ArcaMax

"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," Harvard President Alan Garber said in April. He's right. That is not a principle that should be negotiable.

Reports have surfaced this week that Harvard is willing to pay off the Trump administration in order to settle the attacks the administration has made -- and might continue to make -- in the years remaining in President Donald Trump's term. According to The New York Times, relying on sources involved in the negotiation, Harvard is willing to spend up to $500 million -- more than twice what Columbia spent to settle its fight with Trump -- to settle the lawsuit it brought against Trump and protect its integrity and independence going forward.

Should Harvard pay off the president?

Should Columbia have done so?

I am one who strongly applauded Harvard's decision to sue the Trump administration for cutting off federal funding for vital research, trying to block foreign students from enrolling, policing what Harvard professors teach and what students learn, and overseeing how the university operates. And I was especially pleased when the judge overseeing Harvard's suit, Allison Burroughs, who I greatly respect, asked a barrage of questions of Trump's lawyers and, according to The New York Times, appeared "deeply skeptical" of the Trump administration tying the cutoff of funding to antisemitism.

But litigation, as I know as a litigator, is not always the best way to resolve problems, much less to avoid them in the future. What Trump set out to do, at the outset of his war against some of the nation's best universities, was nothing less than to destroy academic freedom, eliminate the independence of private universities, and thoroughly gut the important scientific and medical research that so many of us need and depend upon literally for our health. If he were to succeed, it would not be the universities alone who paid the price.

The Trump administration has since shifted its strategy, perhaps to be more consistent with Trump's past practices, to focus on how much money he could get the universities he was attacking to pay up, and to measure his success, like any other blackmailer, by how much cash he could get. From Columbia, he got $200 million. That settlement, which Trump officials have pointed to as a template for future settlements with other universities, included a critical provision that no part of the settlement "shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, university hiring, admissions decisions or the content of academic speech." Columbia paid for its academic freedom, a pragmatic decision that no university should be forced to do, but which, given the threats from this administration, was the lesser of the evils posed by Trump.

If Harvard can get a similar deal, as a Harvard alum and former Harvard professor who cares deeply about the institution, I would frankly be relieved. Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money. But the cost to Harvard of what Trump has threatened -- including an excise tax on its endowment -- could exceed $1 billion. And that doesn't begin to measure the losses that will stem from the cutoff of vital scientific and medical research whose benefits extend far beyond the Harvard community.

Harvard is a great institution, but it is far from perfect. Alan Garber, Harvard's president, knows he has work to do. Paying ransom with a gun pointed at your head is not what should be happening now. But given the threats posed by the Trump administration -- existential threats -- it may be the best Harvard can do to save it from greater harm.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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