Elite Universities Form Private Collective to Resist Trump Administration

School leaders strategize about how to respond and push back against the White House

- Emily Glazer, Douglas Belkin & Juliet Chung

Leaders of some of the nation's most prestigious universities have assembled a private collective to counter the Trump administration's attacks on research funding and academic independence across higher education, according to people familiar with the effort.

The informal group currently includes about 10 schools, including Ivies and leading private research universities, mostly in blue states. Strategy discussions gained momentum after the administration's recent list of demands for sweeping cultural change at Harvard, viewed by many universities as an assault on independence.

The collective, as some are calling it, represents a separate, quiet and potentially more potent effort than recent public resolutions from university-aligned groups.

The group comprises figures at the highest levels, including individual trustees and presidents. Maintaining close contact, they have discussed red lines they won't cross in negotiations and have gamed out how to respond to different demands presented by the Trump administration, which has frozen or canceled billions in research funding at schools it says haven't effectively combated antisemitism on their campuses.

The group's aim is to avoid the fate of some top law firms, where one deal led to others following suit. The universities want to make sure other schools don't go so far as to strike deals that create a worrisome precedent that others would be under pressure to follow, say the people familiar with the effort.

The Trump administration has been worried schools would team up in resistance, because it is harder to negotiate with a united front, according to a source familiar with the government task force. Within the past two months the task force warned leadership at at least one school not to cooperate with other schools to defend against the task force demands, said one person familiar with the warning.

The White House didn't respond Sunday to a request for comment.