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Following the Trump administration’s decision to cut $400 million in government grants to Columbia University, outgoing Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana said in a Tuesday interview that top administrators are planning for the possibility that Harvard may be next.
Addressing threats from the Trump administration to strip Harvard of millions in federal funding, Khurana said the administration is preparing for a range of possible penalties from Washington.
“We are very cognizant of the fluid and changing environment that we are in,” Khurana said in the Tuesday interview with The Crimson. “As part of the institution, we are trying to support these efforts to make sure that we can adapt effectively to this environment and minimize any negative consequences to our core mission.”
He added that Harvard officials were in the process of reviewing the University budget, where they annually consider different possible financial challenges. Earlier this month, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced a University-wide hiring freeze and instructed schools, including the College, to cut back on discretionary spending.
The freeze came just three days after the Trump administration announced the funding cuts to Columbia, alleging the university failed to protect Jewish students. Last week, the White House also suspended $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports.
Fears about cuts at Harvard grew last week, when Columbia agreed to several of the Trump administration’s demands, including modifying its protest policies and appointing a senior official to review the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department. Even with the changes, Columbia has not regained its funding.
Khurana said that because of the hiring freeze, searches for unfilled positions in the College have been halted.
“We are trying to support these efforts to make sure that we can adapt effectively to this environment and minimize any negative consequences to our core mission,” Khurana said.
The College will honor job offers extended before the freeze was announced.
During the interview, Khurana also said the College’s student affinity groups are not in jeopardy of being disbanded after the Department of Education directed Harvard and other federally funded institutions to end all programs that separate students based on race.
“As long as nobody’s discriminating — which is, again, a long standing rule at the College — all our affinity groups are in good standing,” he said. “We have very clear commitments around that in our student handbook — that there is no discrimination allowed, and that also in the allocation of resources and opportunities and membership, those groups have to be non-discriminatory.”
The College currently supports more than 80 recognized student groups that center around a particular racial or cultural identity. Though some Harvard undergraduates have recently said they fear for affinity groups after Trump’s threats against diversity programming, Khurana said the groups had no reason to worry.
A “hallmark” of affinity groups, he said, “is they’re open to all students.”
But when asked to address concerns from international students about free speech, Khurana declined to offer the same reassurance.
The Trump administration’s decision to arrest and initiate deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green card holder, for leading pro-Palestine demonstrations at Columbia has drawn wide-ranging backlash from Harvard undergraduates and professors.
Several other international students and faculty across universities have faced visa revocations after Trump issued an executive order threatening to cancel the visas of students who broke the law while participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations.
Khurana encouraged concerned international students to take their own prerogative in monitoring how federal policy is currently being applied.
“Moments like this can create a great deal of uncertainty, and immigration rules, and how they’re being interpreted, seem to be changing quite frequently,” Khurana said.
“I would say to our international students that perhaps one of the best ways to understand how those rules are being applied is to inform themselves by tracking what’s happening,” he said, adding that they should use resources provided by the Harvard International Office.
But under threat from an increasingly aggressive White House, Khurana pledged to advocate for students.
“Our values are not negotiable,” Khurana said. “Values are only values when you stand up for them at difficult moments.”
“Otherwise, it’s just marketing,” he added.
—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.
—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.
