WASHINGTON — Negotiations between Harvard University and the White House have stalled, leaving both sides uncertain about how to finalize a landmark settlement that appeared near completion just weeks ago.
The White House has not issued any new demands to Harvard as part of a potential deal to restore billions of dollars in research funding and end a crush of federal investigations. But the steady back-and-forth that characterized earlier talks has significantly slowed in recent weeks.
One major reason is an emerging divide within the administration between aides eager to deliver President Donald Trump a political victory by announcing a deal and those who contend the current framework is too favorable to Harvard. Some Trump advisers argue that one way to strengthen the agreement would be to subject Harvard to an independent monitor who would ensure compliance. Harvard has consistently opposed that idea.
This article is based on interviews with eight people familiar with the negotiations, all of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
Talks have also slowed in recent weeks with Cornell University and Northwestern University, although the reasons are unclear. The Trump administration targeted both schools as part of its broad assault on higher education, a campaign that the government has depicted as essential to expunging perceived liberal bias from college campuses.
The government’s tactics — cutting research grants, opening investigations and demanding hundreds of millions of dollars or more in settlement payments — have plunged campuses into financial and political crises. Some schools, like Columbia University, negotiated deals with the Trump administration.
Although it has privately weighed a settlement, Harvard has so far resisted government pressure, challenging the administration in court in an effort to preserve its research money and deflect Washington’s demands for influence.
The slowdown in talks with universities is a signal that the administration is still acclimating to the departure of May Mailman, who, as the White House’s senior policy strategist, was a driving force behind Trump’s pressure campaign. She stepped back from that position last month as part of a long-planned return home to Texas.
Mailman remains central to the talks as a White House senior adviser for special projects. But the process she built from the West Wing to help deliver deals with three Ivy League universities over about four weeks this summer appears to be sputtering.
Still, from the perspective of the White House and much of academia, the most important agreement would be the one between the world’s most powerful political office and Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Such a deal could serve as a playbook for other universities to resist the government, or signal that schools will ultimately have to fall in line.
A White House official said discussions were ongoing among Trump and his advisers over a settlement with Harvard that would “change the course of higher education in this country.”
A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment.
A deal with Harvard was nearing the finish line only a month ago. The framework called for the university to spend a staggering $500 million on workforce programs in exchange for the restoration of billions of dollars in federal research funding. Neither Harvard nor the government publicly detailed potential terms for a settlement, which could resolve a litany of accusations from the White House, including that the university allowed antisemitism to run rampant.
One of the final hurdles for the administration was approval from the Justice Department. That never occurred, and the deal has languished for weeks.
Breakdowns and stalemates are often a feature of high-stakes negotiations, and the Trump administration experienced similar delays in its talks with Columbia. Both sides in those talks anticipated a deal in the spring but did not affix their signatures to an agreement until July.
With Harvard, a split has emerged inside the administration between advisers eager to deliver a deal for Trump and more ideologically driven aides who have a more exacting definition of victory.
Trump’s enthusiasm for an agreement has been clear since June, when he posted on social media that a “mindbogglingly historic” agreement with Harvard could be finalized within days.
Some officials view the framework as too lenient. But clinching an agreement that reflects the ferocity of the monthslong whole-of-government assault on Harvard may prove challenging.
The administration has opened more than a dozen federal investigations into a range of targets at Harvard, from the university’s admissions policies to its patent paperwork. While the breadth of the inquiries has showcased the extraordinary power of the government, the administration has often offered little, if any, evidence of wrongdoing. Critics have likened the tactics to extortion.
Among the officials pushing for additional concessions from Harvard is Harmeet K. Dhillon, a former vice chair of the California Republican Party who is now the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer. She has privately warned that a deal viewed as weak on enforcement could spark a backlash from Trump’s conservative supporters, administration officials said.
Such a scenario has spooked some aides, who are worried about any response that overshadows the $500 million price tag that remains a top priority for the president.
“We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard,” Trump told Linda McMahon, his education secretary, during a Cabinet meeting recently. “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate.”
On Wednesday, Judge Allison D. Burroughs of U.S. District Court in Boston eviscerated the administration for its targeting of Harvard, writing that the government had “used antisemitism as a smoke screen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
In her 84-page ruling, the judge said that the government had broken the law, violating Harvard’s First Amendment rights and failing to adhere to statutes and regulations intended, in part, to guard against the misuse of federal power for political retribution.
“Although combating antisemitism is indisputably an important and worthy objective, nothing else in the administrative record supports defendants’ contention that they were primarily or even substantially motivated by that goal,” Burroughs wrote.
The ruling, which the Trump administration vowed to appeal, was a significant legal victory for Harvard. But the case is also largely viewed by both sides as one battle in a broader war. Although Harvard sued to recover billions in research funding halted this year, the university’s win in court in Boston did not immediately resolve questions about when the money will be returned.
Without a deal, the ruling may also prove to have little sway over whether the administration will award Harvard new grants and contracts that have long been financial staples for large research universities. Even Burroughs noted in her ruling that the court could not block government officials “from acting within their constitutional, statutory or regulatory authority.”
That calculus underscores Harvard’s interest in a settlement, which some officials had hoped to finalize before the start of the academic year to limit any uproar on campus that could follow. Classes began Tuesday.
A separate but related lawsuit from the American Association of University Professors and other groups threatens an additional wrinkle. In that case, the groups accused the government, among other violations, of trampling on the First Amendment rights of workers at Harvard.
The faculty rights organization, which boasts a powerful chapter at Harvard, has expressed little interest in a deal with the Trump administration, especially after it also won an injunction from Burroughs this past week. That dynamic creates the potential for the administration to negotiate a fragile peace with the university, only to remain embroiled in ongoing litigation over its tactics against Harvard and its employees.
“Our organizations — which represent the faculty, the teachers, the researchers, the students of Harvard — have no intentions of capitulating or surrendering this hard-won victory,” said Andrew Crespo, a Harvard law professor and general counsel for the association’s chapter there.
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