Harvard fights back against Trump: Institutional resistance finally rises up — and sets a new model

The news has been a steady, depressing drumbeat of complicity tales lately. Every day, it seems another prominent law firm, Ivy League university or mainstream media outlet bends the knee to Donald Trump, trading compliance with the fascist agenda for the hope of getting the mad king off their back. ABC News capitulated early, paying off Trump with a settlement for using the word "rape" to describe his attack of E. Jean Carroll, even though the judge in the civil trial ruled that "Mr. Trump 'raped' her as many people commonly understand the word 'rape.'" Multiple big law firms have bribed Trump with agreements to offer millions in pro bono support for the administration's authoritarian agenda. The bowing and scraping from some corporate bigwigs is so pathetic that it sometimes gets comical. 

NYMAG: A Warner Bros. rep “recently reached out to the Trump orbit seeking advice about how the company might advantageously interact with the White House.. The reported message was .. Don Jr. might like a hunting and fishing show on the Discovery Channel ..” @nymag.com nymag.com/intelligence...

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— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) April 14, 2025 at 1:49 PM

Most alarming, however, may be the appeasement politics of university administrations — most notably at Columbia, where officials agreed to a series of draconian anti-student policies after Trump threatened $400 million in federal funding. Using the blatantly disingenuous pretext of "fighting anti-semitism," the school caved to Trump's demands to silence campus protests with threats of student discipline and even arrest. The choice of Trump over the safety of their own students sparked public outrage, but it felt futile, as though such cowardice would be the standard for all elite schools in a second Trump term. 

On Monday, however, the ground shifted when Harvard University went in another direction.

"The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," Harvard President Alan Garber declared in a public letter. Garber subtly scoffed at the notion that the "reforms" demanded by Trump have jack-all to do with "fighting anti-semitism," making clear that Trump's defunding threats are about silencing progressive thought, forcing the school to hire MAGA hacks as professors and making life so hellish for students it would permanently tarnish the school's brand. Garber also noted that the White House wants to “'audit' the viewpoints of our student body" and ban students who have political views Trump doesn't like. 

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Harvard's endowment is large enough to weather the loss of federal funding. Nonetheless, this is an important move that can help stiffen the spines at other schools. Already, the leadership at Stanford University has piped up in support, with a similar vow to tell Trump to shove his authoritarian demands. At Yale, 876 faculty members signed a letter supporting Harvard's actions. Several other Ivy League universities joined with a group of state schools to file a lawsuit against Trump's funding cuts on Monday. After Harvard's public stand, even Columbia’s interim president issued a statement saying the school no longer consents to some of the Trump administration's “overly prescriptive" demands.

“Harvard has set an example for other higher-ed institutions," former President Barack Obama said in response. “Let’s hope other institutions follow suit.”

Cynical readers need not worry that I'm asking them to hand out medals for courage to university administrators. It's more likely that the Harvard leadership has come to realize what Columbia should have known all along: Complicity will not save you. As Rose Horowitch at the Atlantic wrote Monday, "Columbia still has not gotten the $400 million back. On the contrary, the Trump administration seems to have taken the capitulation as permission to make more demands." Columbia administrators thought they were buying peace. Instead, the White House is pushing to create federal oversight of Columbia so that a MAGA loyalist can have granular authority over the school's daily operations. 

This should have been obvious to anyone who had dealt with a schoolyard bully. If you give him your lunch money the first time, guess what? He will now be waiting for you every day. The only way to break the cycle is to refuse to cooperate; the sooner the better. Trump is even less sophisticated than your typical sixth-grade bully. As a lifelong grifter, he can't help but keep returning to the site of a successful shakedown, and will drain a victim dry, as long as they keep complying.

Harvard seems to understand that saying no to Trump did not "cost" them two billion dollars. As Columbia is learning the hard way, he was always going to find an excuse to withhold the money. Might as well not give up your dignity along with it. Compliance, however, amounted to consenting to what Stanford professor Adrian Daub calls "a controlled demolition, with each demand a charge to knock out another pillar of academic freedom." He notes that the demands were so outlandish that submitting "would have been ruinously expensive and completely impractical." In the end, they are probably saving money, along with their reputation. 

I suspect a major reason that so many powerful companies, schools and other institutions have been playing along with Trump is that their leaders have convinced themselves his time in power is short-lived. Legally, he cannot run for office again. Physically, he's 78 years old. His cognitive function, which was always terrible, is visibly declining. The hope is that all Trump's talk about a "third term" is bluster and that he doesn't have the energy, legal strategy or GOP support to mount another attempted coup. 

However, the past couple of weeks should disabuse anyone of the hope that they can wait for old age or the law to stop Trump. On Monday, Trump and his staff made it abundantly clear that they intend to reject the Supreme Court's ruling that they cannot illegally imprison innocent people in a concentration camp in El Salvador. Trump even started floating the idea of rounding up American citizens, as well. That's scary on its face, but also should be understood as Trump laying the groundwork for staying in office illegally. Whatever strategy he chooses in 2028 — running illegally, stealing an election or simply declaring himself president-for-life — his goal is to have rendered the Supreme Court utterly impotent before then. 

Betting on the vicissitudes of age is unwise, as well. Trump has always been painfully dumb — remember him suggesting that bleach injections could cure COVID-19? — but it hasn't hurt him one bit with half the country that still believes white maleness counts for more than intelligence. Even dramatic cognitive decline is unlikely to change that. We see this already in the reaction to Trump's tariffs. Trump doesn't understand how tariffs work, doesn't have a coherent idea of why he's imposing them outside of pickle-brained hostility towards other countries, and changes his mind about them by the minute. None of this madness has caused his staff or the right-wing media to hesitate for a moment to keep spinning, claiming faith that Trump's moronic groping is a secret genius plan to make everyone super-rich. Even if Trump were drooling on his shirt, roaming around in diapers and yelling at reporters about how he is terrorized by imaginary chickens, the official MAGA line would remain the same: "Only people with 'Trump derangement syndrome' believe there is something wrong with the president's perfect, mighty brain." 

No, as much of a bummer as it may be to face it, the only reasonable option left is to fight back. Trump and his allies will take the fascism thing as far as they can, as quickly as they can. Capitulation just means being the first fed into the meat grinder. Resistance may not guarantee victory or safety, but it at least gives the country a fighting chance. Plus, the more that institutions, companies and even ordinary citizens fight back, the more it will slow Trump down. Every obstacle put in front of him makes it that much more likely that he will run out of time or finally exhaust his support. It will take way longer than any of us hope, but better than lying down and just letting the worst happen.