“Federal funding for universities must not depend on a loyalty oath,” Roth said in a statement.
Hundreds of Harvard students and faculty and staff members demonstrated last weekend, pleading with the university administration not to give in, adding to an earlier open letter with a similar sentiment signed by 600 university educators, who expressed fear that the school would follow Columbia University’s actions.
Last month, Columbia agreed to some of the Trump administration’s proposed reforms, which included banning masks at most protests, enlisting new campus security officers with the ability to arrest students and hiring a senior vice provost to oversee the Department of Middle East, South Asian and African studies.
Late Monday, Columbia’s interim president issued a statement noting Harvard’s stand and said it would not consent to some of the government’s other “overly prescriptive” demands. Other prominent universities — Brown, Cornell, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech — also joined several state schools in a lawsuit Monday against recent research funding cuts imposed by the Trump administration.
Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties watchdog group, saw this week’s developments as a significant change in tune.
“What Harvard does, others follow,” Perrino said. “I do think we’ll see some colleges and universities start to grow a spine in response to Harvard standing up.”
The school, like most research universities, relies on grants and funding from the federal government to complete multiyear scientific inquiries in a variety of fields. Harvard also accepts federal student loans and Pell grants from students to pay for their schooling. All colleges that accept federal funding are bound to follow civil rights laws.
“Unfortunately, Harvard has not taken the president or the administration’s demands seriously,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said at a briefing Tuesday.