Today we explore the growing confrontation between the Trump administration and Harvard University over money. It’s always about money. the media will tell you it’s about “free speech” but, trust me, it’s all about the money.
It’s damn hard to get the real story from the media amidst all the rock throwing. It’s slightly complicated.
Harvard, who is Haaaaaaarvarhd, Big Red Car?
Harvard University, founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is where higher education in the Colonies first took root as a religious school.
Established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Great and General Court, it was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard, a Puritan clergyman who donated his library and half his estate.
By the 18th century, Harvard secularized — meaning it spit the religious bit — broadening its curriculum beyond theology to include liberal arts and sciences.
Building on its success, Harvard established professional schools, including medicine (1782), law (1817), and business (1908), and became coeducational in 1977 with the integration of Radcliffe College.
Today, Harvard is a global academic powerhouse with a $53 billion endowment, renowned for its rigorous academics, and influential alumni including eight U.S. presidents and 188 living billionaires.
It has also managed to piss off Donald J Trump which is not exactly the high hurdles these days.
How much government assistance and funding does Harvard receive, Big Red Car?
Yes, of course, dear reader, it’s all about the money, the money, the money.
I was surprised to see how much money and government assistance Harvard actually receives. Here’s a quick rundown:
1. Harvard receives $9B in Federal funds to support amongst other things affiliated hospitals including Mass General, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Boston Children’s Hospital.
2. Harvard receives $2B in funding for direct research grants that are sponsored by Harvard.
3. Harvard receives approximately $700MM for research sponsored by the government.
In all these grants, Harvard charges an “overhead fee” that can be as high as 69.5% with a blended rate of 38% on all funds in 2024. Big point: when Harvard receives a dollar of Federal funding $0.38 goes directly to the university for overhead related to these grants. It is a massive amount of money.
But, there’s more sayeth the Big Red Car
In addition to direct funding which is massive in its own right, the Feds provide other forms of support that are essential to the business that is Harvard.
1. Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status exempts it and its $53B endowment from federal income and property taxes. This status has been a point of contention, with threats to revoke it under the Trump administration.
2. Part of Harvard’s Federal support is used for student aid, granting scholarships to students, in particular foreign students.
3. Some 27% of Harvard students are foreign students who are allowed to study in the United States by the US Department of State that grants student visas. In general, if a foreign student has an admission letter to Harvard, getting a student visa is not a big deal.
So, Big Red Car, what’s President Trump’s beef with Harvard?
Ahhh, dear reader, President Trump — who believes in the Golden Rule: he who has or distributes the gold makes the bloody rules — has several beefs with Harvard.
1. What got Trump started was the protests in support of Hamas in the Harvard Square that morphed into a concern that Harvard’s failure to control these riots was open anti-Semitism.
2. This then morphed into concern that Jewish students at Harvard were being subjected to harassment, discrimination, and violence.
The Department of Justice lawyers would cite Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination based on race, creed, gender, and national origin as the pertinent law on the matter.
3. Looking at how he could control the situation, Trump immediately focused on the money which triggered him when he saw the magnitude of the Federal funding and the magnitude of Harvard’s overhead charges.
President Trump immediately issued an Executive Order limiting National Institute of Health grant overheads to 15%. Not directly applicable to Harvard, but a clear indication of his sentiment on the subject.
A brief editorial comment, if I may: I am amazed at how little the US public, the media, the government, and the cognoscenti actually know about how Federal funds flow to a myriad of industries and entities like Harvard. Did you have any idea that Harvard received this much Federal funding? I find it mind boggling.
4. Then, the “ideology” issue kicked in with President Trump becoming concerned that Harvard was a hot bed of DEI, an ideology that he rejects completely. This led to investigation of the ideological makeup of the faculty — only 3% even whisper they might be conservative — and the student body that self-identifies as liberal to wildly liberal.
Harvard Law doesn’t have a single Republican amongst its entire teaching faculty.
5. This then led the Trump admin to conclude that Harvard’s hiring and admissions practices must be hopelessly biased to have such an overwhelming concentration of liberals.
So, then what happened, Big Red Car?
So, the Trump admin sent Harvard a letter outlining a long bill of particulars as to what they were doing wrong and what they needed to do to regain the good graces of the Federal sugar teat. The 11 April letter was a thinly veiled threat.
President Trump — actually a bunch of agency legal counsels — said the following:
1. Harvard must eliminate all DEI programs.
2. Hiring and admissions must be solely “merit-based.”
3. Faculty and student viewpoints must be audited to provide for diversity of thought.
4. The administration must reduce the influence of certain faculty and student activists that were discriminatory and anti-Semitic.
5. Harvard must screen international students — students on visas from foreign countries — whose behavior was deemed “hostile to American values” and report that conduct to immigration officials with an obvious reaction to deport them.
6. Harvard must ban face masks at protests and must decertify student groups whose activities were either “criminal” or “illegal harassment.”
Here is a copy of the actual letter for you to peruse:
Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11
So, how did Harvard take the letter, Big Red Car?
Believe it or not, the President of Harvard, Alan Garber, did not take it well and rejected the demands in the 4-11-2025 letter three days later arguing the Feds’ demands exceeded the government’s legal authority, violated the First Amendment, and threatened academic freedom.
Garber emphasized Harvard’s commitment to combating antisemitism but refused to cede control over teaching, hiring, or admissions.
So what happened then, Big Red Car?
Just hours after Harvard’s refusal, the administration froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts, citing Harvard’s “entitlement mindset” and failure to address antisemitism.
Additional threats included freezing another $1 billion in health research grants, revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and canceling its ability to enroll international students, affecting 6,800 students (27% of its student body).
The Trump Department of State acted on threats to stiffen up the student visa applications for Harvard and others by requiring face-to-face pre-visa interviews and a rigorous investigation of any prospective student’s social media profile. This impacts 27% of Harvard’s students.
Hey, Big Red Car, didn’t Harvard sue the Trump administration?
Yes, they did, dear reader.
On 21 April 2025, Harvard filed a 51-page lawsuit in Boston Federal District Court accusing the Trump administration of:
1. Violating the First Amendment;
2. Failing to follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to provide notice, a formal hearing, and a published set of findings before taking any actions to curtail funding;
3. Acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner that lacks any connection to its stated anti-Semitism concerns.
4. Infringing on Harvard’s First Amendment rights by imposing “viewpoint-based conditions” for funding while attempting to control academic content, hiring, and governance.
So what did the Trump admin do then, Big Red Car?
With the filing of the Harvard lawsuit, the Trump admin — acting through its annointed Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism — attempted to lay claim to the moral high ground by justifying the funding freeze based on Harvard’s failure to protect Jewish students.
Bottom line it, Big Red Car
We have a legal donnybrook underway in Boston between the Trump admin and Harvard University and it’s all about money.
1. Harvard will prevail on the issue of the Administrative Procedures Act. The APA has been used successfully thusly many times. There are procedures and if the government doesn’t follow them then they are smacked across the knuckles.
2. The funding freeze is in place, so from that perspective Trump wins because Harvard cannot ignore the financial realities of losing that level of funding.
3. The greater issues of Harvard’s tax exempt status, its overhead charges, its liberal bias, and the visa requirements are all subjects that Harvard would prefer not to have debated in the public square.
The smart play here would have been for Harvard to have jumped all over the anti-Semitism and to try to sidestep the rest of it, but they are an elitist, arrogant organization and didn’t want to submit to the whims of the Trump admin. Now, they will pay a draconian financial penalty.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. And now you know.