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Top donors to Harvard have mixed feelings about the school’s standoff with the Trump administration, which has frozen $2.2 billion in federal funds for what it argues is antisemitism on campus.
Some major donors, including those with buildings named after them on campus, have been displeased with the university’s response, according to The Boston Globe.
Conversations are ongoing between the school and its major donors, whose political and financial support is now more critical than it may have ever been.
Donations have increased following the announcement that the school would be standing up to the administration. However, some top donors feel Harvard should come to an agreement with the government as they worry about the damage that the standoff could inflict on the institution.
On Monday, the White House announced that Harvard wouldn’t be eligible for new federal grants until the school meets the administration’s demands.
Some donors quietly back some of the modifications that the administration is driving when it comes to fighting campus antisemitism and ensuring diversity of viewpoints, even as they think President Donald Trump’s actions have been too drastic.
Following Harvard’s lawsuit over the funding freeze, the school has changed some policies to be in line with Trump and his allies. The school has said that it will centralize discipline under the office of the president, which is in line with some donors’ views.
Its office of diversity has been dubbed “Community and Campus Life.” Last week, the university said it wouldn’t be funding affinity group celebrations during Commencement, which some see as not adhering to Trump’s directives targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
During the course of the last year, before Trump announced his demands, Harvard toughened rules governing protesting and enacted a definition of antisemitism that some have argued has a negative impact on free speech. The school also established task forces to study antisemitism, Islamophobia, and the environment for open discussion, The Globe reported.
Jewish staff and students at the school have said the environment on campus has improved even as concerns remain about issues such as the shunning of students seen as backing Israel’s war in Gaza, which started after the terror attack on the country by Hamas in October 2023.
Top donor and Ukrainian-born billionaire Len Blavatnik halted his donations because of concerns about antisemitism on campus. A spokesperson told The Globe he recently released “a portion of his funding.”
“Although the pace of change is not as fast as many people would have liked, he believes Harvard is moving in the right direction and that the Trump administration should give them more time,” the spokesperson told the paper.
Similarly, real estate investor and former Harvard overseer Peter Malkin, who had the Malkin Athletic Center named after him, said that demands from the government are “overreaching and excessive.”
But he also said that Harvard’s actions to centralize discipline and remove funding for affinity graduation ceremonies were “another step forward.”
“Hopefully, President [Alan] Garber, with support from the Corporation, will continue his program of reforming Harvard, disregarding the federal intervention and doing what is correct and best for Harvard,” said Malkin.
The Corporation is one of the university’s governing boards.
“Hopefully, Harvard will win in court on not permitting that kind of governmental interference in independent colleges and universities, and certainly in reinstituting the grants for scientific and medical research, which really have nothing to do with antisemitism,” said Malkin.
Meanwhile, some donors do not agree with the school’s actions.
Garber has spoken to several top donors who are concerned that Harvard made a mistake in attempting to fight the administration instead of entering negotiations, one Harvard administrator anonymously told The Globe. While many viewed the administration’s demands as an overreach, they thought that the school should instead have attempted to find common ground with the president.
The university is now looking to donors to get itself through the funding crisis.
Jeff Sklar is a senior finance executive and serves as an adviser to business leaders with connections to Harvard. He told the paper that he started receiving messages during a Zoom meeting that Garber held with alumni last week, as alumni were displeased that the call was more focused on the finances of the school instead of measures to combat antisemitism.
“I love the school, particularly the Harvard Business School,” Sklar told The Globe. “But I don’t want [Garber] to over-assert himself and burn the school to the ground.”
Garber told The Globe that the school has “made great strides” in changing its disciplinary processes and in gathering information regarding antisemitic incidents.
“We have done a lot to improve our ability to address these problems over the past year and a half,” he told the paper. “I would say that this not only enables us to address antisemitism better, it enables us to address a wide range of issues better.”
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