Faculty of Arts and Sciences Overwhelmingly Backs Harvard’s Fight Against Trump, Survey Shows

A decisive majority of faculty who responded to The Crimson’s annual survey of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences support the University’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s federal funding freeze — and believe Harvard shouldn’t cut a deal with the White House.

More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the University’s decision to sue the White House. The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.

A striking but less overwhelming majority, 71 percent, said they believed Harvard should not try to reach an agreement with the Trump administration.

Harvard’s decision to defy the Trump administration — in court and in the media — has prompted ringing endorsements from professors and amicus briefs in support of its lawsuit from 20 states, two dozen universities, and a long list of civil liberties groups.

But The Crimson’s survey is the clearest evidence yet that as faculty feel the pain from the White House’s escalating attacks on Harvard, they stand behind the University in its legal battle to wrestle back billions of dollars in federal funds.

The Crimson’s FAS survey was distributed to more than 1,400 faculty members, including both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, with names collected from the FAS’ public masthead. Faculty were polled on demographic information, politics, and campus issues.

The email survey had 406 responses, with 260 fully completed and 146 partially completed. The survey was open for three weeks, from April 23 to May 12.

The response period began after Harvard first sued the Trump administration over its federal funding cuts but before other significant events — such as the legal attacks on international students that sparked Harvard’s second lawsuit against the government.

A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

This is the first installment in a series on the survey results. This installment focuses on faculty perspectives on the University’s lawsuit and demands issued by the Trump administration.

Trump’s Demands

When the Trump administration placed a list of exacting conditions on Harvard’s federal funding in early April, the University denounced them as intrusive and unconstitutional — and received a $2.2 billion funding cut in response. As Harvard rallied affiliates around its defiance, FAS faculty were enthusiastic supporters, survey responses show.

Nearly 90 percent of respondents disagreed with Trump’s proposal to audit the academic programs that “most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” The White House’s proposed audits encompassed entire schools at Harvard — including the Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, and Medical School — as well as individual programs and departments, such as the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Faculty also overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s demand that Harvard audit students and faculty for viewpoint diversity, then drastically reshape the composition of its faculty and student body if it fell short of the administration’s standards.

And more than 80 percent of respondents disagreed with the government’s demand that Harvard derecognize pro-Palestine student advocacy organizations and discipline students involved in pro-Palestine protests.

After last spring’s pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard, the Administrative Boards responsible for discipline at several graduate schools treated participants relatively leniently. The Harvard College Ad Board ultimately rolled back more stringent penalties for student protesters after the Faculty Council criticized its handling of the cases — but only after 13 seniors were prevented from graduating as punishment for their participation in the encampment.

Harvard’s only recognized undergraduate pro-Palestine group, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, was suspended last year, then placed on probation again this spring until July.

An 83 percent majority of respondents opposed Trump’s demand that Harvard reduce the power of faculty and administrators who are “more committed to activism than scholarship” and of non-tenure-track faculty.

Faculty disagreed with the demand that Harvard cut all of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. A decisive but slightly slimmer majority, 75 percent, disagreed with the demand than with the White House’s other asks.

Over the past few years, Harvard has quietly shifted its approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — axing diversity statements in faculty hiring processes, leaving key DEI-related positions unoccupied, and renaming its diversity office to “Community and Campus Life.”

A sweeping majority of respondents — more than 90 percent — rejected the suggestion that Harvard should “immediately report” international students to federal agencies for violating conduct policies.

More than 80 percent opposed the demand that Harvard screen international applicants and reject those who are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” the language used by the Trump administration in its April 11 missive to Harvard.

The Crimson’s FAS survey was sent out just two days after Harvard filed its lawsuit over the funding freeze and eight days after the Department of Homeland Security first threatened to revoke the University’s ability to enroll international students. But it closed before the DHS followed through with its threat and Harvard challenged the move in court with a second lawsuit.

The federal judge overseeing the second lawsuit has blocked both the revocation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification and a presidential proclamation banning entry to the U.S. on Harvard-sponsored visas. A second attempt to withdraw Harvard’s SEVP certification is underway and has not been blocked in court.

Though respondents answered The Crimson’s survey before the rapid-fire actions against international students, they were already frustrated with his presidency by early May. More than 90 percent of respondents were “very dissatisfied” with Trump’s leadership.

Professors’ disapproval of the Trump administration — and their resounding support of Harvard’s funding lawsuit — could stem in part from the direct effects the funding cuts are having on researchers. Nearly 30 percent of respondents said their funding had been impacted by the Trump administration’s actions, though the survey closed before several additional cuts.

Methodology

The Crimson’s annual faculty survey for 2025 was conducted via Qualtrics, an online survey platform. The survey was open from April 23 to May 12.

A link to the anonymous survey was sent via email to 1,425 faculty in the FAS and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The list comprised all faculty named on the FAS masthead for the current academic year, which also includes FAS department and standing committee affiliates whose appointments are in other Harvard schools.

In total, 406 faculty replied, with 260 filling the survey completely and 146 partially completing the survey.

To check for response bias, The Crimson compared respondents’ self-reported demographic data with publicly available data on FAS faculty demographics for the 2024-2025 academic year. (Unlike The Crimson’s survey, this data only includes faculty with FAS appointments.) The demographic data of survey respondents generally match these publicly available data.

Sixty percent of respondents said they hold a tenure or tenure-track position, according to the survey. According to the FAS Dean’s 2024 Annual Report, 56.81 percent of FAS faculty are tenured or on the tenure track.

Forty percent of respondents who identified their gender on the survey said they are female. Thirty percent of respondents who reported their race did not identify themselves as white. (Another 13 percent of respondents did not identify their gender, and 23 percent declined to identify their race).

These figures compare to 39 percent of FAS faculty who identify as women and 28.8 percent who are not white, according to the FAS Dean’s Report.

Among respondents who said they hold a tenure or tenure-track position, 34.5 percent belong to the Arts and Humanities division, 26.7 percent to the Sciences division, 32.8 percent to the Social Sciences division, and 6 percent to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

That means Arts and Humanities faculty were overrepresented and SEAS faculty were underrepresented among survey respondents. According to publicly available data for the 2023-24 academic year from Harvard’s Faculty Development and Diversity Office, the most recent year for which data is available, 26.4 percent belong to the Arts and Humanities division, 27.9 percent to the Sciences division, 32.5 percent to the Social Sciences division, and 13.2 to SEAS.

The Crimson could not find public FAS data on the distribution of non-ladder faculty across the divisions.

Survey responses were not adjusted for selection bias.

—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.