Harvard would be smart to follow Hillsdale's playbook. Trump should avoid Biden's. | Opinion

President Donald Trump isn’t wasting any time implementing his agenda. We’re not even 100 days into his second term, and it’s been busy to say the least.

Trump promised on the campaign trail that he would fight wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in government and education, and he’s following through.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has taken aim at some of the country’s top schools, including Columbia University and Harvard, attempting to force them to fall in line. Trump is particularly displeased – for good reason – with how these universities have failed to address antisemitism on their campuses as well as with a glaring lack of ideological diversity among faculty and programs. 

And Trump is using the cudgel of federal funding to get his way.

In March, Columbia made significant concessions after the administration withheld $400 million in funding. 

Trump’s latest target is Harvard, and the government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts. Harvard, however, isn’t playing ball. 

“I think Harvard’s a disgrace,” Trump said April 17.

Even though Ivy League schools like Harvard and Columbia are private, the large sums of federal dollars that reach their campuses through student aid, grants and research funding always come with strings attached. 

If they don’t like what Trump is asking for, there’s an easy answer: Don’t take federal money. 

Michigan’s Hillsdale College offers a playbook other schools can follow. 

Hillsdale's independence is tied to its freedom from government money 

Hillsdale, a small liberal arts institution, has made a big name for itself when decades ago it chose to eschew federal funding completely, including in the form of student aid, so that it didn’t have to bend to government demands and regulations. 

Grove City College in Pennsylvania has made a similar choice. 

And Hillsdale, my alma mater, is able to offer its students generous scholarships that make up for a lack of federal student loans. 

I know this from personal experience. I could not have afforded Hillsdale without the generosity of its donors, who believe strongly in the mission of the college. 

No doubt, Harvard, an extremely wealthy university with an enviable endowment (more than $50 billion), could find ways to supplant the federal funds if it so chose – at least until a more friendly (Democratic) president is back in the White House.

Harvard, however, seems defiant and unlikely to acquiesce to Trump.

In an open letter published April 14, Harvard President Alan Garber wrote that what the Trump administration wants “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.”

Yet, Harvard doesn’t get a complete free pass from federal interference – as the government aid it has welcomed is paid for by U.S. taxpayers. 

Trump shouldn't make the same mistakes Obama and Biden did 

Trump doesn’t like to lose, and he’s not taking Harvard’s resistance well. He has threatened to withdraw the school’s tax-exempt status as well as interfere with the enrollment of international students, both of which would be a serious blow to the college’s bottom line. 

I caution the president, however, against falling into the playbooks used by his predecessors. 

Even though I’m sympathetic with Trump’s concerns, I’m wary of government heavy-handedness, regardless of which party it's coming from. And free speech organizations like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression have warned against the Trump administration’s latest actions. 

FIRE raised similar concerns during both the Obama and Biden administrations when they sought to erode free speech rights and campus due process under the guise of enforcing Title IX. 

(That makes former President Barack Obama’s “concerns” over what Trump is doing now very hypocritical.)

Similarly, Trump should avoid going after Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Hillsdale faced a lawsuit recently that sought to use the nonprofit tax exemption as a way to get the college to bend to federal regulations by equating the exemption benefit with federal assistance. Luckily, the federal judge didn’t buy that argument. 

If Trump can withdraw Harvard’s tax exemption, a future president unfriendly to a conservative school like Hillsdale could similarly weaponize its tax status. 

It’s better not to go down that road at all.

In the meantime, if Harvard doesn’t want Trump telling it what to do, then it would be smart to follow Hillsdale’s model.