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The Trump administration said it would take $2.2 billion in research funds from the school. Some small donors are doing their best to make up for the shortfall.
April 17, 2025, 8:46 p.m. ET
For two decades after graduating from Harvard, Samuel Graham-Felsen never donated to his alma mater.
The 388-year-old university represented elitism, he said. Giving even more money to the world’s wealthiest school didn’t align with his values.
“Why should I be giving to this place that has billions of dollars?” he asked himself when he received fund-raising notices.
His sentiment changed this week, after the university rejected a series of demands from the Trump administration. The government asked Harvard to do a host of things — like auditing professors’ work for plagiarism and reporting international students who break rules to federal authorities — that outraged the school’s leaders, others in higher education and people far beyond its iron gates.
Within hours, the federal government responded with a $2.2 billion funding freeze, and later in the week said it would try to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The Trump administration has said it is targeting Harvard because it has not done enough to combat antisemitism. That did not sit well with Mr. Graham-Felsen, a novelist and freelance writer in New Jersey, who is Jewish.
