Tangle - The Harvard–Trump standoff.

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it will freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University after the school refused to comply with a list of requirements it said were unlawful. In a joint letter dated April 11, the General Services Administration, Department of Education (ED) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) demanded that Harvard adopt its suggested reforms in order to maintain its funding. Among the required changes, the administration ordered Harvard to discontinue DEI programs, regulate specific academic departments, screen international students, and submit to government audits. Harvard rejected the government’s terms, calling its demands an invasion of “university freedoms.” Hours later, the Trump administration announced its decision to freeze Harvard’s federal funding.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of Harvard’s decision? Let us know!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Stull, and today is Wednesday, April 16th, and we are covering the standoff between President Donald Trump and Harvard. Indicative, I think, of a lot of the funding threats coming from the Trump administration at too many universities and a good deal of what's been going on in that space. So we're gonna break down exactly what happened

and then give a breakdown of the left and the right. And then we have a special, my take today, which I'll explain in a little bit. Before we jump into any of that though, I do have to issue a quick correction. In Monday's numbers section, we included a bullet stating that 238 non-citizens and alleged gang members had been transferred to a mega-prison in El Salvador on March 15th. Unfortunately, we omitted a key piece of information. Those

deportation flights included 238 alleged members of the Trenda Agra gang, but also 23 Salvadorans accused of membership in MS-13, which brought the actual total to 261, not 238. That is our 133rd correction in Tangle's 297-week history and our first correction since March 10th. We track corrections and place them at the top of the podcast in an effort to maximize transparency with our audience. With that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's newsletter and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac. And welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, US District Judge Paula Zennes said that she will require the Trump administration to produce records and sworn answers about the government's efforts to facilitate the return of Quilmar Abrego-Garcia from El Salvador.

Number two, former President Joe Biden delivered his first public address since leaving office at a conference for disability advocates in Chicago. Biden criticized the Trump administration's actions on social security and touted his efforts as president to sustain the program. Number three, Dan Caldwell, a top advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was reportedly escorted from the Pentagon on Tuesday and placed on administrative leave after being identified during an investigation into leaks at the Department of Defense. Number four, two US service members stationed near the southern US border were killed and

another seriously injured in a vehicle accident in New Mexico. And number five, three students were shot and another was injured in a shooting at a Dallas high school. A 17-year-old suspect turned himself in to the police. [♪upbeat music playing on video and on video with beat music playing on video and on video with beat music playing on video While President Trump made new threats today to Harvard University after the federal government froze billions of dollars in funding,

Harvard rejected a list of demands from the Trump administration over school policies and leadership. I think so many of us want to work at a place to be part of a community that stands up for its principles right. Harvard political science professor Ryan Eno says there's reason to celebrate even as the university faces a 2.2 billion dollar federal funding freeze from the Trump administration. If you don't have that, you don't have anything.

What the federal government is doing is saying you have a track record of discrimination, you have a track record of violating the civil rights of your own students, and we're not going to fund this. On Monday, the Trump administration announced that it will freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University after the school refused to comply with a list of requirements it said were unlawful. In a joint letter dated April 11, the General Services Administration, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services demanded that Harvard

adopt its suggested reforms in order to maintain its funding. Among the required changes, the administration ordered Harvard to discontinue DEI programs, regulate specific academic departments, screen international students, and submit to government audits. Harvard rejected the government's terms, calling its demands an invasion of university freedoms. Hours later, the Trump administration announced its decision to freeze Harvard's federal funding. For context, on February 3rd, the Department of Justice announced a joint task force to combat

anti-Semitism consisting of representatives from the DOJ, HHS, and the Department of Education to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses. In March, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities warning of potential penalties from pending investigations into alleged anti-Semitic discrimination and harassment. Then, on March 31st, the task force announced it would be reviewing over $255 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multi-year commitments to Harvard to ensure the university is in compliance with federal regulations, including its civil rights responsibilities. Harvard president Alan Garber responded by posting a public letter stating his belief

that the university's existing reforms were sufficient. The Trump administration then issued its joint letter on April 11, setting off the confrontation that led to the funding freeze. Harvard's response marks the first time a university has confronted the Trump administration's requests to change its policies under the threat of losing funding, prompting Columbia, MIT, Princeton, and Stanford to announce action of their own. Harvard signed on two notable conservative attorneys for its legal representation, William Burke, who represented members of the first Trump administration during the Mueller investigation,

and Robert Herr, who led the government's investigation into President Joe Biden's alleged mishandling of classified documents. On Tuesday, President Trump suggested that the school should lose its tax-exempt status. Perhaps Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired supporting sickness, Trump posted to Truth Social. Today, we'll get into what the right and the left are saying about Harvard's standoff with the Trump administration, and then associate editor Audrey Moorhead, a current undergrad

at Harvard University, will give her take. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right mostly supports the funding freeze, arguing Harvard is not entitled to taxpayer money. Some say Harvard's response validates the Trump administration's scrutiny of the school. Others say the administration is pursuing a legally dubious path. The New York Post editorial board said Harvard may be free to target Jews, but not on the

taxpayers' dime. Harvard University is numbing its nose at Team Trump and refusing to take steps to stamp out Jew hatred and discrimination on its campus. Fine, then let it say goodbye to federal bucks, possibly as much as $9 billion a year's worth, and start spending its own money instead," the board wrote. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act effectively bans federal funds for schools that discriminate. In fact, Harvard is a hotbed of leftism with overwhelmingly left-leaning faculty and staff

and a DEI culture that regards Jews, Israel, America, and the West as oppressors. That does neither students nor the nation much good. Harvard may have a legal right to operate as a leftist bastion hostile to Jews, America, and the left, but US taxpayers don't have to pay for it. The Trumpies should shut Harvard's federal spigot ASAP, let the school tap its $50 billion endowment and see its reserves shrink, along with donations from alums who now see what their giving actually supports. The sooner these bigots run out of money,

the better off everyone else will be. In The Daily Caller, Natalie Sandoval wrote, Harvard goes down with the DEI ship. Harvard University president Alan Garber retreats behind the sturdy bulwark of academic freedom. The defense is shoddily formed. One doubts, for instance, whether Harvard would hire a professor who openly professes the superiority of the white race over all others, or admit a student who submits an

engaging, syntactically unimpeachable essay about repealing the 19th Amendment," Sandoval said. As the federal government reminds Garber, an investment is not an entitlement. Private universities are free to teach whatever they'd like, but if they expect their activity to be funded by the American people, they must justify the value proposition. Prestige is a resource painstakingly accumulated and all too easily spent. Harvard, by virtue of its merit-optional admissions and education process, defeats herself. The university has accrued an enormous debt based on the good name of past alumni, a debt

which more recent graduates cannot repay, Sandoval wrote. Without the faith of the American people or their dollars, what does the future look like for schools like Harvard? Harvard is sitting on an endowment the size of a small country. It is a market player and should be treated as such. The university seems to be giving Trump the perfect chance to do so. In City Journal, Heather MacDonald questioned the White House's clumsy attack on Harvard. Many critics of the politicized academy will greet the Anti-Semitism Task Force's April

11th demand letter to Harvard with a cheer, and understandably so, since it detects long-standing distortions of the academic mission. But just because something is warranted does not mean that it is lawful under current legal standards. It is likely that a court, where this dispute will inevitably land, will agree with Harvard's analysis of the letter," McDonald said. The Trump administration would be within its rights to withdraw funding or to sue Harvard for any ongoing hiring and admissions practices that privilege certain races over others or

females over males. Such preferential treatment violates federal protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But other aspects of the administration's demand letter arguably encroach on academic freedom, however overrated and hypocritically invoked that concept has become. The administration calls for oversight of faculty hiring to ensure viewpoint diversity, though the legal basis for such authority is unclear. Its demand for a critical mass of intellectually diverse faculty is either a wry joke or unintentionally ironic," MacDonald wrote. The Trump administration could have proceeded with greater subtlety, rather than effectively hanging out a flashing red sue-me sign. Instead,

it has managed to elevate Harvard into the incongruous role of a noble David standing up to the government's Goliath. Alright, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left criticizes the administration's actions and urges Harvard to fight back. Some praise Harvard's resistance, but note it has only cleared one low hurdle. Others say Harvard should leverage its endowment to avoid capitulation.

In the Boston Globe, Harvard Law School professors Nicholas Bowie and Benjamin Edelson called the standoff Harvard's moment of truth. The administration is moving toward candor about its real position, not that it is faithfully enforcing any anti-discrimination law enacted by Congress, but that it has absolute authority to block appropriated funds flowing to institutions that it deems in its sole discretion unworthy, Bowie and Edelson said. The First Amendment prohibits the government from denying funds or other benefits to punish

a recipient's constitutionally protected speech. Title VI's regime of funding conditions respects that rule through its insistence on announced standards, procedural safeguards, and tailored remedies. But a regime in which the president alone may use the entire federal budget as a cudgel to suppress whatever speech he dislikes is flatly incompatible with the First Amendment. Harvard has suffered real legal setbacks in recent years, including a major loss on affirmative action and some stakeholders may be leery of another public fight.

There is also no telling what other laws this administration might disregard in order to retaliate against Harvard for asserting its rights," Bowie and Edelson wrote. But a 400-year-old institution should be making decisions with the time horizon of centuries, not news cycles. Making a principled stand now, with the law squarely on its side, is the single best thing Harvard could do to earn its continued place as a symbol of genuine excellence, free inquiry, and commitment to the public good. In the New York Times, N. Gessen wrote about Harvard's strength and how far we've fallen

so quickly. "'The world's most famous university has done the right thing, and this is major news.' It shouldn't be. But less than three months into the Trump administration, we are surprised by simple dignity. Capitulation would have garnered smaller headlines, Gesson said. The Trump administration pulls funds first and negotiates second, dispensing with the rest of the process.

Its first target was Columbia University. When that school acceded to the administration's demands, it didn't get its funding back. Instead, the administration is reportedly considering demanding that Columbia agree to direct government oversight, effectively a takeover of the university. Harvard chose a different response from Columbia's. No other response should have been possible by the logic of law, or the logic of academic freedom or the logic of democracy. And yet, the Harvard lawyer's letter sent waves of excitement through academic circles. This is the measure of how low and how fast our expectations have fallen," Gesson wrote. Still, one hopes that other universities that find themselves in the administration's

crosshairs—and there are many of them right now—follow Harvard's example and make self-respect and respect for the law unsurprising again. In Vox, Kevin Carey said universities have a weapon in the fight against Trump. Why aren't they using it? 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 multi-billion dollar endowments to fight back? Kerry asked.

When the possibility of drawing from endowments comes up, university administrators will tell you it's complicated. Endowments can't be immediately repurposed to make up for cancelled federal grants. But the real reason is that endowments have become the single biggest signifier of excellence in higher education leadership, and college leaders can't imagine making them smaller. The Ivies have the financial wherewithal in both endowments and sterling credit scores that enable borrowing to fight Trump's illegal demands, if they so choose. If they don't, the consequences for American higher education will be severe. The Trump strategy of intimidation

is to use violent punishment to make a few high-profile examples and intimidate everyone else into complying in advance," Kerry wrote. Top schools have to choose whether to use the fortunes they inherited to stand up on behalf of millions of students, faculty, and workers nationwide and defend the values of intellectual freedom that have produced the greatest higher education system in the world. All right, let's head over to Audrey for her take. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So before we get in today, I'm actually going to introduce somebody else to read today's my take and it's not going to be me. A few years ago, Tangle opened up an internship position on our editorial team.

One of the most compelling applications I got came from a woman named Audrey Morehead, who at the time was wrapping up her freshman year at Harvard. Audrey is a bit of an enigma. She's a pro-life woman from rural Tennessee who is attending college at an Ivy League school that, to many on the right, had become a caricature of the progressive left. I was intrigued. In our interview, Audrey came across as obviously brilliant and kind, so I asked her to join the team, a decision I did not regret.

After about a year editing Tangle, she moved on to other jobs and studies, as college students do. On her way out the door, she penned a phenomenal essay about her experience going from Tennessee to Harvard that became a reader favorite. I wished her well, sad to see her go, but anxious to see what she would do next. Supreme Court Justice, Senator, isn't that what happens to Harvard people, I figured. But a few months ago, Audrey and I reconnected, and I was delighted to learn that Tangle had a big impact on her, so much so that as she was barreling toward graduation, she wanted to come back and work for us. So I rehired her as a part-time editor while she's finishing up school at

Harvard, and she's finishing up school at Harvard, and she's been helping with the day-to-day atangle ever since. When we decided to cover the standoff between Harvard and the Trump administration, it occurred to me that we had an actual Harvard student on our editorial team, and it would be a lot more interesting for our readers to maybe hear from her. Selfishly, I wanted to hear her perspective too. So today's my take comes from Audrey. And with that, I'm going to pass the mic over to her to share her perspective. To me and many other students on campus, Trump pulling Harvard's funding isn't the most surprising part of the story. Harvard has been talking about potentially losing funding since as far back as

last summer, after the year-long pro-Palestine campus protests came to a head with an encampment that occupied the center of Harvard Yard for nearly three weeks. While our campus protests weren't as flashy as Columbia's, they drew the attention and ire of conservatives—and some liberals—for their decidedly anti-Semitic flavor, including chants like From the River to the Sea and Instagram posts with flagrantly offensive imagery. As funding has been frozen or revoked at schools like Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and Northwestern,

Harvard students have found ourselves circling back to the same topic. When, not if, a freeze would hit Harvard, and how bad it would be when it finally came. When I first worked as an intern for Tangle in 2022, I wrote about my experience coming from deep red Tennessee to sapphire blue Harvard. My perspective has evolved from that of my 18 year old self, but so has Harvard's environment. Harvard was under almost no federal scrutiny at all when I first matriculated. But scandals have steadily increased since then, crescendoing today with the potential loss of $2.2 billion in funding and the threat of losing tax-exempt status. Losing $2.2 billion in research funding would, of course, be devastating for the vital public health and scientific research that Harvard conducts,

as well as the livelihoods of its employees and graduate students. Even so, that isn't the most consequential part of the story to me. Rather, it's President Garber's mostly unprecedented refusal to acquiesce to the Trump administration's demands. For the past four years, the political environment at Harvard has been roiling. Harvard student body and faculty have produced such a toxic speech landscape that a survey

found that two-thirds of last year's graduates felt uncomfortable sharing controversial opinions in class, even though 72.4% of this same class self-identified as somewhat or very liberal in a survey conducted their freshman year. Harvard student body and faculty have produced such a toxic speech landscape that a survey found two-thirds of last year's graduates felt uncomfortable sharing controversial opinions in class, even though 72.4% of this same class self-identified as somewhat or very liberal in a survey conducted their freshman year. And the class of 2024 isn't out of the ordinary.

In this year's freshman survey, 60% of the class of 2028 reported favorable opinions about Kamala Harris, compared to just 4% having favorable opinions about Donald Trump. This striking lack of political diversity on campus generates emphatic internal debate about how, if at all, to be more ideologically

inclusive, which the university has ostensibly taken steps to do. Since 2021, campus administrators, aided by undergraduate input, have pursued an intellectual vitality initiative with the goal of improving the free exchange of ideas on campus. The effectiveness of this initiative has been debated by students on the left and the right alike. In reality, most of the efforts toward expanding freedom of expression have come from the students, and recently the tiny conservative minority on campus has been making itself heard. Though organizations like the Harvard Republican Club and Harvard Right to Life existed long before my arrival to campus, none had much of a presence. But in my freshman year, the Harvard Salient,

a conservative campus magazine that had been defunct for about a decade, returned with a splash, resuming its controversial practice of dropping physical copies at the door of every undergraduate on campus, three times a semester. In its four years, the Salient has faced vehement student opposition and even administrative blowback. Even so, it has spearheaded the well-documented revival of conservatism on campus. Meanwhile, left-wing activism has arguably been at its

most prominent since 2016, and that activism has been controversial at best, or outright anti-Semitic at worst. When I first came to campus, most left-wing activism seemed exclusively online, probably because of lingering pandemic restrictions. Today, the Left seems almost energized by the conservative revival, emboldened by the presence of real political opposition on campus that refuses to be silenced. Amidst all this, Harvard's administration has, in my view, finally started taking meaningful, laudable steps toward ensuring intellectual vitality on campus by championing unorthodox speech. President Garber himself has emphasized the pursuit of academic freedom by encouraging a

review of potentially stifling discrimination policies despite the unpopularity of the move with the student body at large. College Dean Rakesh Karana has similarly taken a stand announcing the college-wide reinstallation of door boxes so that the salient and other campus publications could continue its door drop efforts in line with university policy. Indeed, as Garber's response to the Trump administration outlines, the university has taken special care to address the very real and palpable antisemitic activity that characterized much of the pro-Palestine movement on campus.

In fact, Garber has, by all indications, been trying to anticipate and accommodate the Trump administration's goals since he took over for Claudine Gay. In my view, Harvard University's top brass, including President Garber, Provost John F. Manning, and Dean Karana, are all aware of the university's free speech problems and making active attempts to improve the situation. The Trump administration's letter, by contrast,

requests a level of control and oversight of Harvard that is almost draconian. I say that despite understanding that its demands are not out of line with many conservatives' goals for higher education. Not only that, but as the Harvard salience Alexander Hughes argued, Americans have long accepted that universities shouldn't operate with total autonomy while accepting federal dollars. If the administration were pressuring Harvard to adopt more progressive policies, I'm sure the university would acquiesce without controversy. With that in mind, the Trump administration making Harvard's funding contingent

upon a set of requirements is generally reasonable. However, some of the administration's specific requests are totally unreasonable. Asking for audits into the entire medical school and divinity school, as well as individual departments, or proposing ultra-specific reforms to discipline standards that include the suspension of all students involved in the Palestine Solidarity Committee, are incredible examples of federal overreach. The federal government is typically understood to have wide latitude in revoking funding,

but Harvard looks poised to challenge the administration's actions as a violation of the First Amendment. Money from the government doesn't come without strings, and public schools deal with that fact all the time. Even so, I think President Garber is right to refuse the Trump administration's demands. Harvard acquiescing here would have meant ceding a ridiculous amount of control and oversight to an administration that has proven it has a very specific idea of free speech that comes at a high cost, and punching back helps the university maintain the academic independence institutions like Harvard require.

We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for today's my take. Thank you, Audrey, for tagging in today. And with that, I'm going to move into your questions answered. This question is from Shelby in Des Moines, Iowa. Shelby said, how disruptive does someone have to be to get banned from the comment section? I think it's reasonable to remove and warn people when they go too far. I likely have a few times in my more heated comments." So we've actually received a considerable amount of reader comments in the last week complaining about conduct in our comments section. Without singling the individual out, most of the comments were about one individual poster crossing the line in one specific article. So first, we actually reached out to that individual asking him to be less aggressive with his comments.

You can always contact us at staff at readtangle.com with any concerns you have, but we already had by the time you received most of those complaints. Second, we do not actually have a code of conduct for our comments section, and it is our sincere hope that we will not need to implement one. We are intentionally very permissive about language in our comments section and believe in our community's ability to police itself in almost all cases. However, when we feel a

comment is too personal or a commenter is too consistently vulgar or counterproductive, we'll reach out to them and ask them to be more considerate with their language. Third, and to answer your question more directly, we will ban someone from the comments if we have to address their comments multiple times and they show no interest in changing. In our five-year history, we have never banned anyone from the comments section, but that is not a challenge. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks. On Monday, artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia announced plans to produce its AI supercomputers entirely in the United States through its manufacturing partnerships. The company estimates it will produce up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years. It has already started manufacturing some chips at the Taiwan Semiconductor Plant in Phoenix, Arizona, and has commissioned more than 1 million square feet of additional manufacturing space.

The announcement follows President Trump's now-paused 32% tariff on products from Taiwan, where Nvidia produces most of its chips. The company declined to comment on whether the move was tied to the impending tariffs, but CEO Jensen Wong said, adding manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain and boosts our resilience. CNBC has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. Harvard University's endowment in fiscal year 2024 was $53.2 billion. The amount distributed by Harvard's endowment in fiscal year 2024 was $2.4 billion, 37 percent of the university's annual operating revenue.

The amount of federal funding to Harvard University in fiscal year 2024 was $686 million, approximately 11 percent of its annual operating revenue. Of that federal funding, the amount that comes from the National Institutes of Health is $488 million, the most of any agency. The percentage of the Harvard Endowment's annual distribution that is directed by donors to specific programs, departments, or purposes is 70%. The approximate percentage of the Harvard Endowment's

annual distribution that is unrestricted is 20%. The percent decrease in philanthropic contributions to Harvard in fiscal year 2024 was 14%, a $151 million decline. And the amount of tax-exempt bonds issued by Harvard in March 2025 to finance and refinance certain capital projects, according to the school, is $450 million. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. A high school English teacher in Virginia has helped over 60 students pay for college with her self-styled Lion Pride Run. Since 2016, Kate Fletcher has raised more than $100,000 in scholarships

through the event, which includes a new twist every year. In 2022, Fletcher ran nonstop for 24 hours around the school's track. This run gives a lot of scholarship funds to kids who really need it every year, so that is what inspires me even when I'm definitely hurting, Fletcher said. Sunny Skies has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reetangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership

that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Law. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor, Ari Weitzman with senior editor, Will K. Back and associate editors, Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Morehead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth

and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75 and John Law. And to learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at www.reedtangle.com.