By E. Matteo DiazAs Donald Trump prepared to return to the White House, Harvard prepared for what could be a tough four years. The test came quickly.
Within months, the Trump administration presented a series of sweeping demands for academic and administrative overhauls on campus, catalyzing a conflict with Washington that will continue into the new year. Those demands included asks to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and review programs that “fuel antisemitic harassment” to avoid losing federal funding.
Harvard didn’t publicly respond to the missive. But days later, it was forced into a reckoning.
In a second letter, sent on April 11, the Trump administration severely escalated its demands, calling on Harvard to implement external audits of academic programs for viewpoint diversity and screen international students for “terrorism and antisemitism.”
Harvard rejected the conditions outright in response, describing them as a gross overreach of federal authority.
The plaudits followed quickly. Garber became the face of higher education’s battle with the White House, drawing praise from faculty, students, alumni, and leaders of peer institutions. Donors poured support into University coffers as the Trump administration began slashing billions in funding.
By June, the two parties, even as they continued to spar in courtrooms in Boston, reopened settlement talks. Trump claimed at the time that his administration was negotiating a “historic” deal with Harvard, saying the details would be finalized over “the next week or so.”
Six months later, that timeline has proven optimistic.
Little has been said publicly about the talks. But it is all but likely that a deal, if one materializes, will involve a large payout. The White House has privately demanded that Harvard cough up roughly $500 million in exchange for restoring frozen federal funding and resolving ongoing federal investigations.
In conversations with faculty over the summer, Garber denied that he was considering a $500 million deal. But in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon last week, Garber reportedly pledged to pay $500 million toward workforce education programs.
White House officials have insisted for months now that a deal is near, though negotiations have proceeded only in fits and starts. Any settlement is likely to see fierce pushback from faculty and students, who have warned repeatedly that agreeing to a deal now would be tantamount to having agreed months earlier.
—Amann S. Mahajan, Crimson Staff Writer
By Mae T. WeirBy Mae T. WeirHarvard’s finances took a hit this year as the Trump administration pulled its purse strings in an effort to reshape higher education.
Early on, Harvard launched a series of belt-tightening measures. It paused merit-based raises for faculty and non-union staff and announced a sweeping, University-wide pause on any non-essential staff and faculty positions.
But that was hardly enough to deter the impending onslaught. After Harvard refused to comply with an aggressive slate of demands that sought to give the federal government control over hiring, teaching, and admissions practices, the Trump administration pulled nearly $2.7 billion in grants and contracts.
The impact of that move was immediate and severe. Research projects — particularly those housed in Harvard’s campuses in Longwood — were quickly halted. Stop-work orders were issued across the board, and despite a $250 million commitment from Massachusetts Hall to backfill lost federal funding in the short-term, faculty said their work had been interrupted or permanently terminated.
Harvard took the federal government to court, arguing that the freeze had leapfrogged proper procedural mechanisms under Title VI. While the challenge was ultimately successful and most of the frozen funding has since flown back into the University’s coffers, the strain has hardly been relieved.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is now running a $350 million structural deficit, a gap it has sought to close by cutting Ph.D. seats by more than half across the next two cycles. In the Sciences and Arts & Humanities divisions, FAS will accept at least 75 percent and 60 percent fewer students, respectively.
Other schools — including the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education — have turned to layoffs to address financial woes. In October, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences controversially laid off roughly 35 staff members, nearly a dozen of whom served in student-facing roles. Weeks after, the Harvard University Information Technology Services laid off 38 of its employees, citing the same financial hardships.
And though the restoration of frozen funding brought a momentary sigh of relief, the White House appealed that court decision earlier this month, setting the stage for a protracted battle that will loom over Harvard’s funding over the next year.
—Sophia E. Alcacer, Crimson Staff Writer
By Jina H. ChoeBy E. Matteo DiazInternational students at Harvard became the focus of an unprecedented federal crackdown in the spring as the Trump administration threatened the University’s ability to enroll thousands of visa holders amid a broader campaign against elite universities and pro-Palestine activism.
The pressure began in early April, when the Department of Homeland Security threatened to revoke Harvard’s authorization to enroll international students unless the University turned over disciplinary records and protest participation data for visa holders. In a letter citing concerns about antisemitism, DHS gave Harvard a two-week window to comply.
Harvard refused to fully comply, arguing that the demand infringed on its constitutional rights, though it did turn over partial records. Federal officials quickly deemed the response insufficient. In late May, the Trump administration moved to immediately revoke Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, attempting to invalidate the visas of thousands of international students.
Harvard sued the administration and sought emergency relief. A federal judge quickly blocked the revocation with a temporary restraining order, later granting a preliminary injunction that preserved Harvard’s SEVP status as the case moved forward.
The legal battle intensified in early June, when President Donald Trump issued a proclamation barring entry to the U.S. for Harvard-sponsored visa holders. That order was also temporarily blocked by a federal judge. Still, some Harvard affiliates reported visa denials and heightened scrutiny at U.S. consulates and ports of entry, including increased airport screenings and social media vetting.
As the lawsuits continued, Harvard issued guidance to international students navigating the uncertainty, warning of tightened screenings and advising caution ahead of international trips. Federal agencies later instructed consular officials not to reject visas for Harvard affiliates on the basis of the blocked SEVP revocation.
By August, the standoff had largely subsided. DHS agreed not to enforce its original revocation threat and moved to dismiss Harvard’s lawsuit, leaving the University’s authorization to enroll international students intact for the 2025-26 academic year.
Despite months of upheaval, the proportion of international students in the incoming Class of 2029 remained consistent with prior years.
—Sebastian B. Connolly, Crimson Staff Writer
By Briana Howard PagánHarvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 is here to stay.
On Dec. 15, the Harvard Corporation granted Garber an indefinite extension of his presidency, scrapping a planned presidential search and issuing an emphatic endorsement of his leadership in an extraordinarily tumultuous year.
Although his extension came without a search — the third time in a row that Garber has been anointed president without a formal process — it was widely celebrated by students and faculty alike.
In the turmoil of 2025, driven in large part by attacks from Washington, Harvard saw Garber move from the careful economist-turned-administrator who spent more than a decade as provost to the president who became Harvard’s public defender-in-chief — and, at times, a national bulwark against the White House’s attacks on higher education.
Garber moved early to brace for a potential clash with Washington, cancelling his planned spring break trip to India after the federal government pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia University.
When Harvard later confronted an even more sweeping reality — losing nearly every last penny of federal funding — Garber attempted to mobilize support for Harvard.
On campus, his efforts were largely symbolic. In May, Garber announced that he would take a 25 percent pay cut in response to research disruptions, a move that prompted similar pledges from other faculty and administrators.
But Garber also took the job of persuading the broader public that Harvard deserved their support. He embarked on a national media blitz, arguing Harvard’s case on a host of outlets including the Wall Street Journal and NBC.
In doing so, Garber became a posterboy of sorts for higher education, drawing support from students and faculty on campus, but also a myriad of politicians and higher education leaders.
That support, however, was not universal. Several of Garber’s decisions — like taking a chainsaw to diversity, equity, and inclusion programming on campus — were met with intense backlash. In August, California Governor Gavin C. Newson called on Garber to resign, condemning his decision to reopen settlement talks with the White House.
Garber, for his part, has repeatedly defended his approach. In a May interview with The Crimson, he said that although he understood criticism that some changes could be seen as political in nature, such claims amounted to nothing more than far-fetched speculation.
And any lingering doubts on his standing within Harvard’s leadership after the pushback were effectively put to bed by the Corporation’s decision earlier this month.
—Hugo C. Chiasson, Crimson Staff Writer
By Briana Howard PagánAcross Harvard’s schools, a series of leadership shakeups at programs focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict ignited backlash from faculty and students, who argued that political pressure from the Trump administration was shaping decision-making and curtailing academic freedom.
The first major leadership change came in early April, when Harvard dismissed the faculty co-directors of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The CMES’ director and associate director were forced to leave their posts, a move that came after criticism that some of the center’s programming was antisemitic and insufficiently balanced.
University administrators privately framed the dismissals as necessary to preserve viewpoint diversity and intellectual rigor. But students and faculty condemned the move as an infringement on academic freedom, citing Harvard’s decision days earlier to suspend its research partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.
Critics said the decisions reflected mounting political pressure from the Trump administration, which has adopted an adversarial stance toward pro-Palestine activism and scholarship. Later in April, the White House called on Harvard to reform programs with what it labeled “egregious records of antisemitism” — naming the CMES, the Harvard Divinity School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, among several others, as departments that “most fuel antisemitic harassment.”
The same week as the CMES’ dismissals, HDS suspended its Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which came after several affiliates alleged its programming on the Israel-Palestine conflict was one-sided. While administrators said the closure was part of a strategic planning process for HDS to rethink the program’s focus, students and faculty alleged a lack of transparency and questioned whether pressure from the Trump administration had shaped the decision.
The most abrupt removal occurred in December, when Harvard ousted the director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at HSPH, another center that houses Israel-Palestine programming.
Mary T. Bassett ’74, a professor at HSPH, was told just hours before that she would need to step down and clear out her office by the end of the day. University officials later said the dismissal was made based on academic considerations and that the center would shift its focus toward children’s health.
Bassett’s removal followed months of scrutiny of the center’s work on Israel and Palestine, including criticism from a federal antisemitism task force and a Trump administration demand in April that Harvard conduct an external review of FXB.
The decision prompted swift backlash. A dozen students protested outside HSPH dean Andrea A. Baccarelli’s office, demanding an explanation on the removal. More than 1,000 academics signed a petition calling for Bassett’s reinstatement and warning that the actions at FXB, CMES, and the Divinity School risked undermining academic freedom.
—Abigail S. Gerstein, Crimson Staff Writer
By Madeline R. LearFormer Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers unexpectedly became embroiled in controversy after a tranche of documents showed he shared an unusually close and personal relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein.
The materials — hundreds of messages and emails exchanged over several years — showed Summers and Epstein freely discussing women, politics, and Harvard-related programming, reopening long-simmering tensions between Summers and Harvard affiliates and forcing him to retreat from public life.
The correspondence, which was released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee as part of a bipartisan push to release documents from Epstein’s estate, stretches from early 2013 until just one day before Epstein was arrested on new federal sex trafficking charges in 2019. In one exchange, Summers solicited Epstein — who described himself as Summers’ “wingman” in the documents — for advice on how to pursue a romantic relationship with a woman he called a mentee.
Within days of the release of the files, the Department of Justice announced that it would probe Summers, a former United States Treasury Secretary, and other notable Democrats implicated in the files, following a request from President Donald Trump.
Harvard announced days after that it too would launch an investigation into Summers’ relationship with Epstein. Though his exchanges with Epstein were the most frequent of any Harvard affiliate in the dump, Summers’ wife — Harvard English professor emerita Elisa F. New — also appeared to regularly banter with the financier.
In light of the newly-surfaced messages, Summers — who holds Harvard’s highest faculty distinction — said he would leave his teaching positions across three undergraduate and graduate courses. He described his association with Epstein as a “major error of judgement.”
He then stepped down or was let go from a myriad of other high-profile public commitments, including as director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and from the board of directors of OpenAI.
Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) called upon Harvard to bar Summers from the classroom, and the American Economic Association, the field’s most prestigious scholarly body, took the extraordinary step of issuing a lifetime membership ban against Summers.
The fiasco also bred controversy on campus. Some undergraduates and faculty called for Summers’ to resign, saying his messages with Epstein long after his first conviction was not in line with Harvard’s values. One of Summers’s co-professors condemned his conduct as “inexcusable” during a lecture.
Summers’ ties to Epstein continue to unfold as the federal government releases trove after trove of documents, albeit at a pace that has violated federal law and drawn bipartisan criticism. Last week, The Crimson first reported that Epstein had named Summers as a successor executor in his will signed in November 2014.
—Uy B. Pham, Crimson Staff Writer
By Timothy R. O'MearaHarvard rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion infrastructure this year, overhauling diversity offices and programming as it faced unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration over federal funding and compliance with civil rights law.
The shift began in late April, shortly after the Trump administration demanded that Harvard eliminate DEI programming or risk losing billions in federal funding. Harvard rejected the demands and later sued the administration over subsequent funding cuts. But weeks later, the University renamed its central Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, dropping DEI language to rebrand the office as “Community and Campus Life.”
Hours after the renaming, administrators informed student affinity groups that Harvard would no longer fund, staff, or provide campus space for affinity groups to hold graduation ceremonies. Affinity groups proceeded with holding independent Commencement celebrations, using outside fundraising and off-campus venues.
Over the summer, similar changes spread to Harvard’s graduate schools, where diversity offices were renamed, re-scoped, or folded into broader administrative portfolios. The Harvard Divinity School replaced its diversity office with an “Office of Community and Belonging,” and the Harvard School of Public Health announced a parallel renaming. The Harvard Medical School restructured and renamed its diversity office and adjusted DEI programming, while the Harvard Business School removed website language pledging support for minority, women, and LGBTQ students. Across the University, DEI language was stripped from websites and job titles.
At Harvard College, Dean David J. Deming oversaw some of the most visible changes. The College closed its offices for minority students, LGBTQ students, and women, reassigning staff and programming into a reworked Harvard Foundation under a new Office of Culture and Community. Weeks later, the College eliminated the dedicated physical spaces that had housed the Women’s Center and the Office for BGLTQ Student Life, converting them into general-use event space.
Deming later acknowledged that the College could no longer host programming targeted to specific identity groups, even as administrators described the restructuring as a consolidation of student support services.
The rollback also reshaped student-facing programming. As the Class of 2029 arrived, Harvard introduced antisemitism training for pre-orientation leaders and residential life staff, drawing criticism from students who questioned the absence of comparable training on other types of bigotry like Islamophobia.
—Alexa M. Schmitt, Crimson Staff Writer
By Julian J. GiordanoCambridge City Councilor Paul F. Toner was criminally charged in March for patronizing a high-end brothel network that operated in Cambridge — an extraordinary scandal that rippled through local politics as a hotly contested election cycle neared.
Toner, a two-term incumbent, is the first elected official in Cambridge to face criminal charges in more than a decade. He was charged with sexual conduct for a fee, a misdemeanor that rarely carries jail time, along with 33 other defendants.
Toner pleaded not guilty in May and refused a plea deal in December. A judge refused to dismiss the case in December, sending Toner’s case to jury trial in 2026. Every remaining defendant accepted a plea deal, avoiding formal conviction.
Legal filings obtained by The Crimson through a public records request showed that Toner spent months fighting to keep the initial hearings private.
But after the charges came to light, the Council splintered over Toner’s future.
Toner resisted early calls for his resignation at a City Council meeting just days after the hearing. Days later, Mayor E. Denise Simmons quietly removed him from his co-chair position on six Council committees.
By early April, a majority of councilors and Cambridge’s state representatives publicly called for Toner’s resignation, and residents vehemently condemned the councilor’s actions.
Emails obtained by The Crimson through a public records request showed that many councilors were notified that Toner would be implicated in the case in January 2024 — more than a year before the allegations became public in court.
Toner, serving the remainder of his term despite months of mounting pressure, announced in July that he would not seek reelection, leaving an open seat on the Council in a packed race.
Timothy R. Flaherty, Toner’s lawyer for the criminal case, was elected to the Council in November. Flaherty, who will continue to represent Toner as his case proceeds in 2026, has emphasized that his campaign is separate from the embattled councilor.
—Megan L. Blonigen, Crimson Staff Writer
By Julian J. GiordanoWhen Harvard hired Victor A. Clay, it was supposed to be a fresh start for the University’s police department.
HUPD was left fraught with allegations of racism and sexism, forcing then-chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley to resign after a tumultuous two-decade tenure. Then, Harvard hired Clay — a Black man from the California Institute of Technology — to lead the department in July 2021.
But Clay’s relationship with his officers quickly soured.
In his first year, Clay swept much of Riley’s top brass and created four new leadership positions. Two officers have since brought age discrimination lawsuits against the University, alleging they were unfairly passed over for promotions as a result of the shakeup.
Soon, the tensions that had long racked the department reached a boiling point. In early April, Harvard’s police union overwhelmingly voted to declare “no confidence” in Clay's leadership.
Clay quietly resigned a few weeks later, abruptly ending a turbulent four-year tenure and leaving the department under Assistant Chief Denis G. Downing as Harvard embarked on yet another nationwide search for a new chief.
By September, Harvard’s search for a permanent replacement was underway, contracting a third-party search firm to pull contenders from across the country. In November, Harvard named a new chief — Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell, a two-decade veteran of New Haven law enforcement.
Amid leadership turnover, HUPD has navigated several public safety challenges. HUPD failed to notify affiliates for more than 30 minutes after reports of gunshots in the Harvard Square MBTA station in April, a lapse students blasted as “embarrassing.” HUPD also ramped up security after a mass shooting at Brown University in mid-December killed two students.
Campbell will take over the department on Jan. 5, 2026, tasked with stabilizing the department and rebuilding trust both with officers and Harvard affiliates.
—Wyatt T. Zurline, Crimson Staff Writer
By John S. KimBy Pavan V. ThakkarIn September, Harvard ramped up enforcement of hazing policies and expanded oversight of student organizations in response to a new federal law requiring universities nationwide to formalize hazing investigation processes.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act — passed in December 2024 — requires institutions to compile reports on hazing incidents, standardize investigative procedures, and publicly identify student organizations that have been investigated.
The first student organization known to be investigated under the new framework at Harvard was the Crimson Key Society, which organizes orientation programming and campus tours. Proctors approached CKS members in costume during a scavenger hunt in Harvard Yard, prompting a review by College officials. Administrators later determined the incident did not constitute hazing and cleared the group.
Later in September, the College issued its first sanction under the stricter policy, suspending the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra — the College’s 200-year-old student orchestra — after a freshman filed a complaint about activities at the group’s annual off-campus retreat.
During the retreat, which took place on Sept. 6 and Sept. 7 in Cummington, Mass., upperclassmen blindfolded new members, shouted instructions, and led them to a barn where they were told to tap an upperclassman’s forearm once for water or twice for a shot of vodka. While many participants said they were not troubled by the activities, at least one freshman reported feeling unsettled.
The College suspended the HRO for the remainder of the fall semester, barring the group from operating as a student organization or hosting social events. The orchestra was permitted to continue rehearsing and performing only under the banner of its affiliated course, Music 110R.
In November, however, the College removed the hazing finding after a group of students appealed the decision. The reversal came after individual members of the organization faced hearings before the College’s Administrative Board, where they were found not to have violated Massachusetts’ legal standard for hazing.
Despite reversing the finding of hazing, administrators upheld the HRO’s suspension, citing other violations of College policy, including hosting unregistered social events and providing alcohol to minors.
—Theresa F. Bartelme, Crimson Staff Writer