Harvard is about to get its clock cleaned by no-nonsense Trump & Co.
By
Charles Gasparino
Published April 26, 2025, 3:55 p.m. ET
Tariffs are consuming so many headlines that you might have missed how Harvard, the pinnacle of the Ivy League, is struggling to come to terms with a simple, undeniable reality: It’s about to get its clock cleaned by Donald J. Trump.
Trump & Co., are sick of the antics of the Ivies — their blatant disregard for the law by looking to consider race in admissions, the far left tilt of the professoriate, and of course their acceptance of blatant antisemitic protests that erupted in support of one of the most heinous crimes in history, the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis by Hamas.
Trump wants all of the above to stop, and to make it happen he is now throttling federal funds, and threatening their tax-exempt status, while the GOP Congress takes aim at school endowments, those large piles of investable cash that go a long way in keeping their lights on.

Demonstrators gather on Cambridge Common to protest Harvard’s stance on the war in Gaza and show support for the Palestinian people, outside Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 25, 2025. AFP via Getty Images
And if you understand the endowment system, along with the array of weapons Trump has at his disposal, you will also appreciate that Harvard has almost no choice in this battle but to capitulate just like Columbia, another hotbed of antisemitism after Oct. 7, which has announced a set of sweeping changes to campus life and curriculum.
That’s why it’s a bit baffling that Harvard actually has the chutzpah to fight Trump. Its president, Alan Garber, has announced a lawsuit against the White House after Trump froze $2.2 billion in federal aid over its woke policies like DEI and its half-hearted attempts to root out all forms of antisemitism.

Harvard is about to get its clock cleaned by no-nonsense Trump & Co.
Tariffs are consuming so many headlines that you might have missed how Harvard, the pinnacle of the Ivy League, is struggling to come to terms with a simple, undeniable reality: It’s about to get i…

Last edited: