Up First from NPR - Harvard President says critics' "fire is misdirected"

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

In addition to revoking Harvard's ability to enroll international students, the Trump administration is pulling all federal contracts from the university. NPR's Steve Inskeep sits down with Harvard's President Alan Garber and asks whether he sees the current actions as a warning.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Reena Advani and produced by Ana Perez. Our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I wonder if you agree with that statement, that this episode is in fact a warning to all universities across the country. Well they said it and I have to believe it. And I've repeated it myself. President Trump's administration strikes again and again at the nation's oldest university and Harvard has now sued the administration twice. What does the university do now? We have an interview with Harvard president Alan Garber in a special episode of Up First from NPR

News. Coming up, Alan Garber calls on universities to insist on their rights. We need to be firm in our commitments to what we stand for. He also admits Harvard has not always lived up to its commitment to the truth. When we fail in that, then we can expect to be attacked. Harvard has been attacked, so what does the president think his university is doing right

and wrong? We put questions to Alan Garber, a figure in the news, today. President Trump's administration began this week the same way that it ended last week with a tax on Harvard University. NPR has confirmed the administration plans to cancel another 100 million dollars in contracts with Harvard. The administration had already put on hold some two billion dollars in grants and contracts. Last week, the administration banned Harvard from hosting foreign students, and that

prompted Harvard president Alan Garber to sue for the second time. A judge temporarily blocked the administration so foreign students can stay for now. But when we sat down with Garber on Monday, he knew the fight was far from over. As you know very well, Mr. President, the Trump administration has taken a number of

actions against Harvard University. They've cut off grants in a number of different ways. And most recently, they've ordered all international students to leave the university for some other university or for their home countries. In your lawsuit, the most recent of your lawsuits about this, you argue very quickly that this isn't really about international students, that it's an act of retaliation. What is really going on in your view? In my view, the federal government is saying that we need to address anti-Semitism in particular, but it has raised other issues, including issues about speech.

And it includes claims that we lack viewpoint diversity. There are also claims about failure to comply with laws concerning discrimination more generally. For some of this, we have been very clear that we think we do have issues and I would particularly emphasize the speech issues. We think it's a real problem if particularly at research universities, students don't feel free to speak their minds. When faculty feel that they have to think twice

before they talk about the subjects that they're teaching. That's a real problem that we need to address. And it's particularly concerning when people who have views that they think are unpopular and the administration and others have said conservatives are too few on campus and their views are not welcome. And so far as that's true, that's a problem we really need to address. Is it true? I think that we have heard from some people that they do feel that way. So we certainly need to address that. And that means changing views in the community,

making diverse viewpoints more welcome. It includes skills in speaking as well as skills in listening. So the federal government has referred to some of these areas and as I said we agree that some of these problems we absolutely need to address. What is perplexing is the the measures that they have taken to address these that don't even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems. Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard, but it hurts the country because after all the research funding

is not a gift. The research funding is given to universities and other research institutions to carry out work that the research work that the federal government designates as high priority work. It is work that they want done. They are paying to have that work conducted. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard. And it is hard to see the link between that and say anti-Semitism. If you don't see a link,

it raises the question of what you think the government is really doing. Is the administration trying to damage, destroy, or capture your university? I don't know fully what the motivations are, but I do know that there are people who are fighting a cultural battle. I don't know if that is what is driving the administration. They don't like what's happened to campuses, and sometimes they don't like what we represent. What I can tell you is Harvard is a very old institution,

much older than the country. And as long as there has been a United States of America, Harvard has thought that its role is to serve the nation. I believe I speak for nearly every other university as well in believing that is our goal. And that is why, in so far as there are people who would like to see these universities brought down in some sense, I think that their fire is misdirected because we have a common interest in making the nation and indeed the

world a better place. In the letter cutting off your ability to host international students, the Department of Homeland Security made a number of accusations including these that you, Harvard, brazenly refused to provide information that was demanded about international students and that you also quote ignored a follow-up question about them. Is either of those statements true? To the best of my knowledge, they are not true. I'd need to add, by the way, that this is clearly the subject of litigation, as you pointed out earlier. So we have endeavored to comply fully in line with the law with the

requests that the government has made. Are you going to be able to show in court that you provided information, which I believe your lawsuit says you did? I believe we have provided ample information in line with the law. In that same statement announcing that you would lose the right to host international students, the DHS was able to link to one of Harvard's own documents. It's a report by a presidential commission to you.

So it's your commission investigating problems at Harvard University. And I read through the document, there are a lot of accusations in there about things that have gone wrong here. And my eye fell on one sentence, which I wrote down. I'll quote it to you. Since fall 2023, different factions at Harvard have fought to force various university leaders

to make statements, invest, divest, hire, fire, dox, undox, discipline students, and undiscipline them. That's your own commission talking about this university. How would you define the problem? Well, clearly, there has been tremendous division That's your own commission talking about this university. How would you define the problem? Well clearly there has been tremendous division on campus over that period of time. There are faculty and students who disagreed with one another about what the university

should do. But the main purpose of that report was to identify the problems that we face, particularly with regard to our Jewish and Israeli students. And they took a very hard look and they listened to many, many people. They had dozens of listening sessions and put together what they thought was a comprehensive picture of how basically how people felt on campus about issues touching on not only Jewish and Israeli students, but faculty and staff and the broader community

as well. And their work led to a series of recommendations. And I take very seriously not only their identification of the problems, but the recommendations that they made about how we should address them. Some of those recommendations we had already adopted, some we are currently working through, but I do believe that we have a real problem in this regard, or we had a real problem. We have done a lot to address it and we will continue to work at it.

Would you say that antisemitism on your campus is better, worse or about the same as it would be anywhere else in America? I believe that we have made substantial progress on campus over the past year. And that's what I've heard from many faculty and staff and students. There has been real progress. Comparing what goes on on campus to what goes on in the rest of the country is a little bit difficult because the manifestations may

be different. From what I've heard, we have many fewer violent incidents. They're almost unheard of on our campus and probably a lot less vandalism. The main manifestation of antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias that we have grappled with has to do with social exclusion. It has to do with shunning.

If a student sits down at a dining room table and they have good conversations with other students who don't know them, and when the other students find out that that student is Israeli, if they refuse to continue to speak to them, we have a serious problem that we need to address. That has been, to me, the most disturbing aspect of what we've experienced and it was highlighted in that report. And that is why the problem we're trying to solve requires different solutions, perhaps, than what we do throughout the nation. Is that a small example of what you're trying to do in a large way?

You want to allow all sorts of ideas, but you want people to be able to engage each other civilly and not? Exactly, exactly. We want people to be able to discuss difficult topics with one another, especially when they disagree. We shouldn't be in an echo chamber. Everyone in our community needs to hear other views and let me add that's one reason why it is so important for us to be able to have international students on our campus. They come from different cultures, they have different experiences, different languages. There is so much that they contribute to our environment

and they enable everyone else to open their minds. Is this what you mean when in the lawsuit you say that without international students, which is a quarter of your student body, Harvard would not be Harvard? Absolutely. You argue that it's a benefit for US-born students to have the international students here? Absolutely.

And not only other students, for the other members of our community as well. Harvard is an American institution that is engaged globally, and I wouldn't want to change that. It's in the interest of the university, it's in the interest of the nation. We're listening to the NPR interview with Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University. Now, people have strong feelings about Harvard, and that's what we'll discuss in the next part of our interview.

What would the president say to somebody who thinks this elite university deserves what it's getting? Stay with us. This is Fresh Air contributor Ann Marie Baldonado. I talked with actor Cole Escola about their hit Broadway play, Oh Mary. Cole plays an unhinged alcoholic Mary Todd Lincoln, who's an aspiring cabaret performer. If that makes no sense, that's part of the point. You can find my interview on the Fresh Air podcast. ["Oh Mary!" by John Williams plays.]

Our conversation with Alan Garber took place at the start of Harvard's graduation week. It's a week spent celebrating the university and its traditions and its students. We saw the preparations around campus. But of course, most voters never attend Harvard and that political reality informed the last part of our conversation with the University President. What would you say to someone in the middle of the country, where I come from, where you come from, who is listening to us and maybe thinking, I really don't have a stake in this, I didn't go to Harvard, I'm not sending my kid to Harvard, I really don't like Harvard that much,

this seems to be about a different kind of people. And Harvard deserves what they're getting. Or in any case, it doesn't matter much to me. What would you say to somebody who has that attitude? I would ask them to learn a little bit more, not only about Harvard, but about universities like Harvard, that is research universities. At the center of our university is teaching and learning.

That's so crucial to what we do. But actually, if you look at the activities of the university, so much of this is about research. There are so many discoveries that have come from Harvard and other research universities. Advances in cancer, in treatments of cancer of all kinds. A faculty member of ours just got the Breakthrough Prize for work that led to the discovery of GLP-1 drugs,

which are now revolutionizing how we approach obesity, diabetes, and many other conditions. Another one of our faculty received the Breakthrough Prize this year for advances in gene editing, which is already being used to cure diseases. This is a huge part of what we do. Everybody benefits from the research work of universities like ours. And it is not only about Harvard, and I think that's important to keep in mind. The kinds of changes that the administration has begun and is contemplating, which include

deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health and to the National Science Foundation, to health and to the National Science Foundation will affect all research universities and will have a real impact on the ability of the United States to remain at the forefront of science and technology. When President Trump says, as he did this week, that Harvard's grants ought to go to trade schools instead. How do you respond to that? I would say that the federal government has the authority through the budgeting process to reallocate funds.

But the question to ask is, what problem is he trying to solve by doing that? The money that goes to research universities in the form of grants and contracts, which is almost all of the federal support that we get, is used to pay for work that we perform at the behest of the government. So in reallocating to some other use,

including trade schools, it means that work just won't be performed. So the right question is, is this the most effective use of federal funding? Do you really want to cut back on research dollars? I'm less concerned about whether it goes to a trade school or if it goes to some other project, like working on highways.

The real question is, how much value does the federal government get from its expenditures on research? There is a lot of actual research demonstrating the returns to the American people have been enormous. One of the thing in reading the DHS Department of Homeland Security statement about Harvard,

there is a line that struck me. Let this serve as a warning. They're talking about their actions against Harvard. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country. I wonder if you agree with that statement, that this is in fact, this episode is in fact a warning to all universities across the country.

Well, they said it and I have to believe it. And I've repeated it myself. And that is how it's understood by the other leaders of other universities that I've spoken to. It is a warning. They see this as a message that if you don't comply with what we're demanding, these will be the consequences. If you were going to make a warning to other universities, how would you phrase it?

I would say that we need to be firm in our commitments to what we stand for. And what we stand for, I believe, I believe I speak for other universities, is education, pursuit of the truth, helping to educate people for better futures, our own students, and hopefully our own students after they graduate from our institutions, go out and serve the world. In the end, we're about producing and disseminating knowledge

and serving our nation and our world. When we fail in that, then we can expect to be attacked. So number one, I think we all need to redouble our commitment to the good of the nation and the world. And I know my fellow leaders fully embrace that. Mr. President, thanks so much for your time. Thank you. Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, who came by

the studios of one of our Boston member stations WBUR. The president has since moved on to the rituals of graduation, which will proceed as they have for centuries in a political environment like no other. This has been a special episode of Up First from NPR News. It's produced by Anna Peres and edited by Rina Advani. Our executive producer is Jay Schaler. I'm Steven Inskeep.