How Trump helped Harvard: 5 ‘Crimson’ leadership lessons on standing up to bullies
Harvard has helped itself recover from institutional slips while a massive rallying of peer institutions fortified Harvard’s defense from Trump administration attacks — which had paradoxical consequences beneficial to the Ivy League institution.
In particular, President Trump’s attack on Harvard have forced it to accelerate its focus on repairing weaknesses which were legitimately raised, but his escalating ideological intrusion into private institution decision-making over staffing and curriculum content, freedom of expression, and funding for vital objective research led to a surge of sympathetic support from across American society as well as among key constituent groups from donors and applicants to peer institutions.
Two years ago, Harvard University’s venerable reputation had been badly damaged by classic governance failures of tardy responsiveness to allegations of antisemitism, ideological bias, charges of massive plagiarism of its president, a faulty succession process, attacks on the legitimacy of fact-based critics, falling donor support, resentful students, demoralized faculty, and plunging numbers of applicants. As some of Harvard’s most vocal critics from that period, we have to acknowledge that the new president and reconstituted board of Harvard have pulled off a model of institutional resilience in policies but also in tangible results.
For example, Harvard donations have rebounded significantly, with fiscal year 2025 (FY25) seeing a record-breaking $629 million in current-use gifts, a 19% increase over the previous year. Despite earlier controversies, alumni and supporters rallied, leading to over 22,000 gifts in a six-week period. Total donations for FY25 exceeded $600 million. We commissioned a national survey by Morning Consult which shows a stunning resurgence of trust, while the numbers also show a record number of international student enrollments.
Indeed, Harvard’s turnaround has been so remarkable that at our recent Yale Higher Education Leadership Summit, Harvard President Alan Garber received the Yale Legend in Leadership Award. We admit, this raised some eyebrows on campus: Yale honoring Harvard?
In fairness, we must acknowledge that these schools have longstanding rivalries which we know first-hand. Two of the authors of this piece got one degree from Yale (a BA and an MBA), while the lead author got both his BA, his MBA, and his doctorate at Harvard and was a professor there for a decade, after which he’s been a professor at Yale for 25 years. (It should also be noted that we are not unhappy that Yale trounced Harvard 45 to 28 in the 141st football contest between these 300-plus-year-old schools, one of the most intense rivalries in the history of college sports.)
Garber’s leadership warranted this rare (perhaps only) recognition of a rival, because on top of Garber’s successes turning Harvard around, Garber’s stewardship of Harvard offers a master class in how to stand up to Donald Trump strongly and effectively without martyring themselves, and without losing their institutions and values through appeasement.
As we identify in our new book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, published by Simon & Schuster/Worth Books, many of President Donald Trump’s moves are surprisingly predictable as he has only a handful of tricks up his sleeve, so the following five lessons in how to stand up to Trump are widely applicable to leaders not only in higher education, but across sectors.
1 – Have your board solidly behind you
No leader can survive a confrontation with the president without a unified board. Garber benefited from one critical advantage: a disciplined board which closed ranks early with strong, accomplished superstars such as Merck CEO Ken Frazier, former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, former Small Business Administration Administrator Karen Gordon Mills, former Amherst President Biddy Martin, and others who were not cowed by Trump’s threats, and who have the independent credibility and standing to back Harvard.
Contrast this with University of Virginia President Jim Ryan’s unfortunate fate. Critics argue that certain board members at UVA, such as the widely protested Rachel Sheridan, apparently went rogue and appeared to be, at a minimum, complicit with the Trump Admin in pushing Ryan out, with some even floating the possibility that those board members themselves were more eager to remove Ryan than the Trump Administration. Furthermore, it is bewildering why Rachel Sheridan’s personal, subsequent accounting of Ryan’s departure differed so divergently from his own. Once a board fractures, external pressure wins.
2 – Secure your whole sector. Collective action deters bullies
Harvard never stood alone. Last spring we held a series of forums, in partnership with the Association of Colleges and Universities and the American Academy Arts and Sciences, which helped catalyze over 700 college presidents to speak in defense of Harvard’s academic freedom. Alongside countless accrediting bodies, faculty organizations, and higher-education associations, this was a powerful demonstration of collective action in standing together with Harvard, with collective letters warning about the dangers of Trump’s attacks and expressing support for Harvard’s resistance.
Bullies thrive through divide-and-conquer tactics, and collective, unified action is the most effective counter. Indeed, over 98% of university presidents surveyed agreed that certain Trump Admin overreach, such as the endowment tax, worries them. As Benjamin Franklin quipped, “We must all hang together, or more assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
3 – Don’t be afraid to fight when the facts and the law are on your side
Harvard did not posture; it immediately litigated, hiring highly respected conservative lawyer William Burck, who is on the Fox board and has frequently represented the Trump family, to sue the Trump Admin for overreach in court. Leaders often underestimate how much credibility they gain simply by simply putting the facts out clearly and transparently and with conviction, when the facts are on your side.
4 – Rally your core constituencies
Garber understood that he needed much more than just his board behind him. Harvard invested heavily in communication with students, alumni, donors, faculty, and even prospective applicants, not only communicating Harvard’s value proposition to the world, but also rallying support against Trump’s overreach. The goal was not spin: rather, the institution was reminding its key stakeholders what it stood for, and how it was addressing legitimate concerns. When constituencies feel informed and respected, they become allies rather than liabilities. Silence, by contrast, invites others to define your story.
5 – Most importantly, don’t point fingers elsewhere before fixing the homefront
Harvard’s credibility did not come from denial. It came from accountability. As alluded to previously, we have been among Harvard’s toughest critics, but impressively, Garber took responsibility for past failures rather than deflecting. Under his leadership, Harvard has made tangible progress with even the most strident critics agreeing Harvard is making great progress.
The many historic parallels far beyond academia should not be overlooked. While the public unity of hundreds of college presidents confronting Trump halted the punitive edicts from the White House against academia, so did unified, forceful voices of leaders in the legal profession stop similar assaults targeting individual law firms, as did the forceful voice of the National Association of Manufacturers stop the reckless, damaging, punitive “Liberation Day” tariffs targeting 90 trading partner nations.
These lessons also apply to the impact of Minnesota community leaders and major Minnesota corporations in demanding a deescalation of violent ICE immigration raids in the aftermath of federal officers killing, seemingly intentionally, two peaceful demonstrators who were U.S. citizens. The institutions that spoke out did so without divisive internal dissent. They found mutually acceptable language that could unify the resistance across employers and sectors.
Sixty major local employers such as Target, Medtronic, Cargill, and 3M spoke out as did the local Chamber of Commerce chapter. With a flood of footage from witness cameras, they took the evidence to the court of public opinion, as well as the justice system. The public has not succumbeed to Trump officials demanding we ignore own eyes. Americans observed the documented brutal killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, they saw the detentions of peaceful protesters and non-criminal immigrants falsely labelled as “terrorists.” They didn’t fire back equivocal insults at Trump’s officials but defended the noble citizenship of the innocent victims. The White House responded by toning down its language and, as Minnesotans demand, Trump reached out to collaborate with Gov. Tim Walz. Trump silenced and withdrew ICE commander Gregory Bovino and promised an “honest” investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti.
As Voltaire advised in his 18th century satirical novel Candide, “cultivate your own garden.” It was a pragmatic call to assume responsibility for repairing the domain where we have immediate impact, rather than getting lost in grand, futile, bombastic, abstract philosophical oratory about condemning the evils of the world that are beyond our control.
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