Harvard takes a $2B hit after defying Trump administration—Today is a Proud Day in Our Nation's History

Friends:

I wish there were more universities standing up to this bald, partisan agenda, and ever so glad to see Harvard University taking a stand and willing to take a hit for it by the Trump administration. And indeed, it has to the tune of $2 Billion, no less. What is the cost of freedom—the freedom to teach, learn, and conduct research—a question that Harvard's leadership is implicitly answering?

The Trump administration is holding universities responsible for broader cultural shifts that extend far beyond the scope of any single institution, including Harvard. These shifts challenge the outdated notion that identities—whether racial, ethnic, or gender-based—as fixed. In truth, identity is inherently fluid, continually shaped by both political and apolitical forces, by tradition and the evolving demands of the modern world. Attempting to confine such complexity within neatly labeled boxes to appease those in power is not only misguided—it’s ultimately a futile endeavor. 

As Chicana feminists, beginning with the late Gloria Anzaldúa, have long argued, the future of culture is hybridity. Its power extends far beyond the walls of the academy into the streets of Calcutta, the highways of the Americas, the songs of the diaspora, and the quiet rebellions of everyday life. It moves like water—resisting containment, carving new paths, refusing to be still. To reduce it to something static is to deny its essence, for culture lives not in boxes, but in motion, in memory, and in the ever-shifting dance of who we are becoming.

Our colleges and universities are those sanctuaries within which these processes are researched and discussed—spaces where the fluidity of culture is not only acknowledged but actively engaged. In a world increasingly polarized by rigid ideologies and political agendas, universities provide the intellectual freedom and critical distance necessary to explore the complexities of identity, belonging, and transformation. They are among the few places where competing truths can be interrogated, where the past is held up to the light of the present, and where visions for more inclusive futures can be imagined and debated.

As Chicana feminists have long reminded us, hybridity is not a flaw in culture but its future—an ever-expanding, layered process of becoming that defies singular definitions. Universities play a crucial role in cultivating this vision by nurturing curiosity, protecting dissent, and making room for voices that have historically been silenced or ignored. To weaken these institutions under the guise of control or conformity is to endanger one of the last bastions where knowledge is pursued both for its own sake and in pursuit of a more just, humane, and dynamic world. 

The university’s lawyers argued that the Trump administration's demands encroach on long-established university freedoms upheld by the Supreme Court. In their response, they emphasized that the university would not compromise its independence or forfeit its constitutional rights, asserting that neither Harvard nor any other private institution should permit itself to be overtaken by the federal government.

Today is a proud day for Harvard University and our nation's history. What is the price of freedom? It's priceless. Harvard is letting us know.

-Angela Valenzuela

Harvard’s response represents a rare show of resistance to efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to punish major institutions and law firms he views as hostile. | Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Harvard takes a $2B hit after defying Trump administration

The university said it would not comply with the list of demands that included changes to code of student and faculty conduct.

By Ali Bianco

04/14/2025 03:09 PM EDT

Updated: 04/14/2025 09:33 PM EDT

A Trump administration task force announced Monday that it would block Harvard University from receiving $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts after the Ivy League school defied demands to adopt new policies on student and faculty conduct and admissions.

The Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said it was taking the measure because Harvard and other universities had not taken adequate steps to address the harassment of Jewish students in recent years.

“It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support,” it said in a statement that came hours after Harvard had defiantly said it would not bow to administration pressure.

Harvard President Alan M. Garber said the unprecedented demands, which include requirements to change disciplinary policies to address antisemitic acts during last year’s protests over the Israel-Hamas war, are unnecessary and infringe on free speech rights.

“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,” Garber wrote in the message to the campus community.

Harvard’s response, in the face of a threat of losing billions in federal grants, represented a rare show of resistance to efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to punish major institutions and law firms he views as hostile.

The loss of federal funding is a significant blow to Harvard and affiliated institutions, such as Mass General Brigham and Boston Children’s Hospital. Other schools, including Columbia University, have opted to accept administration demands to avoid the cuts.

Institutions across the country are facing probes focusing on diversity initiatives and allegations of antisemitism on campus. Trump has particularly singled out Ivy League schools that he has denounced as left-leaning and elitist. The administration has said it is also either reviewing or pausing grants to Brown, Princeton, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania.

Princeton President Chris Eisgruber, like the leader of Harvard, has said he would resist administration demands.

Former Harvard President Larry Summers told a group of students and alumni last week that the school is positioned to resist because of its nearly $52 billion endowment. “With all of those assets — If Harvard can’t resist, who can?” he said.

The administration sent an updated list of demands Friday to Harvard that would require the university to restructure its governance, eliminate diversity as a consideration in admissions, institute new disciplinary measures for student protesters, and decertify pro-Palestinian student groups. Garber said the school had already adopted measures to address antisemitism and other misconduct that occurred during raucous protests over the war in Gaza.

“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” he said. “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.”

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the administration was seeking to end “unchecked” antisemitism and that Harvard’s response puts its federal funding in jeopardy.

“Harvard or any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding,” Fields said.

The letter the administration sent Friday — from the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and General Services Administration — accused Harvard of failing to “live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.”

Harvard’s response to the administration defended the university’s commitment to fighting antisemitism on campus, and said the administration disregards” the changes already made by the university. The university’s lawyers said the demands “invade university freedoms” long recognized by the Supreme Court.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” the lawyers wrote in response. “Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government.”

Bianca Quilantan contributed to this report.

‘Evil and Cruel Intent’: Trump Demands Smithsonian Toe the Line and Do Its Part to Whitewash America’s Past—or Lose Funding As Outrage Mounts Over Attempt to ‘Erase History’

Friends:

I want to remind you that whitewashing the Smithsonian and other institutions is blatant censorship. And then calling it "divisive" is a deliberate attempt to silence historically marginalized voices and erase uncomfortable truths rather than engage in honest discourse about the past.

First, the reason these museums and exhibits exist to begin with, at least in part—if not in great part—is that our standard curriculum is already whitewashed. That's what my book, published 25 years ago, Subtractive Schooling (1999), critiqued as part of a larger systemic process of culturally and linguistically subtractive educational assimilation that is the norm, hardly the exception, in U.S. public education. 

Cultural and linguistic erasure is another way to express this.

Second, this illuminates how textbook bans and why deliberations over Texas state standards are so high stakes. They're about the reproduction of a critical consciousness in youth and practitioners. After all, greater inclusion in state curriculum is what we, as civil rights groups alongside various other coalitions and organizations, have advocated for, a number of us for decades. Right now, for example, is Christina Morales' social studies bill, House Bill 178, really needs a hearing.

Third, this attack exists because extremists don't want us, as Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, to have power. They don't want us to have a curriculum that will tell our children and youth that there are people and institutions in world history who, in their drunkenness with power, commit horrible acts like censoring knowledge and erasing the histories of marginalized communities. 

They fear an education that empowers our children to think critically, to question injustice, and to recognize the patterns of oppression that have shaped the world. By controlling the narrative, they seek to maintain the status quo—one where ignorance prevails, and the voices of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are silenced. 

Fourth, we refuse to be erased. Our own history already tells us that we will continue to teach, to learn, and to fight for a future where truth is not a privilege but a right. To draw on Dr. Dolores Delgado-Bernal, we will always have those "pedagogies of the home" that correct sins of omission and commission in state curriculum with the actual truths of history. 

I know my Mom and Dad taught us about their own experiences under McCarthyism with lessons that called out white supremacy while watching the evening news, having conversations at church or around the dinner table that served as correctives to history and social studies textbooks intended to tell us our story with incomplete or biased accounts. My mom always said she knew better than the textbooks because "I lived it," she would say. She could not be gaslighted.

I'm also always reminiscent of the late Gloria Anzaldúa who in her pathbreaking book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, stated correctly that there isn't a Tejana or Tejano alive who doesn't know that the lands were taken from them. She nailed it with that statement. It's in our genetic memory.

Here is another similar article to the one posted below that is about this censoriousness that I'm calling out. Trump Moves to Rewrite Black History at Smithsonian, Targets African American Museum and DEI in New Order

May cool heads prevail. This has happened before in U.S. history. Elections are a real solution to all this nonsense, by the way. Midterms are scheduled for November 2026 and involve every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third or so of the Senate. We must get the vote out.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘Evil and Cruel Intent’: Trump Demands Smithsonian Toe the Line and Do Its Part to Whitewash America’s Past—or Lose Funding As Outrage Mounts Over Attempt to ‘Erase History’

By Christian Boone | Atlanta Black Star | March 28, 2025

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President Donald Trump has claimed to have “saved free speech” and he’s issued an executive order empowering Vice President JD Vance to “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the 21 museums and learning centers operated by the Smithsonian Institution, including the National Zoo.

Vance, who currently serves on the Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regent, will coordinate with the White House budget office to ensure future funding isn’t spent on programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”

Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at the PPG Paints Arena on November 04, 2024 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With one day left before the general election, Trump is campaigning for re-election in the battleground states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The order could have a chilling effect on programs or exhibits that chronicle shameful chapters in American history, such as slavery or Jim Crow laws.

Trump addressed what he called a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”

During his re-election campaign, Trump threatened to withhold funding from schools that taught slavery was central to American history. The president’s pledge closely aligns with the stated goals of Project 2025, the right-wing policy document that Trump disavowed on the campaign trail but has widely implemented since reassuming power.

In his latest order, the president has specially targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016 as President Barack Obama was concluding his second term.

Trump says the museum promotes “divisive narratives,” alleging the museum “has proclaimed that ‘hard work,’ ‘individualism,’ and ‘the nuclear family” are aspects of ‘White culture.'”

Trump has also put the spotlight on the Women’s History Museum, which he claimed planned to recognize “men as women.”

Trump had made no secret of his attempt to reshape the country’s culture, which he says has been corrupted by “wokeness.” He’s signed a slew of executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion measures within the federal government, which has elicited a number of legal challenges.

The president has already fired the board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and installed himself as chairman. The move led to widespread criticism from actors and directors, causing several to cancel upcoming performances. Since then, Trump-friendly acts, like the J6 chorus and Lee Greenwood, have been booked in their place.

The president’s acolytes have also pushed to implement similarly themed, MAGA-friendly materials into public schools. In Oklahoma, teachers are encouraged to use content created by PragerU, founded by conservative radio host Dennis Prager and funded by right-wing donors. PragerU has more than 3 million subscribers on YouTube and calls itself “a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education.”

America’s troubled racial history is de-emphasized, if not whitewashed, in the PragerU curriculum.

According to Yahoo! News, a PragerU video features an animated Frederick Douglass calling slavery “a compromise” while criticizing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison for being too strident. Another PragerU video, about the end of the Civil War, has Ulysses S. Grant complimenting Confederate general Robert E. Lee, calling him “a good man” who just happened to be caught on the opposite side.

In the “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” order, Trump has called for the interior secretary to restore federal properties, including parks, memorials and statues, which “have been improperly removed or changed in the last five years to perpetuate a false revision of history.” In most cases, the names or statues removed were of Confederate generals.

Recasting troubled times in a more positive light is at the heart of Trump’s agenda, which he said aims to promote “American greatness.” Vance will join the Smithsonian Board of Regents and to spearhead the purge. The Smithsonian museums offer free entry to up to 30 million visitors each year.

The blowback to Trump’s plan has been swift and hostile.

One volunteer at the NMAAHC noted that the museum helps people trace their genealogy back to slavery.

“The rest of the museum talks about the slave trade, slavery & Civil Rights,” he wrote on X. “Let that f****** piece of s*** try to change that.”

Another former volunteer wrote, “Sometimes history is hard and painful, but needs to be seen and heard so it’s not repeated and that is not anti-American as he claims.”

One critic described the order as “a direct attack,” while another pointed out that Trump’s order is “an attempt to erase history.” Another added, “Evil and cruel intent, always smh.”

“First Trump removes any reference of diversity from the present — now he’s trying to remove it from our history,” Texas congresswoman Jasmine Crockett wrote on X. “Let me be PERFECTLY clear— you cannot erase our past and you cannot stop us from fulfilling our future.”

“Applying Anzalduan Frameworks to Understand Transnational Youth Identities”

Happening tomorrow afternoon. Join us for a great discussion of a wonderful anthology. Re-connecting right now with my nepantlera energy. 

Free and open to the public, however, you must register here at https://bit.ly/CTMESept4Webinar

-Angela Valenzuela

Center for Transnational and Multilingual Education Webinar

“Applying Anzalduan Frameworks to Understand Transnational Youth Identities”

Sunday, Sept. 4 | 5 p.m. EST

The Center for Transnational and Multilingual Education invites you to a bilingual book discussion on “Applying Anzalduan Frameworks to Understand Transnational Youth Identities.” Angela Valenzuela, professor at the University of Texas and author of the book’s foreword, will discuss the text with the editors and chapter authors and will invite audience participation.

Co-sponsored by the American Education Research Association - Peace Education SIG

"Kindergarten Teachers Speak Out for Children’s Happiness," by Peter Gray, Ph.D., Psychology Today

Great, important read. So much wisdom in this piece. It calls out the dehumanizing and thusly, harmful aspects of kindergarten as practiced in our country today. We need to totally re-think kindergarten, taking out academic training and regimented learning that induces unnecessary stress. If this is happening with white children, we can only imagine how difficult it is for Black and Brown children.

Note: Also read Gray, P. (2015). Early academic training produces long-term harm. Psychology today, 5, 2015.

Check out the letter below by concerned Brookline parents. While mass schooling of which mass kindergarten is a problematic part, the issue with respect to language minority children must get recognized as running even deeper. 

We're not solely dealing here with the art of teaching, but also the art of learning. By this I mean that most pedagogies today stop short of the aesthetic, intuitive, and spiritual that connect to students' cultures and languages. If we really put our minds and hearts around what our kindergartners' greatest happiness and freedom are, these would be diametrically opposite of what we're seeing now in the form of, what I term in my own work, "subtractive schooling." This is a world where students' heritage gets construed as the wealth that they bring to school contexts as embodied cultural beings. This is what rises to the top.

As the late Gloria Anzaldúa once expressed, 

"So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity - I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate."

-Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Yay for Spanglish and Tex-Mex! 

While all children are entitled to happiness and freedom, the ways in which these ideals are culturally mediated and thusly, resonant and meaningful, are ever present, regardless of whether teachers and others are aware. Ideally, of course, they are...

Moreover, this is true for everyone. We are our language (or languages) and language is identity. And all of us have a human right to our identity. And our diversity as a country is what makes us strong.

-Angela Valenzuela

Kindergarten Teachers Speak Out for Children’s Happiness

How can teachers bring common sense and compassion to education policy?

Posted November 12, 2019 |  | Psychology Today

The research is clear. Academic training in kindergarten has no long-term benefit. In fact, it may cause long-term harm. It does not reduce the education gap between the rich and the poor, which is the usual reason offered for such training. It slightly increases academic test-scores in first grade, but by third grade the benefit is lost and, according to some of the best studies, by fourth grade those subjected to academic kindergartens are doing worse—academically as well as socially and emotionally—than those who were in play-based kindergartens (for some of the evidence, see here).

The views of kindergarten teachers are also clear (see here). I have spoken at many early education conferences over the past several years, and at each one I heard from teachers about unhappy little children who are being deprived of play and forced to do increasing amounts of “seat work.” I also hear regularly from kindergarten teachers who are resigning or taking early retirement because they see that the policies they are forced to enforce are harming children. We are losing our best teachers because they are the ones who are most likely to see what is happening and least likely to tolerate it.

So why do we continue on this trend of depriving little children of play and joyful group activities, from which they learn so much, and subjecting them ever more to meaningless, shallow “academic work,” from which they learn so little? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that the politicians who make education policy and many of the administrators who enforce it know little about children or learning, and don’t pay attention to the two groups of people who do: those who conduct research on child development, and the teachers who see directly how the policies affect children.

There was a time when teachers could use their experience, judgment, and common sense to vary what they did in the classroom to respond to children’s varying individual needs. But now teachers are increasingly seen as tools of the administration, to carry out the policies that constitute the latest fad—so many hours of this and of that, and everything the same for every child regardless of the child’s interests and dispositions. Children are data points, not individuals. This is “No Child Left Behind,” “Common Core,” and, heaven forbid, “Race to the Top.”

Race to the Top; what a horrid metaphor for education. A race? Everyone is on the same track, seeing how fast they can go? Racing toward what? The top? The top of what? Education is not a race, it's an amble. Real education only occurs when everyone is ambling along their own path.

I have often wondered what would happen if the teachers who can see what is happening would stand up and protest, not individually, but together, as a united force. I was fascinated, therefore, to read this past June about the united stand taken that month by kindergarten teachers in Brookline, Massachusetts, not far from my home. Twenty-seven of the 34 public school kindergarten teachers in Brookline signed a letter that they read aloud at a meeting of the Brookline School Committee.

Here, in part, is what the letter said (for the full letter, see here):

"We have dedicated our careers to teaching 5- and 6-year-olds, and we see that some current practices are leaving an everlasting negative impact on our students’ social-emotional well-being. Therefore, we are here tonight to share with you our concerns about a new kind of gap that is emerging in Brookline Kindergarten. It is a "reality gap"—a gap between the way research shows that young children learn best and the curriculum the district requires us to teach. It is a reality gap between Brookline educational values and what is actually happening to children in our classrooms.

“We have all worked with our literacy coaches and specialists to implement the various reading and writing lessons with fidelity. However, block scheduling—90-minute reading and writing blocks—comes at the expense of thematic units, play-based learning, and social-emotional opportunities.

“We are seeing the effects of this loss. We see many of our Kindergartners struggle with anxiety about school because they know they are expected to read … It is now common to hear their little voices announce to us, "I don’t know how to read, I hate reading, I hate school, I am not good at anything." This is our greatest concern.

“Current academic pressures on 5- and 6-year-olds are contributing to increasing challenges with our kindergartners ability to self-regulate, to be independent and creative … Study after study has shown that young children need time to play, but in Brookline, because of academic demands, time for play-based learning has been shortened and, on some days, eliminated entirely. As Kindergarten teachers, we know that play is not frivolous; it enhances brain structure and function and promotes executive function, which allow us to pursue goals and ignore distractions. It helps children learn to persevere, increase attention and navigate emotions.

“Young children are also meant to move around and explore. Many children who sit for long periods of time experience frustration, muscle cramps, and disruptive behaviors. We have seen an increase in the number of children diagnosed with ADHD and behavior issues within our schools and we know why this is happening. Yet, we are doing things that will only exacerbate the problem rather than make it better.

“We are not advancing equity. As mentioned with play and social-emotional development, the district is asking us to teach our children in ways that reduce equity in the classroom. We are told that everything has to be the same. Please think about what ‘the same’ means. It is not uniquely tailored to maximize the joy and learning for every single child. Standardization is not equity.

“Where once teachers were trusted to use their judgment and teach to the needs of each unique class, now we are directed to follow set curricula from textbooks. We are being given directives, not empowerment for our students.

“Let’s envision our children being excited to come to school each day, developing a deep love of learning, having confidence in their abilities as learners, strengthening social-emotional skills, creating deep relationships with peers and teachers, and being part of a community of learners. Imagine a classroom where teachers are spending time working directly with students, forming trusting relationships, and engaging in meaningful teaching experiences that address students’ needs as a whole.

“Imagine a future where the educational power of play is returned to Brookline Kindergarten. There is no arguing that our students learn best through play and real experiences that allow them to explore and make connections, build some background knowledge, and develop problem solving skills. The play can be purposeful (teacher guided), but there also needs to be time for children to explore freely without teacher direction. This is essential in the development of curiosity, and the ability to follow an idea or a project through. This is the bedrock of Kindergarten practice. In fact, it is the bedrock of lifelong learning

“Brookline Kindergarten can be a place where children explore relationships with others in order to develop a sense of empathy. It can be a place where they master amicable and respectful dialogue with their peers. It can be a place where they learn how to justify their own ideas and solve problems. Imagine a classroom where children learn how to fail, so they can try again and find their way.

“We ask you to envision with us a future in which our Kindergartners are deeply engaged in fun, integrated content areas. Envision with us classrooms where learning to read is fun, purposeful engaging and organic. We ask you to imagine Brookline Kindergarten classrooms where teachers are trusted to use their judgment about what’s best for each class. Imagine a future where love of learning, not test-based performance, returns to the heart of our children’s very first educational experiences.”

The letter was accompanied by a petition of support signed by more than 500 Brookline parents. It garnered a considerable amount of publicity, nationally as well as locally, including this article in The Washington Post. Did it have an effect?

A new school year is now underway, and I wondered if much has changed in Brookline kindergartens. So, I called Benjamin Kelley, co-president of the Brookline Parents Organization and a supporter of the teachers’ protest. He told me that there have been some small improvements in some of the schools, but all in all little has changed. A request for a full hour of recess every day in kindergarten was turned down. Block academic scheduling still occurs. The Brookline school superintendent resigned suddenly over the summer, though it is not clear that the teachers’ protest had anything to do with it. Currently, there is an interim superintendent while they search for a replacement.

Maybe serious change will come after a new superintendent is hired? Or maybe not. If not, then I hope the kindergarten teachers will have the courage to do more than write a letter. How about a strike? A strike not for higher pay or other such benefits, but for the welfare of the children and our nation’s future.

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Peter Gray, Ph.D., research professor at Boston College, is author of Free to Learn (Basic Books) and Psychology (Worth Publishers, a college textbook now in its 8th edition). He has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He did his undergraduate study at Columbia University and earned a Ph.D. in biological sciences at Rockefeller University. His current research and writing focus primarily on children's natural ways of learning and the life-long value of play. He a founding member of the nonprofit Alliance for Self-Directed Education and a founding board member of the nonprofit Let Grow. His own play includes not only his research and writing, but also long distance bicycling, kayaking, back-woods skiing, and vegetable gardening.