Harvard and White House move towards potential landmark settlement

Harvard University and the Trump administration are nearing a potentially landmark legal settlement that would see Harvard agree to spend $500 million in exchange for the restoration of billions of dollars in federal research funding, according to four people familiar with the deliberations.

Negotiators for the White House and the university have made significant progress in their closed-door discussions over the past week, developing a framework for a settlement to end their monthslong battle.

The talks could still collapse, as President Donald Trump and senior Harvard officials need to sign off on the terms of the deal. The sides are still going back and forth over important wording for a potential agreement.

But under the framework coming together, Harvard would agree to spend $500 million on vocational and educational programs and research, three of the people said. That figure, currently penciled in to be paid out over years, would meet a demand from Trump that Harvard spend more than double what Columbia University agreed last month to pay. It would also satisfy Harvard's wish that it not pay the government directly, as Columbia is doing.

Harvard would also make commitments to continue its efforts to combat antisemitism on campus, two of the people said.

In return, Harvard, one of the largest recipients in higher education of federal research money, would see its research funding restored and avoid the appointment of a monitor, a condition the school has demanded as a way to preserve its academic independence, according to two of the people.

The Trump administration would also end its widening number of investigations into the university, including ones conducted by the Justice Department and another inquiry that the Commerce Department announced Friday. The deal would also stop attempts by the Trump administration to block Harvard from enrolling thousands of international students, according to three of the people.

Harvard has spent the last four months at the forefront of the opposition to the Trump administration's pressure campaign against higher education. It is the only school that has sued after the administration targeted it with explicitly punitive funding cuts.

A settlement between the White House and the nation's oldest and wealthiest university would reverberate throughout academia and could shape how other schools respond to Trump's tactics.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.