You’ve likely seen that Harvard officially and publicly refused the Trump White House’s latest set of demands. You can see the letter here. I would say that if you’re going to read only one letter it should actually be the one the White House (notionally the GSA, HHS and Education) sent to Harvard, which the University published along with its response.
It’s a very clarifying letter. It’s not too much to say it essentially demands operational control over the whole university or perhaps more specifically a kind of receivership police departments sometimes go into under consent to decrees after they’re caught framing or torturing prisoners. When I first read it I was not … well, certainly not happy to see it but it occurred to me that the demands were not only substantively of an indefensible character but also very tenuous legally. It’s good to have this fight on these grounds because, as I said, they demand to put the entire university under the direct control, down to hiring, curriculum, admissions and more of MAGA operatives. It’s been suggested to me by one person familiar with the university’s decision-making that waiting for the White House to spell out all its demands on paper may have been by design to put the University’s refusal on the surest legal footing. If that’s the case it was smart to wait.
