Donald Trumps attacks on Harvard worked. Thats terrifying.
When a government starts making lists of people, its very rarely a good thingDonald Trump himself clearly knows why someone would be scared to be on a list.We know that states like Texas have been curating a list of trans people who have requested updates for their gender markers on drivers licenses. The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pushed for the creation of a registry to track people with autism. Related Donald Trumps attack on Harvard is a sign of what could be coming for LGBTQ+ organizations The administration is using tactics against the university that could be used against other political opponents. Now, Harvards recent capitulation to the Trump administration might seem like a small part of this wider picture, but its turning over of I-9s, a document that will reveal employees immigration and citizenship status, is a major reason for concern.Weve repeatedly seen Trump attempt to brandish power through authoritarian moves, demanding that people do what he says while threatening to withhold federal funding (even when that might not be a power he legally has). While that tactic has been depressingly effective in many instances, Harvard has so far been one of the few institutions happy to stand up to the administration and say no. After all, if you want to make challenges against an organization on shaky legal grounds, then one of the best law schools in the country might not be the best target. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today Back in April, the Trump administration threatened to freeze funding and withdraw federal grants and contracts from Harvard unless they met a long list of demands. While positioned as being about stopping antisemitism, citing pro-Palestinian protests, that argument has little support. Their extensive demands included orders to shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, deny admission to international students who were hostile to the American values, stop recognizing certain student clubs, and audit all admissions and hiring for viewpoint diversity while sharing that information with the federal government.Harvard refused to meet these demands. Shortly after the administration made their move, Harvard President Dr. Alan Garber released a statement declaring that they would not bend to the administration, and stating that 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. In response, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard. The school filed a lawsuit, claiming that it went beyond Trumps authority to make that unilateral move. Since then, the administration has worked to challenge the operations of the university in additional ways, including threatening Harvards participation in the student visa program.However, after being a bulwark against Trump in recent months, this past week saw Harvard crack on an important issue. Supposedly, as part of a probe into Harvards compliance with immigration laws, the Department of Human Services (DHS) requested and received I-9 forms for employees at the university from July 2024 to July 2025. Harvard has now stated that they will comply with this demand.That capitulation is important because of what an I-9 is: a document required to prove that a person is eligible for employment in the United States. While it is needed regardless of immigration status, obtaining this information will provide details on which Harvard employees are not citizens of the United States but have authorization to work through student visas or green card programs instead. The DHS investigation is already a clear attempt at intimidation after the administrations financial threats fell flat earlier in the year. The specific request for the I-9s constitutes a move to create a list of immigrants who work at an institution that they have obviously sized up as a symbolic target: if theyre branding universities as liberal propaganda mills, then Harvard is surely a meaningful place to try to take down a notch or two.To Harvards credit, they have taken steps to mitigate the fallout from their agreement with Trumps demands. The university originally suggested that the request would only apply to a small subset of the employees who worked at a particular building, but DHS was quick to clarify a wider scope for the order. Harvard is still holding back information relating to jobs that are only available to students at the university, but in the meantime, the majority of the I-9s for the roughly 19,000 Harvard employees will be turned over.However small or limited the capitulation from Harvard might be, its still cause for concern that they complied with this politically motivated investigation at all. Giving Trump an inch opens the door to giving him a mile. Weve seen that he wants to target immigrants at institutions who might want to speak out against his regime: Mahmoud Khalil has obviously been the most high-profile of those cases. These actions against Harvard are about finding a way to stifle those voices, to limit free speech on college campuses, and to hunt out views that oppose their own. This is about limiting freedom of expression and scaring people into fearing for the stability of their own lives if they dare to challenge Trump or his administrations actions in Gaza.To understand how much this small opening to the Trump administration might snowball, we only have to look at the recent capitulations from Brown University and Columbia University. Early this week, Brown reached a deal with the Trump administration to reinstate federal grants and research funding at the cost of throwing trans people under the bus by instigating anti-trans bathroom and sports policies, while adopting Trumps definition of gender from his January executive order.Similarly, Columbia University settled with the Trump administration in July. The government had made claims that the university had discriminated against Jewish students by allowing pro-Palestine protests to take place (the same accusation lobbied against Harvard), the university agreed to pay $220 million to settle the issue and the investigation. Additionally, the university will have to submit biannual reports about the campus to a federal monitor. Clearly, what the Trump administration is taking away from all of this is that this tactic works, and they should keep doing it. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that they hoped to exploit more universities in the manner they used on Brown to have them end gender-affirming care (though she used more heated rhetorical phrases to express that plan). Additionally, in the wake of Columbias settlement, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that this is about a cultural change for the campus, and that they are hoping this is a template for other universities. However, when it comes to Harvard, the administration is eyeing a settlement that reaches over half a billion dollars. Each capitulation paves the way for the next railroading.Were seeing this sort of move across the board: a lot of this might sound similar to stories about Paramounts recent settlement with Trump. But whether its media networks that settle lawsuits and cancel shows to appeal to a government to approve their mergers, or hospitals that cancel their gender-affirming care programs in preemptive compliance, we should all be very afraid. This is about groups giving up on their principles, even in small ways, to make themselves more palatable to the current regime while dooming marginalized communities by removing opportunities and silencing their voices.When the government starts compiling lists and data on immigrants and people it views as undesirable to their view of a utopia, its a bleak sign for the future. Too much of this feels like citizens pretending they dont know whats in the cattle cars as they get ready to one day shrug their shoulders and ask what could we do?Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
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