University president Jonathan Levin ’94 and Provost Jenny Martinez expressed support for Harvard after its president Alan Garber M.D. ’83 — a Stanford Medicine professor emeritus — vowed to resist the Trump administration’s demands to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, cooperate with heightened immigration enforcement and undergo federal audits for “viewpoint diversity.”

“Harvard’s objections to the letter it received are rooted in the American tradition of liberty, a tradition essential to our country’s universities, and worth defending,” Levin and Martinez wrote in a statement that Levin shared with The Daily.

“America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth,” they also wrote. “This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study.”

The statement continued: “Universities need to address legitimate criticisms with humility and openness. But 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.”

Members of the Trump administration sent a lengthy list of demands to Harvard on Friday, directing the school to discontinue DEI efforts, prevent the admission of international students who might be “supportive of terrorism or anti-semitism,” submit to a federal audit for “viewpoint diversity” and stop recognizing pro-Palestinian campus groups. Building on a previous set of demands, the government threatened to withdraw $9 billion of federal funding if Harvard did not comply.

The new directives came after huge government funding freezes against universities including Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Northwestern over the schools’ alleged failure to rein in campus anti-semitism.

In a Monday letter to Harvard community members, Garber rejected the orders, writing, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” He added that the Trump administration’s list of demands “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”

Garber’s statement made Harvard the first major university to take such a forceful stand against the White House’s actions targeting higher education. Within hours, the Trump administration announced it would freeze over $2.2 billion in grants to the school.

Garber himself attended Harvard before receiving his medical degree from Stanford in 1983. He then joined Stanford Medicine as a faculty member, holding various academic appointments on the Farm for the next 25 years.

An expert in healthcare policy, Garber also holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard and was a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI), where he served as director of the interdisciplinary Center for Health Policy.

Health policy professor Douglas Owens ’78 M.S. ’91, who succeeded Garber as director of the Center, wrote to The Daily that “Alan is one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked with, and I’m sure he weighed the issues carefully.” Although Owens said he could not speak to whether Garber’s statement set a precedent for Stanford, he added that “There are larger issues at stake, and Alan laid those out clearly.”

Stanford has faced threats to its federal funding from the Trump administration, including over race-conscious decision-making, though it has not yet seen a targeted freeze like Harvard.

Last month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it would investigate Stanford’s admissions policies to ensure the University’s compliance with a 2023 Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, an action the DOJ called a routine “compliance review.”

The Department of Education previously threatened that Stanford and other institutions would lose federal funding if they did not cease all race-conscious practices, extending beyond admissions to campus life. The department later appeared to walk back some of its restrictions in an FAQ document.

Cuts to research funding at the National Institutes of Health have also affected Stanford, with an estimated loss of $160 million annually. The change has already interrupted research labs on campus. Along with a potential new endowment tax, the cuts led the University to freeze all staff hiring.

Amid these changes, a growing number of community members, including members of the Faculty Senate, have called on Levin and Martinez to publicly oppose the Trump administration’s policies.

Levin did not comment on whether Stanford would issue a statement of its own against the government’s funding threats.

Garber left Stanford in 2011 to become Harvard’s provost. Last year, after the contentious resignation of Harvard president and Stanford alumna Claudine Gay ’92, Harvard named him its interim president. The Harvard corporation later extended his appointment through the 2026-27 academic year.

Coinciding with Garber’s statement, Harvard’s legal team sent a response letter to the Trump administration Monday, expanding on their opposition to the demands. One of Harvard’s lawyers, Robert Hur J.D. ’01, is a Stanford Law School alumnus who served as executive editor of the Stanford Law Review.

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle,” wrote Hur and William Burck, another lawyer representing Harvard, in their letter.

The Daily has reached out to Hur and Garber for comment.

This story is breaking and will be updated.