Harvard Has a Weapon in The Fight Against Trump. Here’s Why the University Isn’t Using It.
Article/Op-Ed in Vox
Brett Phelps/Boston Globe via Getty Images
April 9, 2025
For Vox, Kevin Carey explores why wealthy universities are not using their multibillion-dollar endowments to push back against the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.
For the past month, President Donald Trump has been stalking the richest universities in the world like a horror movie serial killer picking off a group of frightened teenagers one by one. Why aren’t they using their multibillion-dollar endowments to fight back?
The spree started in early March, when the administration announced it was holding $400 million in federal grants to Columbia hostage until the university agreed to a lengthy list of demands. As experts immediately noted, this is plainly against the law. And Columbia has plenty of money to temporarily fill in the gap while hiring legal counsel — its $14.8 billion endowment grew by more than $1 billion just last year.
But instead of lawyering up, Columbia gave in to the demands. Emboldened, the administration next threatened to freeze $175 million in grants to the University of Pennsylvania. Penalties for Princeton and Brown followed, and just this week the administration announced it would freeze $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern.
Read the full article here.