Elite universities have formed a “private collective” to resist President Trump’s crackdown on higher education.
Over recent weeks, the Trump administration has gone to war with several elite universities over their lack of educational and viewpoint diversity, discrimination via DEI and refusal to combat antisemitism.
While Columbia folded to his demands, Harvard has pushed back against the administration and attempted to frame Trump’s threats to remove federal funding as an assault on the university’s independence.
To try and protect themselves, elite universities are now teaming up to try and create a united front against the White House.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The informal group currently includes about 10 schools, including Ivies and leading private research universities, mostly in blue states. Strategy discussions gained momentum after the administration’s recent list of demands for sweeping cultural change at Harvard, viewed by many universities as an assault on independence.The collective, as some are calling it, represents a separate, quiet and potentially more potent effort than recent public resolutions from university-aligned groups.The group comprises figures at the highest levels, including individual trustees and presidents.Maintaining close contact, they have discussed red lines they won’t cross in negotiations and have gamed out how to respond to different demands presented by the Trump administration, which has frozen or canceled billions in research funding at schools it says haven’t effectively combated antisemitism on their campuses.The group’s aim is to avoid the fate of some top law firms, where one deal led to others following suit. The universities want to make sure other schools don’t go so far as to strike deals that create a worrisome precedent that others would be under pressure to follow, say the people familiar with the effort.
One major fear among the collective are reports that Trump could escalate his crackdown on Harvard by targeting the flow of international students and faculty, which many elite schools have come to rely on for tuition revenue and prestige.
This prospect is said to have sent shockwaves through university leadership, who now see their business models under threat.
There are also plans to rescind Harvard’s tax-exempt status, which currently saves the instutition billions of dollars a year.
Trump Orders IRS to Draw Up Plans to Rescind Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status
Should Harvard’s lawsuit fail, the collective fears that more schools will be forced to comply and that the left-wing strangehold over higher education will finally be broken.
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