The potential for a deal between Harvard University and the White House was thrown into doubt after President Trump unleashed a blistering attack on the Ivy League school in a series of late-night social media posts.
Just last week, Mr. Trump privately told negotiators he was willing to drop his demand for a $200 million payment from Harvard to the government if that would secure an agreement to end his pressure campaign against the university, which he views as hostile to conservatives and his presidency.
After a report from The New York Times about the change of heart, Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts at 11:20 p.m. on Monday and again on Tuesday — at 12:11 a.m. and 7:56 a.m. — made clear he had lost interest, at least for now, in such a compromise.
Instead of dropping the fine, Mr. Trump said he would demand $1 billion “in damages.” He threatened the school with a criminal investigation.
“This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event, and Harvard will have to live with the consequences of their wrongdoings,” Mr. Trump wrote. “In any event, this case will continue until justice is served.”
The sudden shift was characteristic of Mr. Trump’s vacillating demands during months spent trying to hammer out a Harvard deal, which remains a central plank of his broader push to alter the culture of a higher education system he had derided as a factory of “woke” ideology.
Miles Rapoport, the co-chairman of Crimson Courage, an alumni group that has urged Harvard to resist any deal that compromises its academic freedom, said Mr. Trump and his White House were “completely unreliable negotiating partners.”
“I hope this strengthens Harvard’s resolve to not make a deal with an administration that is so ready to go nuclear at any moment,” Mr. Rapoport said.
Ryan Enos, a government professor at Harvard, said Mr. Trump’s shifting demands seemed to show he was motivated by revenge instead of policy goals.
“He’s just looking for a way to win a battle and assert political retribution on an institution that he thinks is defying him,” Mr. Enos said. “This is indicative of a larger story in the country, which is that Trump is flailing politically and looking for ways to assert pressure.”
A Harvard spokesman declined to comment.
The Times reported on Monday that Mr. Trump was willing to accept a deal if Harvard agreed to spend $500 million on job training programs, instead of a $200 million fine.
In his social media posts, Mr. Trump assailed The Times’s reporting as “completely wrong.” The Times issued a statement standing by the article, which was based on information from Trump and Harvard officials.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, disputed that Mr. Trump had made any concessions and objected to the context included in The Times’s report that a deal with Harvard would hand him a victory at a difficult time in his presidency. She said Mr. Trump’s renewed interest in a deal was part of a “normal back-and-forth” of negotiations.
“The president has been adamant with Harvard about making a deal, as many other universities have,” Ms. Leavitt said. “But unfortunately, they have dragged their feet and proven inept at doing what is right.”
What started last year as an effort from the administration to investigate antisemitism on the Cambridge, Mass., campus quickly morphed into a broad attack on the university, including 13 investigations from 10 federal agencies.
In May, Mr. Trump said Harvard should have a cap on the number of international students enrolled. That position undercut the administration’s argument that merit alone should guide admissions practices. But weeks later, Mr. Trump posted on social media that Chinese students could continue studying at Harvard as part of his trade talks with Beijing, adding that allowing students from China “has always been good with me!”
In October, Mr. Trump publicly waffled about Harvard in the span of seconds. Aboard Air Force One, he told reporters that the deal would include $500 million for trade education. Moments later, he mused that “we may just charge them a fine, big fine, $500 million fine.”
In June, Mr. Trump said a “‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC deal” with Harvard could be done in about a week. In September, he said that Linda McMahon, his education secretary, was “finishing up the final details.” Aboard Air Force One in October, he said that the two sides had agreed to the “concept of a deal.” Last month, at a news conference marking the one-year anniversary of his second inauguration, he said, “I hear we have a deal, but who the hell knows with them?”
Harvard’s leaders have viewed the administration’s attacks as politically motivated and have been frustrated by the White House’s inconsistent approach to talks, its evolving demands and the rotating mix of people driving discussions.
Mr. Trump’s latest comments gave fodder to opponents of a deal, who have argued that the president cannot be trusted to keep his end of any bargain. But his new demands also underscored the argument from others in the Harvard community, who say the stakes are too high to walk away from the negotiating table.
In his posts, Mr. Trump appeared to once again threaten to cut off Harvard from future research funding, which is the lifeblood of major research universities, even though a federal judge blocked the administration’s attempt to do that last year. The president’s call for a criminal investigation also intensified some university leaders’ fears of being subject to political prosecutions.
Mr. Trump had insisted on $500 million for job training last year. But in recent months, hard-liners in Mr. Trump’s administration, including Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, argued that the terms were not tough enough on Harvard and pushed to include a cash payment. As a result, The Times has reported, Mr. Trump changed his position to $300 million for job training and $200 million as a fine from $500 million on work force programs.
Mr. Trump’s new billion-dollar demand showed once again how he and others in his administration have relied on an ad hoc approach to setting financial terms with universities.
Last spring, Columbia University was nearing a potential agreement with the government that included no financial penalties. But when Mr. Trump was briefed on the emerging deal, he demanded that the university pay $200 million. Columbia ultimately agreed.
Mr. Trump has also demanded $1 billion to settle accusations of civil rights violations at the University of California, Los Angeles. The university rebuffed the demand, which state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, decried as a “shakedown.”
While Mr. Trump’s social media posts this week appeared to make a Harvard deal less likely, he has repeatedly spoken about his interest in finalizing a settlement.
Trends in public opinion polling that show Americans have grown increasingly skeptical of the cost and benefits of a college education may ultimately force Harvard and other schools to consider Mr. Trump’s demands, said Eitan Hersh, a political science professor and the director of the Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education at Tufts University.
“There is some fairly widespread acknowledgment of a problem that needs to be solved,” Mr. Hersh said of the issues higher education faced. “The chaos of the administration makes that more complicated, but I don’t think it changes that dynamic.”
