GBH News’  paragon of discernment and political reporter Adam Reilly runs down the big ways that the Trump administration and its decisions intersect with the politics and people of Massachusetts. Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis of last week’s developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: So Adam, it’s not easy to make Harvard University sweat when it comes to finances. They’ve got a massive endowment of about $53 billion, but a new threat from the Trump Administration seems to have done exactly that, make them sweat. Explain this to us.

Adam Reilly: On Monday, the Trump Administration said that it is reviewing nearly $9 billion dollars in multi-year grants that are slated to go to Harvard and Harvard affiliates, like the hospitals that Harvard’s connected to, as well as more than $250 million in existing contracts between Harvard, its affiliates, and the federal government.
This is all part of the Trump administration’s push to root out antisemitism on college campuses. In a statement, Linda McMahon, the U.S. Secretary of Education, accused Harvard of failing to protect students from antisemitism and also of “promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry.”
So that happened on Monday. Then on Thursday, the administration sent Harvard a letter demanding that it eliminate DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programming, that it ban masks at protests, and that it reform unnamed programs that it claims, fuel antisemitism. So Harvard is very much on the hot seat right now.

Herz: Yeah, and I’ll note that the New York Times was reporting that in our backyard, Brown University is in the hot seat to the tune of about half a billion dollars right now too. Something similar also played out at Columbia — would you explain the differences here?

Reilly: Yeah, as you say, this isn’t unique. I think what’s unique is Harvard’s standing in the world of higher education, and the magnitude of financial risk that we’re talking about here. Last month, as we mentioned, the US government pulled about $400 million in funding from Columbia University in New York over similar concerns.
And ultimately, a lot of people thought Columbia acquiesced to the government’s demands by agreeing to steps aimed at getting that funding restored. For example, Columbia agreed to ramp up its campus police force and give campus police arrest powers. It barred protests in campus buildings, and agreed to study the decline in Jewish students admitted to Columbia. And maybe most controversially, Columbia put programs that teach about the Middle East and Israel under the control of a new senior vice provost, which obviously raised big questions about academic freedom.

Herz: I’ll also note that there is a pro-Palestinian student group that got suspended on Harvard’s campus.

Reilly: That is one of a few steps that Harvard has taken, which suggests to me that their response is maybe going to be more Columbia-esque than a lot of people want.
Now, there are people at Harvard who don’t want the university to follow Columbia’s approach at all. Before the first set of demands from the administration, about 600 Harvard faculty signed a letter urging the university show more backbone if it found itself in a similar situation.
Larry Summers, the former Harvard president, who’s still a faculty member, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying he thinks antisemitism is a real problem at Harvard, but the Trump Administration’s approach is far too heavy-handed. Summers reminded people in that op-ed, 'hey, we’ve got a $53 billion endowment. That should be a source of strength as we push back against the administration.’

But it’s not looking like that’s going to happen. You mentioned the suspension of that Palestinian student group. In a letter responding to the Trump Administration, Harvard President Alan Garber started off by saying that losing $9 billion in federal funding would be disastrous. He added that he himself had experienced antisemitism at Harvard. He said attempts to root it out were ongoing and incomplete, but needed to be brought to fruition.
And again, in the past few days, Harvard’s taken a bunch of steps that seem aimed at giving the Trump Administration what it wants. They suspended a program called “Religion, Conflict and Peace” at Harvard Divinity School . They’ve dismissed the faculty leaders at their Center on Middle Eastern Studies. You mentioned the suspension of the pro-Palestinian group. So it seems like the response is going to be a lot more Columbia-esque than a lot of people had hoped.

Herz: On to some other funding cuts, this time involving education and public health. These are cuts that affect the entire country and public health. Wow — 20,000 jobs in total with the latest round of cuts from Health and Human Services. What’s the impact on these education and public-health cuts in Massachusetts?

Reilly: So a week ago, the administration announced that it was going to stop disbursing about $2 billion in federal education grant funding headed to 41 different states, including Massachusetts. The total for Massachusetts specifically is $106 million that’s going to be lost. The administration had said just a couple months ago that the state had through next March to spend that money — now they’re saying they can’t spend it at all.
The big loser here is the Springfield Public Schools — they lost nearly $48 million in unspent funds. And then, as you mentioned, there’s $118 millionin public health grants that have been cut by Robert F. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services. These are post-COVID grants allocated by Congress for things like substance abuse and tracking the spread of infectious diseases.
Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has said the cuts are illegal, and she’s part of a multi-state lawsuit aimed at reversing them.