How Harvard Ended Up Leading the University Fight Against Trump

Harvard University has drawn a line in the sand against the Trump administration and its sweeping demands for cultural change. Now it is counting on its peer institutions for backup.

- Douglas Belkin, Meridith McGraw, Erin Mulvaney & Sara Randazzo

In Washington, Republicans say the nation's wealthiest and oldest university has just made a serious error in judgment and is about to learn the cost of crossing Trump.

The collision between the president and America's most iconic university had barely begun when it immediately escalated. Trump on Tuesday threatened to withdraw the university's tax-exempt status, a move that would hit Harvard's finances far beyond the $2.26 billion in federal cuts the Trump administration had announced Monday night after Harvard's president said the school wouldn't bow to a broad list of demands.

Trump's allies are also vowing to hold the line against the Ivy League university, which has an endowment of more than $50 billion. "I think Harvard got bad advice to take a different approach," said U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), herself a Harvard graduate, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. "But what they don't realize is the level of seriousness-it is dead serious."

Now that Harvard has stuck its neck out, it is waiting for support. The institution is working with Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with close ties to Trump that the university hired earlier this year. It is also leaning on its own team in Washington to reach out to potentially sympathetic Republicans in the administration or in Congress who might be willing to help, according to people familiar with the matter.

The pitch to Republicans, according to a person familiar with the matter: Don't overreach, this is a private institution.

Harvard's defiance seems to have emboldened Columbia University, which has been in protracted negotiations with the Trump administration to restore $400 million in funding cuts over antisemitism allegations.

Following Harvard's public stance, Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, told the university community that it will not let Washington call the shots on who Columbia hires or what it teaches.