The president of Harvard University has no plans to back down in his fight with the Trump administration.
Alan Garber, who has held the position for just over a year, told NBC News anchor Lester Holt that the institution will not change course, whether the federal government fully follows through on its plan to freeze billions in funding or not.
In an interview Wednesday, Garber claimed that the country’s wealthiest school had “no choice” but to resist what it considers the current administration’s illegal overreach, adding that “we will not compromise on certain issues.”
“What they are indicating is that they want to directly review who we hire on our faculty. That has implications for what kinds of views can be expressed on campus. They also want to be able to tell us who we need to fire, and they also want to intervene in our admissions processes. That is what we are objecting to,” Garber added.
“We are defending what I believe is one of the most important lynchpins of the American economy and way of life: our universities.”
The defiant statement seems to fly in the face of requests from some of the university’s biggest financial backers.
Last week, Harvard reportedly solicited its wealthiest donors, including Michael Bloomberg, John Paulson, and David Rubenstein, after Trump froze $2.26 billion in federal funding.
Some, including Bloomberg, pushed for the university to fight Trump—but a group of influential donors, including Paulson and Bill Ackman, are urging Harvard to soften its stance and seek a settlement instead, The New York Times reported.
The fracas began earlier this month when the Harvard Corporation–the powerful and secretive board that governs the university–rejected a number of White House demands for control over the school’s hiring policies, admissions policies, and curriculum. The Trump administration has claimed that the concessions were necessary to combat a climate of antisemitism on the elite campus following a series of pro-Palestine protests last year.
After Harvard declined to comply with the administration’s demands, the White House announced it would freeze more than $2 billion in federal funding.
In a statement on April 14, the government said Harvard was reinforcing the “troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”
In response, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the federal government on Monday to stop the freeze.
Garber this week said the research now in jeopardy includes work aimed at improving outcomes for children who survive cancer, uncovering the molecular mechanisms behind cancer’s spread, predicting infectious disease outbreaks, and alleviating the pain of wounded soldiers on the battlefield, among many other beneficial programs.
“Putting that research at jeopardy because of claims of antisemitism seems to us to be misguided,” Garber said. “The effort to address antisemitism will not be advanced by shutting off funding.”
Garber, who spoke publicly about the debacle for the first time on Wednesday, said that the lawsuit was needed after the school was backed into a corner.
“We will not compromise on certain issues,” Garber told Holt. “We’ve made that very clear.”
Garber, who has held the position since 2024 and is Jewish himself, has admitted that the Massachusetts campus has had some “real problems” with antisemitism following last year’s protests.
To combat this, Garber said that Harvard will implement “meaningful discipline” for policy violators to help curb incidents of antisemitism, in addition to beefing up security and enhancing programs that address bias.
The Harvard president confessed that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future” amid the escalating battle with Trump, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between the federal government and research universities, which he claims have enhanced lives and helped make the U.S. a “technological powerhouse.”
“That partnership has been responsible over the decades for dramatic innovation in science and technology,” he said.
On that note, Garber added that “of course” the feud between Trump and his university has broader implications.
“Look at what’s at risk here,” he said. “What’s at risk is the excellence of higher education in the United States and in particular the research mission of many of our universities which play such a vital role in the U.S. economy and in the health and well-being of the American people.”