I write letters

To Alan Garber & John Manning:

As a member of the law faculty (and, not for nothing, a professor of the First Amendment), I am writing you to express my strong opposition to any "settlement" with the Trump Administration. Harvard has been a beacon for academic freedom, and that means that even if Harvard's administration believes that it is getting a "good" deal, any "deal" will be used to extort more concessions and destroy academic freedom elsewhere. This is not how the leading US university should behave.

Moreover, as every trade partner has seen—as Columbia University has seen—as the recission package passed by Congress despite promises to the contrary has shown--there are no "deals" with authoritarians of this stripe. This administration is both unwilling and unable to keep its word. Russ Vought and his ilk are not going to release money, and even if the money previously owed is released without a court order, there will be more demands and less money next time.

Instead, the administration's acts against George Mason's faculty suggests that individual professors are next, and our students are already at risk. Protecting Harvard requires protecting its faculty and students from government thought control. This cannot be accomplished merely by saying in a statement that the university has retained academic freedom, if it is accompanied by concessions to people who hate higher education and want to destroy it. If you sign an agreement with these people, will appointments and admissions be actually free to follow the pursuit of academic excellence according to the law on the books? Or will a threat hang over every decision? If you sign an agreement, will it still be likely that you'll wake up to find that we can't have international students any more until we do just one more thing to root out whatever they've decided is too "woke"?

I understand you must be under a huge amount of pressure. If the US does not retain its democratic institutions, let it be without your consent and with your resistance. If the US does survive as a democracy, we will all remember what side Harvard was on.