Trump officials cite Harvard Divinity as one of university’s ‘schools of concern’

Easily lost in the flurry of news about Harvard University refusing to bend the knee to the Trump administration is that Harvard Divinity School is one of the “programs, schools and centers of concern” cited by the administration as having “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias.”

That should come as no surprise because the divinity school has been a favorite subject of criticism from political conservatives and evangelicals for decades. It is the quintessential “liberal” seminary.

But that’s in the school’s DNA. It dates from 1816, when it was established as the first nondenominational divinity school in the United States. In those days, “nondenominational” did not mean “conservative” like it does today. It meant the school was untethered from the kind of denominational dogma that guided every other seminary in the budding nation.

“Harvard Divinity stood against Calvinism the last time Calvinism was cool.”

Harvard Divinity stood against Calvinism the last time Calvinism was cool — in the early 19th century. Out of that tradition, the school today enrolls students from a variety of religious backgrounds, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Sikh.

That makes it different than most every other — but not all — seminaries in the U.S., which typically have denominational ties, even if loosely.

Notable former professors at Harvard Divinity include Frederick Buechner, Harvey Cox, Peter J. Gomes, Richard R. Niebuhr, Henri Nouwen, Paul Tillich and Cornel West.

Ties to Israel-Gaza conflict

Here’s one illustration of what’s behind the conflict: The Trump demands to Harvard University came two weeks after Harvard Divinity School announced it would suspend its Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative. That suspension was said to be due to budget cuts and “public accusations that the initiative’s programming presents a one-sided view of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” according to The Harvard Crimson.

Harvard also “forced out the faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies — another program that has come under fire for alleged antisemitism in its programming,” the student newspaper reported. “The Harvard School of Public Health has also suspended its partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.”

Harvard Divinity School is certainly not alone among U.S. academic institutions in educating students and the public about the overreaches of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military forces.

This is the heart of the Trump administration’s concern about Columbia University which, unlike Harvard, decided to acquiesce to Trump’s demands and then, rather than relief, got hit with more demands.

Harvard Divinity’s unique role

Today, the stated mission of Harvard Divinity is to “educate students of religion for intellectual leadership, professional service and ministry.” And its stated vision is “to provide an intellectual home where scholars and professionals from around the globe research and teach the varieties of religion, in service of a just world at peace across religious and cultural divides.”

Harvard Divinity is, first and foremost, an academic and research school more than a training ground for local church pastors, although it has produced a number of those.

A simple internet search will reveal dozens of articles written about the pros and cons of Harvard Divinity and its relevance to the modern church.

In the minds of many Americans, the very name “Harvard” elicits thoughts of elitism and WASPY superiority.

Onerous demands

While Harvard is not a typical divinity school, the demands made of it by the Trump administration would be found onerous at nearly any seminary not beholden to conservative evangelicalism.

Of note is that the original letter outlining the administration’s demands was made by three people with little actual authority. The now-infamous demand letter was signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration; Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Thomas E. Wheeler, acting general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education.

Note two of the three signers are “acting” in their roles and are not Senate approved. They are temporaries.

Yet their demands are far-reaching.

There’s a notable comparison to a letter sent to Georgetown Law Center in March by another Trump “acting” director that was strongly rebuffed by the Jesuit Catholic school. That official from an acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia also demanded curriculum changes.

Aside from the divinity school, other “programs, schools and centers of concern” cited in the Trump administration letter are the Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Religion and Public Life Program, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic.

Notice a pattern there?

The three Trump bureaucrats begin their letter by lecturing the university president on “scholarly discovery and academic excellence” and warn that “an investment is not an entitlement.” They accuse the university of not upholding federal civil rights laws and not producing “intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor.”

“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” they opine before giving a shopping list of what must be done to merit federal dollars from the Trump administration.

For the record, Gruenbaum holds a law degree from NYU School of Law and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. The 39-year-old has said he left a corporate job to join the Trump administration, in part, as a way to fight antisemitism.

Keveney holds a bachelor’s degree in German and history from the University of Tulsa, a degree in modern history from Oxford University and a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Both he and Gruenbaum are serving on Trump’s Antisemitism Task Force that took money away from Columbia University.

Wheeler earned a bachelor’s degree in law and public policy from Indiana University Bloomington and a law degree from Indiana University Maurer School of Law, where he was a founding member of the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the far-right group that has been vetting judicial nominees for Trump before and now.

The demands

These three Trump officials made a long list of demands of Harvard, which they said would be required to maintain $2 billion in federal grants. Among other things, these demands included:

• Governance and leadership reforms that would elevate tenured faculty members “committed to the changes indicated in this letter” and “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.”
• Merit-based hiring reform that must replace “all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” Along with these reforms, the officials oddly are obsessed with rooting out faculty plagiarism.
• Allowing a federal audit of “all hiring and related data.”
• Merit-based admissions reform that would “cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof.”
• Allowing a federal audit of “all admissions data” and all “statistical information regarding admissions.” While prohibiting admissions decisions based on race or gender, the trio demanded that very data be provided for government review going forward.
• International admissions reform to “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or antisemitism.” They also demand the university immediately report to the State Department any foreign student “who commits a conduct violation.”
• “Viewpoint diversity” in admissions and hiring that ensures “each department, field or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.” And with this penalty: “Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity.”
• Reforming programs with “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias,” such as the divinity school. This must include a report on “individual faculty members who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules following October 7.”
• Discontinuation of DEI. “The university must immediately shutter all diversity, equity and inclusion programs, offices, committees, positions and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control policies, under whatever name.”

And the list goes on, ending with this demand: “We expect your immediate cooperation in implementing these critical reforms that will enable Harvard to return to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence.”

Harvard’s response

As you probably already know, Harvard’s leadership did not take kindly to these government directives.

University President Alan M. Garber published an open letter to the Harvard community titled “The Promise of American Higher Education” that said, in essence, “Hell, no!”

The letter from the three Trump officials “makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner. Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

He declared: “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

Other responses

Some Jewish faculty and former faculty have expressed agreement with the overall attempt to address antisemitism but say the Trump administration’s demands are overreach.

“The second Trump letter had demands that could charitably be called ridiculous.”

“The second Trump letter had demands that could charitably be called ridiculous, and the Trump administration must have known that (President) Garber would have no choice but to reject them,” Jesse Fried, a Harvard Law School professor told Jewish Insider. “They say that Trump is the great divider, but I’ve never seen anybody unify the Harvard faculty as successfully as he has.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, who was a visiting faculty member at Harvard Divinity School in the 2023-2024 academic year, told Jewish Insider he has no problem “with the general goals that are laid out” in Trump’s letter. But, “I think this is a letter that will have a lot of unintended consequences, and it seems to me an overreach.”

Other persistent critics of Harvard have written in defense of the school against Trump.

A coalition of 70 past and present university presidents co-signed an open letter decrying the Trump administration’s demands.

“When the Trump administration conditions federal grants and contracts to universities on these demands, it threatens all Americans,” the letter begins. “Higher education is the greatest source of U.S. global competitiveness, cultural enrichment and learning. By partnering with the federal government for decades, American universities have made lifesaving discoveries and increased the prosperity, safety, security and creativity of our country. When the Trump administration insists on anyone’s compliance with likely illegal and unconstitutional conditions, it is threatening everyone’s freedom from arbitrary rule. When it insists on controlling the admission of students, faculty hiring and governance of a university, it is also threatening a prime source of the opportunity and economic prosperity of all Americans. We all know from Martin Neimoller’s haunting lament, this authoritarian incursion does not end with Harvard.”

“This is a loaded gun.”

Even Fox News went after the Trump administration’s tactics, quoting Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression who said even though he believes Harvard has a bad track record of protecting free speech on campus, the administration is trampling on its Constitutional rights.

“This is a loaded gun,” Perrino said. “These same tools that the presidential administration is using right now to get some outcomes that maybe conservatives like, are the same tools that can be used by a liberal administration to get outcomes they don’t like once the power changes hands.”

At least one reliable Trump-supporting organization was at the ready with a defense. Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen published an article by Emily Washburn that said: “For years, campus faculty and administrators fed the sickness of antisemitism. Now, an astonishing number of students have been infected. Policy adjustments alone can’t cure them.

“Radical ideological change is the only permanent solution — and that takes time. In the meantime, Harvard, Columbia and the rest of their ilk will be playing whack-a-mole with the destructive ideology they once embraced.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon tweeted a warning to other schools: “Let me be clear to Harvard and any university receiving federal funding: civil rights violations and creating an unsafe environment for any student will not be tolerated.”

That as the State Department appears to be randomly revoking education visas for international students at 120 schools across the nation and limiting the free-speech rights of Palestinians, Arabs and their allies.

 

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