Khurana Suggests Trump Admin Is Using Antisemitism Fears As Pretext for Campaign Against Higher Ed

Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana said at a Faculty of Arts and Sciences meeting on Tuesday that the federal government has weaponized genuine concerns about campus antisemitism to justify its attacks on higher education.

Though Khurana did not refer to President Donald Trump by name during his speech, he said Harvard should oppose coercive and illegal attempts to infringe on universities’ autonomy — even as it works to examine its own institutional flaws.

His remarks came one day after three federal agencies announced a review of more than $8 billion in multi-year federal grant commitments to Harvard, suggesting the funds may be in jeopardy if the University does not “root out” alleged antisemitism.

But Khurana quickly sought to limit the reach of his comments and walk back their implicit condemnation of Trump.

The Crimson reports on faculty meetings under the condition that remarks on undocketed items may only be directly quoted with the speaker’s approval. When asked for permission by The Crimson, Khurana declined emphatically through a College spokesperson.

Via the spokesperson, Khurana also asked that The Crimson not suggest his remarks referred to Trump, even in summary.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has pulled hundreds of millions of dollars from Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania over their policies on campus protests and transgender athletes, respectively.

Columbia’s decision to accede to some government demands in an attempt to win back funding drew condemnation from Columbia professors and prompted more than 600 Harvard faculty to sign a letter urging Harvard to reject “unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance.”

Khurana’s comments — which were met with applause from a faculty body that has become increasingly restive amid the funding threats — marked the most forceful rebuke of Trump by a top Harvard administrator yet. They came one day after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in a message to University affiliates that he would “engage” with a federal task force investigating Harvard over antisemitism.

Khurana said in his remarks that antisemitism exists at Harvard and that he has witnessed it himself. But he said addressing the issue did not warrant severe external intervention in University affairs.

He said attempts to control the material taught in classrooms and the identity of teachers were not good-faith reforms to address antisemitism but rather attempts at control. Such efforts were authoritarian and un-American, he added.

If Harvard were to compromise on its basic principles in response to external demands, Khurana said, then the University would have already lost the values it claims to defend.

Khurana also acknowledged critiques that Harvard lacked intellectual diversity and said the University still had more work to do to promote diverging viewpoints.

Khurana’s speech, which was not listed on the meeting docket, comes as Harvard has distanced itself from several programs that could be targeted by the Trump administration.

Last week, the Harvard School of Public Health announced it had severed ties with Birzeit University, a school in the West Bank. And the Harvard Divinity School announced it would pause the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which had drawn criticism over its programming on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Interim Harvard Dean of Social Science David M. Cutler ’87 also dismissed the director and associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies last week. Both told colleagues he explained the dismissals as a response to the center’s allegedly imbalanced programming on Palestine.

​​—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.