not found.

It is a typical example of the way Trump has tackled American universities – especially those of the elite ‘Ivy League’ – in the past year. A method that amounts to extortion. Universities must crack down on anti-Israel protests on campus, make their policies and education less ‘woke’ and pay ransoms to escape a stranglehold of financial sanctions and official investigations.

A number of universities have now reached agreements with the government and opened their wallets. Only Harvard is still opposing the case in court, but that institution has also made concessions. Also critics who believe that universities have partly made it their own way – through a one-sided approach liberal curriculum, sky-high tuition fees and commercial operations – speak of an unprecedented attack on academic freedom in the US.

The youngest university to capitulate is Northwestern University, a private institution in Evanston, Illinois. After months of bargaining with the government, the university pays a fine of $75 million for violating anti-discrimination legislation, to be paid directly into the state treasury. The institution also promises to comply with this legislation from now on, which above all means: stopping the diversity policy for minorities. Nevertheless, board president Henry Bienen expressed pride and relief: “I would not have signed if the agreement gave the government a say in who we hire, what we teach, who we admit and what they study,” he declared. In exchange, the university will regain access to $790 million in research funding that had been frozen by the government.

Protests restricted

In the showdown with the universities, money is for Trump, dealmaker and real estate magnate, a condition and a decisive factor. Columbia in New York, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell’s and others caved and paid up. Columbia, the scene of intense pro-Palestinian protests in the fall of 2023, paid the highest price: more than 200 million dollars in fines. The university restricted protests on campus and introduced surveillance of the Middle Eastern Studies department. The smaller Brown University in Rhode Island got rid of it with $50 million, not branded as a ‘fine’, Cornell paid 60 million. The University of Pennsylvania did not have to pay but had to promise no transgender athletes to allow more participation in sports teams (the well-known trans athlete Lia Thomas was on the swimming team).

According to critics, the negotiations with the universities have resembled scenes from mafia films. Many institutions are willing to pay to get research money back, but for the sake of their reputation they do not want this to be recorded as a ‘fine’ to be paid to the government treasury. Columbia University, the first to bend its knees this year, did so. Brown’s $50 million “ransom” is not a fine but an “investment” in local job projects. That is also Trump’s wish: elite universities, in his view breeding grounds for complaining left-wing intellectuals, should contribute to vocational and practical education that has economic benefits and helps ‘ordinary’ Americans.

Money is not only punishment, but also a lure. In October, the White House introduced a new plan, the ‘Covenant for Excellence in Higher Education’. That stated preferential treatment with federal subsidies in prospect of universities that, on their own initiative, comply with the wishes of the government. These are known: banning diversity policies for minorities, recognizing that there are only two genders in education, limiting the number of foreign students and, popular in the US, freezing tuition fees (which can amount to many tens of thousands of dollars per year).

Harvard is still the bone in the throat of the Trump administration

Nine institutions received the offer from Washington. Seven rejected it immediatelyincluding Brown, Penn and the universities of Arizona and Virginia. Signing up to the agreement would make favoritism official policy and undermine academic independence, they believe. The rejection is a dampener for Trump, who had hoped to pit universities against each other.

The sticking point in his government is still Harvard, which is Trump’s symbol liberal America. The country’s oldest and most famous Ivy League university has been resisting an avalanche of measures, threats and demands from the government since April.

Harvard was the only one to take legal action, to the anger of Trump. With success, in September a judge ruled that the freeze on more than $2 billion in government funding for Harvard was unlawful and could not stand. Some of the frozen funds for Harvard were subsequently thawed. At the last minute, the government announced in December that it would appeal against the verdict.

Accused of anti-Semitism

That verdict was also not decisive. Negotiations between Harvard and Washington resumed last summer, but failed despite this enthusiastic messages from Trump on social media about a “historical deal” has not yet resulted in results. What is known is the stakes: the government is demanding no less than 500 million dollars from the university, a record. In exchange, the government would stop half a dozen investigations against the university, which has been accused of anti-Semitism, among other things.

According to reports in the American media, Harvard, which cannot afford a protracted conflict with the government, is willing to pay that amount, but the institution opposes the conditions. Hardliners in the Trump administration who believe Harvard is getting off too easy are demanding that some of it go directly into state coffers, which Harvard opposes because it suggests a fine and sets a precedent for state interference. Trump also wants to reduce the share of foreign students at Harvard, currently 27 percent of the total, to a maximum of 15 percent.

Regardless of how those negotiations turn out, the chilly political winds have had consequences for Harvard for at least two years. Well before Trump’s election in 2024, Harvard had already taken steps to curtail pro-Palestinian protests on campus and increase “viewpoint diversity.” Two task forces investigated anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus (conclusion: Jewish and Arab students felt threatened). The management of the Middle East department was overhauled and the university promised to remain neutral in political controversies. Harvard also embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which labels some criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. This month Harvard replaced the lead of a human rights center that, in Trump’s eyes, paid one-sided attention to the Palestinians.

All in all, how much lasting damage has a year of Trump caused? Some of the frozen research funds are now flowing again, gradually. Some hope for Trump’s capriciousness and impatience: he can quickly lose interest in a subject. Yet next year, Harvard in particular, in Trump’s eyes the left-elitist stronghold, and the universities in Democratic California will remain a target. The state has already acquired access to a mass of data from students at prominent institutions. A chilling effect on the entire academic world is clear, especially in political positions. Furthermore, there is mainly uncertainty – and that is also the intention. Trump tells universities to tone down their voices.

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