With Donald Trump, seemingly everything is personal, leading some to wonder if his war against Harvard was prompted by the university denying admission to his son Barron, who recently finished his freshman year at New York University’s business school.
The president targeted Harvard and several other leading universities, alleging they did not do enough to protect Jewish students during campus protests against the war in Gaza.
Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, acknowledged anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim prejudice accompanied some of last year’s protests.
“I’m sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” he said. “Harvard cannot, and will not, abide bigotry.”
Harvard has been one of the few institutions to defy the Trump administration’s heavy-handed tactics, citing First Amendment concerns, among other issues. As the school seeks legal redress, the White House has reportedly threatened to cancel all federal contracts with the university, worth an estimated $100 million annually.
Harvard has already lost $2.6 billion in federal research grants canceled by the government.
But according to First Lady Melania Trump, the whispers about a Trump family feud with Harvard have no merit.
“Barron did not apply to Harvard, and any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false,” said Nick Clemens, spokesperson for the Office of the First Lady.
In 2024, Barron’s father, a graduate from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania, bragged on the campaign trail that his youngest son “got into every college he wanted to. He made his choice, and he is a very good guy.”
Meanwhile, the dispute between Trump officials and the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school continues to escalate. The administration has presented Harvard with a list of demands, including ending its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, hiring an outside auditor to ensure ideological diversity within the school’s clubs and groups and preventing the admission of any students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.” A ban on all international students was recently paused by a federal judge’s injunction.
Trump is already claiming victory in the fight, declaring Thursday that “Harvard has to understand the last thing I want to do is hurt them. They’re hurting themselves.”
“They’re fighting. You know, Columbia has been really — they were very, very bad what they’ve done,” Trump said during a tense press conference in the Oval Office. “They’re very anti-Semitic and lots of other things.”
“But they’re working with us on finding a solution, and, you know, they’re taken off that hot seat,” the president concluded. “But Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are, and they’re getting their ass kicked.”
The showdown has placed Harvard squarely into the culture wars, shaped by loyalty to and against Trump. MAGA devotees announced via social media they were boycotting the university.
One parent with a son about to start med school wrote, “Harvard was an option, but he’s a white male — so we decided to have him go somewhere his skin color wouldn’t hurt his chances of success.”
News of a potential boycott was greeted by mostly chuckles from the left.
“MAGA boycotting Harvard is like me saying I am boycotting Ferrari!” joked one pro-Harvard voice.
Ironically, conservatives, including Republican Sens. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, and Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, attended the school figures on the right now demonize as a bastion of Marxist, anti-American beliefs.
Barron Trump, now 19, is expected to graduate with the class of 2028 from NYU.
