Stanford Joins the Warpath

One week ago, on April 11, 2025, the Trump administration sent Harvard University a letter presenting wide-ranging demands and threatening to cut off federal research funding if said demands were not met. Harvard swiftly rejected these conditions, prompting the administration to freeze $2.2 billion in funding to the university. Three days ago, Stanford University, which has thus far escaped the targeted federal funding cuts directed at Harvard and Columbia, publicly sided with Harvard, entering the fray and risking its own relatively advantageous position.

The Trump administration’s core demands to Harvard fall into five broad categories. First, the administration calls for merit-based hiring and admissions practices that cease “all preferences related to race, sex, religion, or national origin,” effectively dismantling affirmative action’s race-based “preferences.” Second, it demands viewpoint diversity, ordering Harvard to abolish “ideological litmus tests” that exclude conservative perspectives from academic discourse. Third, it seeks a crackdown on DEI programs and antisemitism on campus. Fourth, it insists on heightened scrutiny of international students, requiring Harvard to “prevent admitting students hostile to … American values and institutions,” specifically emphasizing antisemitism and terrorism in a nod to pro-Palestine protestors. Finally, the administration requests the restructuring of university governance to empower tenured professors over the administrative apparatus.

In broad strokes, the letter represents a blueprint for much-needed reforms to elite universities. Harvard has 25 liberal professors for every conservative; Stanford spends more on bureaucratic bloat than research; the modern American university has become a “soft target” for Chinese espionage. In this context, reforms to university hiring, admissions, and governance practices are welcome.

But some of the letter’s requests are frankly baffling. The letter asks Harvard to report “any foreign student … who commits a conduct violation,” a phrase vague enough to suggest the potential for deportation for even minor infractions. Another puzzling clause mandates a “comprehensive mask ban” punishable by “not less than suspension.” Are we to suspend flu-ridden Harvard students for wearing masks to protect their friends? Moreover, the directive to empower tenured professors extends “exclusively [to] those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the University and committed to the changes indicated in this letter,” raising concerns about whether the goal here is genuine reform or conformity to government ideology.

Much like the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia at the onset of World War I, this mixture of necessary reforms and provocative poison pills risks making realistic settlement impossible, raising questions that more radical elements within the Trump administration might overwhelm moderates who genuinely seek constructive reform. University administrators likely read this letter not as a call for institutional improvement, but as an existential threat of dismantlement.

If the true goal is to build a parallel set of elite institutions from scratch, the administration faces an uphill battle: prestige, capital, networks, and talent compounded over centuries--indispensable for both elite formation and cutting-edge research--cannot be easily replicated in a single presidential term. In President Levin’s words: “The way to bring about constructive change is not by destroying the nation’s capacity for scientific research, or through the government taking command of a private institution.”

This perceived existential threat was likely front-of-mind for President Levin as he decisively aligned Stanford with Harvard, condemning the Trump administration’s letter.

Previously, Levin made careful overtures towards conservative factions, publicly appearing alongside now-NIH Director, then-Stanford professor, and former Review staffer Jay Bhattacharya at a pandemic policy conference addressing liberal overreaches during COVID. Compared to peer institutions, Stanford has been uniquely well-positioned vis-à-vis the conservative movement: Stanford’s pro-Palestine protests were far smaller than, say, Columbia’s, and many conservative policymakers in the current administration, particularly within the influential “tech right,” hail from Stanford and presumably feel some institutional loyalty.

Consequently, Stanford has largely avoided the Trump administration’s targeted wrath. While it has absorbed universal funding cuts--like the capping of NIH grant overhead to 15%--the University has been spared the direct funding freezes imposed on Harvard and Columbia.

That might change.

In publicly siding with Harvard, Stanford invites retaliation it might not survive. The penalties Harvard faces--nonprofit status revoked, endowment taxes sextupled, federal funding frozen--are financially catastrophic. Stanford, with its vast endowment and administrative slack, could weather any one of these punishments. But not all three: firing two-thirds of administrators would still not cover the financial hit.

The risk Levin has taken on is existential; the upside, even on his own terms, is unclear. One more university joining the chorus of objections is unlikely to dissuade the administration, especially if actually intent on dismantling elite academia.

There was a brief window in which it looked like Stanford would reign ascendant, reaping the rewards of its uniquely ideologically-tolerant, innovation-focused culture. Stanford could have stood apart, emerging from this conflict as the last elite university unscathed, concentrating top talent and resources from the rubble of its former peers.

Levin and Martinez have left room for dialogue, stressing the need “to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness.” Still, having thrown in with Harvard, Stanford likely rises and falls with elite universities writ large.

The door of Stanford exceptionalism stands ajar--and closing; the Stanford decade may end before it truly began.