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Garber, a mild-mannered, cerebral health care economist who rarely sits for interviews with the media, is guiding the university through a treacherous confrontation with the Trump administration at a time when the federal government is seeking to reshape American universities and, in President Trump’s words, “reclaim” them from radical leftists.
On Monday, Harvard sued the Trump administration over a freeze of more than $2 billion in federal research funding, which followed the university’s rejection of a list of expansive demands. The demands, sent to Harvard by the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force on April 11, ordered the school to abolish diversity programs, change the way it recruits international students, and submit to audits of its hiring practices, among other measures.
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“Now, even if you think that this is really about antisemitism,” Garber, who is Jewish, said Wednesday, “it has impacts on so many different aspects of university life that it is hard to say it is only about antisemitism.”
In a statement Thursday, White House spokesperson Harrison Fields, said, “President Trump is standing up for every student denied an education or safe campus because left-wing universities fail to protect their civil rights. Colleges are hooked on federal cash, and Mr. Garber’s public outburst only fuels the push to shut off the taxpayer money propping up their institution.”
Garber has repeatedly acknowledged antisemitism is present on campus and that Harvard’s leaders take the issue seriously, and are working to address it. A Harvard task force convened last year is expected to issue a report on campus antisemitism soon. Garber said on Monday that its findings, as well as those from a separate task force on Islamophobia, are “hard-hitting and painful.”
“I can just tell you that I believe there is antisemitism on campus,” he said Wednesday. “I believe that it is a serious problem, and it is a problem that we have been addressing with particular attention over the last year and a half. We still have more to do, but we believe that we are making progress in addressing it.”
In his view, antisemitism at Harvard largely involves ostracism of Jewish students.
“I would say that the form that it takes, that I hear the most complaints about, is a form of social shunning, particularly directed against students who are Israeli or overtly Zionist, or in some cases overtly religious,” he said.
“That concerns me greatly,” he said. “Shunning has a corrosive influence. It may change [students’] view of their role and who they can trust for many, many years.”
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The problem, he said, “does not lend itself to simple solutions, but that’s one reason why we are paying so much attention to it.”
Harvard has faced criticism over its response to antisemitism. Some allege that the measures the school has taken suppress pro-Palestinian speech. Others say the university has not gone far enough to respond to what they describe as a hostile environment for Jewish students.
Asked about those criticisms Wednesday, Garber said, “We have put a great deal of effort into clarifying our rules about speech, preserving free speech, and also being clear about so called time, place, and manner restrictions [on protests] that ensure that it is possible to protest without disrupting people as they carry out their research, their studies, their work around the university.
“And I think it’s very important to recognize that our rules concerning speech are content neutral. That means that they are enforced equally and are designed to apply equally to people with all political views. They are not selectively enforced,” he said.
“And for the people who complain that we haven’t done enough about antisemitism, I would say that we have made great strides. But we were confronted with an issue that has long been highly controversial on campus and has divided our campus, really, for decades. This has raised a level of, shall we say, hostility and anger and frustration that is qualitatively different from other situations involving protest that we’ve seen for many years.”
Garber also said he believes the university has made progress toward another goal: making students and faculty feel more comfortable debating controversial topics. Harvard’s leaders launched a working group on Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue last year after faculty members said that students and professors sometimes felt the need to self-censor about charged topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Garber said Wednesday that he is “hearing from faculty that this year is really different. The students are more open to debate. They’re more open to disagreement. I didn’t expect the changes we made would have palpable differences this quickly.”
Asked about the university’s strategy following its Monday lawsuit over the funding freeze, Garber said the university will “exercise our constitutional rights right now.” In its lawsuit, Harvard argued that the Trump administration’s demands, paired with the punitive funding cuts, violated the university’s First Amendment rights.
“I would add that where we think that there are problems we truly need to address, such as antisemitism, such as bringing more diverse voices to our campus, we will proceed to address those problems.”
The task force had also demanded that Harvard submit to an audit of the university’s “viewpoint diversity,” which generally refers to a mix of ideological and political persuasions. Then the university would have been obligated to implement reforms approved by the government to boost viewpoint diversity among its students, faculty, and staff.
In a public statement on April 14, Garber said the Trump administration was seeking “direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard,” which the university could not abide.
Thursday, Trump wrote on social media: “Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart.”
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When asked about where he thinks the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against universities is headed, Garber declined to speculate.
“I leave this to them to clarify,” he said.
Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com. Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.
