May30

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Trump vs. Harvard: Are the Administration's Options Beginning to Peter Out?

Donald Trump and his administration continue to wage war against Harvard, having undertaken a couple more maneuvers designed to bring the university to its knees.

The first of those is the announcement that the administration will cancel another $100 million in contracts that the government has signed with the university. That follows the nearly $3 billion in contracts (mostly funding for research) that have already been canceled.

The second of those is a plan to make it much harder for international students to get student visas. Reportedly, the State Department will conduct much more "probing" interviews, and will spend time looking into applicants' social media. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chinese students will come in for special scrutiny, and will be rejected if they have "communist ties" or they are working in "critical fields."

The $100 million in contracts has the same set of problems as all the other cancellations, namely that there's a point to writing up and signing contracts, and that is so the two parties are both committed, and neither of them can back out for no good reason. That applies even to the President of the United States; if the administration moves forward with these new cancellations (they're still "being studied" right now), then it will end up in court, with the other $3 billion worth of agreements.

As to the student visas, perhaps this plan sounds plausible in theory. In practice, it's a mess. The State Department has been DOGE-ified, and lengthening interviews/going through social media would demand person-hours that really aren't available. If the focus is particularly on Chinese students, well, there are about 300,000 of them with visas right now. Their social media is largely going to be in—wait for it—Chinese, a language that most State Department employees are not fluent in. Further, how does one even determine if a citizen of a communist nation has "ties to communism"? That's like trying to figure out if a U.S. citizen has "ties to capitalism."

Similarly, how does one determine if a student is working in a "critical field"? Sure, we can see it if a research team is building nuclear bombs or something like that. It's easy enough to boot all the Chinese students from the Manhattan Project. But for the vast majority of research going on in 2025 (as opposed to the 1940s), you have to be a world-class expert to possibly understand what's critical and/or some sort of potential security risk. For example, Geoffrey Hinton, who is the most recent Nobel laureate in Physics, works on visualizing data using t-SNE. Terence Tao, who may be the country's best mathematician, is known for his work on compressed sensing. Dan Kahne, who chairs the Department of Chemistry at Harvard, has done a lot of research into lipopolysaccharide transporters. Can you tell if any of those are "critical fields" or represent some sort of security risk? And do you think Marco Rubio can tell?

The Rubio announcements have been met with a combination of eye-rolling and hair-tearing-out by the federal bureaucracy. We'll find out if he's actually able to implement his plans, or if he even tries. In any event, the first thought we had when we heard about the new anti-Harvard measures was... the White House's bag of tricks seems to be running short. The $100 million is way less impressive and less impactful than $3 billion, and the student visa plans are somewhat impractical and certainly are not laser-focused on just one school. Maybe the administration is running out of leverage to utilize.

Meanwhile, the pushback is well underway. Trump bragged this week that "Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are, and they're getting their ass kicked." But the evidence does not support that conclusion, as the university has already prevailed in court several times. Most recently, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs extended the temporary restraining order she issued, the one that prohibits the administration from revoking Harvard's right to accept foreign students.

At the same time, prominent members of the Harvard faculty are all over the place, flaying the administration, and mounting a resistance. Steven Pinker, who is in the running for "most famous faculty member at Harvard," wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he accused the administration of having a case of "Harvard Derangement Syndrome" and said that while much/all of this is being done in the name of fighting antisemitism, the actions of Trump and his minions are actually harming Jews. Similarly, Laurence Tribe, who is also in the running for "most famous faculty member at Harvard," went on TV to slam Trump as a "paper tiger" and "tin horn tyrant" who is going to lose, and lose, and lose some more in court over the coming months and years.

That's the latest Harvard-related news but, as long as we're on the general subject, we thought we would also address a few Harvard-related rumors/urban legends that have circulated widely in the last couple of weeks:

• Barron Trump: The most widespread rumor, and the one we've been asked about the most, is the one that claims that when Barron Trump was college-shopping last year, he applied to Harvard and was rejected. This, ostensibly, is the reason his father has targeted the school—it's driven by the desire for revenge.
  
  We can see why people put things together in this way, since it all seems very plausible. But there's no evidence the younger Trump applied to, or was rejected by, Harvard. A secret the school (and other elite schools) would prefer you not know is that celebrity admissions are handled by a special office, one that is very good at finding a way to get the celebrity applicants admitted. If Barron Trump had applied, he very likely would have gotten in, even if his credentials were not up to snuff. On top of that, while it is true that the President is at war with Harvard, that's only because they fought back. His first targets were actually Columbia and Princeton.
  
  
• Tenure Revoked: Earlier this week, Harvard revoked the tenure of a professor, Francesca Gino. This is pretty unusual in academia, and it's unheard of at Harvard. In fact, no other professor has had their tenure revoked since Harvard adopted the current guidelines governing tenure... back in the 1940s. Indeed, it is possible that Harvard has NEVER revoked a professor's tenure before. There are no known examples of it happening at that institution before this week.
  
  Naturally, some folks have noted the unprecedented assault Harvard finds itself under, and the unprecedented revocation of tenure, and concluded the two must be related (even if they can't really explain why or how). It's human nature to assume that when two very unusual things happen at the same time, there must be some connection, but in this case, there isn't. Gino is a notorious case in academia, and she's been under investigation for years (since at least 2020) for faking her data. Her situation just happened to reach its conclusion right now; it would have done so just the same if Kamala Harris was president. (Actually, it's not really the conclusion; Gino is still fighting the school in court.)
  
  There is a message/lesson here, but it's unrelated to politics. In theory, good research is good research, regardless of the results. A properly done study that shows that calcium helps prevent cancer uses the same methods and rules as a properly done study that shows that calcium DOES NOT prevent cancer (these are invented hypotheticals, please do not send us e-mails about calcium and cancer). Needless to say, the theoretical reward structure in academia—good research is good research is good research—is not the actual reward structure. Dramatic and sexy conclusions are much more marketable for a candidate than bland and unsexy ones. That's doubly true if their work has some crossover appeal, and will attract research funding and/or media attention. As readers can imagine, if they're not already very familiar with this dynamic, the reward structure can and often does induce people to cook the books.
  
  In Gino's case, she first made a name with a study that "showed" that if someone signs an honesty pledge before filling out a form, they are less likely to lie. She also got a lot of attention with a study that "showed" that only "rebels" really succeed in business. This work not only got her a lot of media attention, as well as tenure at Harvard, it also led to a lucrative side hustle giving talks at corporate conferences and running training sessions. For several years, she was one of the highest-paid faculty members at the school, earning in excess of $1 million annually. Of course, every time there is a case like Gino's, lots of people in the academic world declare "things have to change." But they never do.
  
  
• Civics Class: The third story circulating widely right now is that Harvard has announced an online civics class, available to all who want to take it, that teaches students how to recognize when their country is being taken over by a dictatorship.
  
  The civics class is definitely real (the website is right here). And it would be a slick move for Harvard to put together such a course as a response to Trump. But the truth is that the course has been offered since at least 2020, and that its actual title and focus are "American Government: Constitutional Foundations." Presumably, topics related to dictatorship and/or abuses of power will come up, but that is not the sole subject matter.

And that's the latest from Cambridge. We doubt we'll be able to get through next week without at least one Harvard item, given how fast the slings and arrows are flying back and forth. (Z)