There is at least one objective that the White House and an increasing number of Harvard University employees have in common during the high-stakes negotiations between the Trump administration and the university.
The head of the university’s highest governing board, Penny Pritzker, is someone they want removed.
As the head of the Harvard Corporation, Ms. Pritzker occupies a position of authority that is often silent. The corporation is primarily concerned with strategy, fund-raising, and selecting the university’s president. It is comparable to a board of trustees at any other educational institution.
However, these are not at all typical times at Harvard. The government has attempted to prohibit international students, who make up 25% of the school’s student body, from attending and has reduced billions of dollars in governmental funding to the institution. Even as it attempts to negotiate a resolution to a dispute that has resulted in painful belt tightening, the institution has filed two lawsuits against the government in recent months. Ms. Pritzker’s leadership has come under scrutiny as Harvard’s issues continue to mount.
Prominent academics and donors on campus are debating whether or not she should go. Additionally, it is hoped that the government’s pressure campaign on the school will result in her removal, according to two Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity as sensitive negotiations continue.
The Hyatt hotel fortune’s heir, Ms. Pritzker, has given Harvard $100 million for a new economics building. Her family has a long history of animosity for President Trump, and she has strong ties to the Democratic Party. She has also come under fire for how she handled the scandal involving Claudine Gay, the former president of Harvard, who resigned last year under duress.
Some individuals connected to the university now claim that Ms. Pritzker has turned into a distraction that appears to be harming rather than assisting the university’s attempts to fend off attacks from the Trump administration. If she would only agree to leave, they said, she might be a concession whose resignation could aid Harvard’s efforts to negotiate with the White House.
Ms. Pritzker’s job and future at the institution were addressed by a dozen individuals, including friends, professors, alumni, prominent benefactors, and Trump officials. Many asked not to be named for fear of jeopardizing Harvard’s discussions with the administration.
According to one administration official, no offer specifically mentions Ms. Pritzker’s resignation. Unofficially, however, Trump officials have expressed a wish for her to depart in order to demonstrate Harvard’s dedication to change.
Although they acknowledged that such a move could be interpreted as concession, several contended that there was a valid need to bring new perspectives and abilities to the board.
Dr. Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School who has criticized the Trump administration’s interference in higher education and universities over free speech concerns, stated that the corporation should be held accountable for some of the issues that have existed and that the chair of the corporation would be a natural person to be subject to turnover at a time like this.
According to a well-known Harvard scholar, Ms. Pritzker’s departure would be a little cost. Losing the board’s leader would not jeopardize Harvard’s academic independence, in contrast to many of the demands the Trump administration is making of the university.
However, any change in the corporation’s membership would have to originate from within because it is a self-appointing organization.
Many Harvard fans still believe that Ms. Pritzker has done a good job of guiding the university through several problems. They highlight her political and business acumen and contend that the position currently requires a more subdued leadership approach.
Jason Furman, a Harvard economics professor who worked with Ms. Pritzker at the White House during the Obama administration, said he thinks the Harvard community is excited about its present leaders.
“People are just generally quite unified and quite reflexively against the idea that you would do something for Donald Trump,” he added, referring to the fact that a year ago, many people were unhappy with the leadership.
The 66-year-old Ms. Pritzker refused to be interviewed for this piece. Harvard spokesperson declined to comment.
According to a close business associate, Ms. Pritzker is involved in the conflict as it moves into what may be its last stage between Harvard and the White House. According to this associate, she speaks with Harvard President Dr. Alan Garber daily, sometimes more. Additionally, Ms. Pritzker has a significant amount of power because she is the CEO of a company that has the authority to appoint and dismiss the president.
She was unlikely to give in, according to friends.
Ms. Pritzker is most concerned with finding constructive interaction, according to Vivian Riefberg, who has known her since they were freshmen at Harvard in the late 1970s.
There are those that enjoy a fight. According to Ms. Riefberg, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, she enjoys making a difference.
In 2018, Ms. Pritzker was chosen to join the 13-member company. She became the first woman to lead the board in 2022, and the members are affectionately referred to as fellows.
Choosing Dr. Gay to be the president of Harvard was her first significant choice. As speakers praised Dr. Gay as Harvard’s first Black president, Ms. Pritzker stood by the new president’s side during the 2023 inauguration ceremony, grinning through her blocky glasses.
Dr. Gay’s term came to an end three months later. When asked if calling for the extermination of Jews was against Harvard’s standards during a congressional session, she stumbled. Plagiarism was another charge brought against Dr. Gay. In the ensuing conflagration, Harvard graduate and Pershing Square hedge fund founder Bill Ackman attacked both Ms. Pritzker and Dr. Gay for failing to conduct adequate research before employing her.
Following Dr. Gay’s resignation, Mr. Ackman urged Ms. Pritzker and other company personnel to do the same.
Mr. Ackman made a request for Ms. Pritzker to resign once more in May. While she might be a fine person, he wrote on X, she has led Harvard during a period of substantial damage to the institution s global reputation, the explosion of antisemitism on campus, and dramatic deterioration in Harvard s financial wherewithal.
Although its officials have acknowledged that they have been striving to address the issue of antisemitism on campus, Harvard has vigorously defended itself.
However, Mr. Ackman’s criticism has been noted by the Trump administration. In a letter to Harvard, Education Secretary Linda McMahon advised the university to stop applying for government funding because none would be awarded.
Ms. McMahon referenced Mr. Ackman in her letter. Additionally, she wrote: The Harvard Corporation, which is meant to effectively and professionally oversee Harvard’s extensive academic, financial, and physical resources, is being run by Democrat Penny Pritzker, an Obama political appointee with a strong left-leaning stance, who is disastrously running the university in a completely disorganized manner.
Many Harvard students think that Ms. Pritzker’s prominent affiliation with one political party has become a liability.
She served as the secretary of commerce during the second Obama administration and as the national finance chair for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign. The Democratic governor of Illinois, her brother JB Pritzker, has made a name for himself as a vocal opponent of Mr. Trump and is anticipated to enter the 2028 presidential election.
Ms. Pritzker was able to move beyond partisan politics, according to her undergraduate buddy Ms. Riefberg. She recalled that in 2013, the Senate had confirmed her as commerce secretary with nearly unanimous votes. (The only person who disagreed was Senator Bernie Sanders.)
The current disagreement between Harvard and the government is preceded by the Pritzker family’s disputes with the president. Her uncle, Jay Pritzker, who established the Hyatt hotel chain with Ms. Pritzker s father, feuded with Mr. Trump over a hotel deal made in the 70s.
In 1993, Mr. Trump told The New York Times, “I was at the lowest point of my financial life, and they tried to force me to default or sell my hotel cheaply.”
Mr. Trump promised to exact revenge. I always said, the first time I got back on my feet, the Pritzkers would be the first people I d go after, he told The Chicago Tribune in 1993. (Mr. Trump later sold his interest in the hotel.)
As Mr. Trump attacks Harvard, alumni, faculty and donors have suggested that convincing taxpayers of Harvard s importance in American society has never been more urgent. But some complain that Ms. Pritzker has stayed out of the public eye.
One alumnus who attended a dinner with her at the Harvard Club in New York remembers that she let Dr. Garber do all the talking and said little beyond hello, goodbye and thank you.
In April, when the Trump administration issued a series of demands of Harvard, including exercising some control over hiring, teaching and admissions, it was Dr. Garber who signed a public letter saying that Harvard would fight.
An elite institution like Harvard benefits from public support and is vested with public interest, said Lloyd Blankfein, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs and a Harvard graduate. Leadership and oversight here comes with high profile. Don t take the job if you re not prepared for that. Shyness is not a virtue.
Members of a presidential advisory group on antisemitism remember that Ms. Pritzker did respond after several of them threatened to resign. Beaming into a video meeting from an airplane, Ms. Pritzker, who is a practicing Jew, according to her friends, assured them that their suggestions were being heard.
Ms. Pritzker s allies say that it is more effective for Harvard to unite behind one voice, in this case, Dr. Garber.
She does not pick fights for the sake of fights or headlines or fun and excitement, said Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, a Democrat, who got to know Ms. Pritzker during the first Obama presidential campaign.
Dr. Furman, the economics professor, said she was acting appropriately in her role. You hear from the C.E.O., you don t hear from the chairman, Dr. Furman said. As head of the board, he added, you re not supposed to be the face, but you re supposed to be a very, very key person in shaping the decision.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientistwho has been sharply critical of the Trump administrationand urged Harvard to fight back, said Harvard s leadership was perceived by many faculty members to be more attentive to donors and outside interests than to faculty and students.
Still, he said, I don t think the federal government should be using its leverage to force out the leadership of a private university. That s authoritarianism.
Supporters say she brings her considerable business knowledge to the table, noting she rose to the top in male-dominated industries. Ms. Pritzker, who graduated from Harvard in 1981, is now the head of PSP Partners, a private investment firm, and she is worth $4.1 billion.
Harvard s corporation is stuffed with eminent figures from Big Law, big business and elite academia. Perhaps not accidentally, however, the corporation s politics have shifted somewhat. This year, Kannon Shanmugam, who clerked for Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court justice, replaced Ted Wells, a lawyer and Democratic Party donor.
So far the shift has not seemed to help Harvard s case. In recent days, the Trump administration has onlyescalated its attacks on the school.
The fight with the Trump administration has convinced some people at Harvard that its governance model might need radical change.
It might not be enough for Penny Pritzker to leave Harvard, said Kit Parker, a bioengineering and applied physics professor on Harvard s Council on Academic Freedom, a group dedicated to supporting diverse points of view.
It might need to be something much bigger, he said. He added, It s hard to hold any one person responsible for what has happened at Harvard over the last 10 years.
Changing the board, he said, might be the one thing they can agree on without anyone losing face.
Kirsten Noyes,Susan C. BeachyandSheelagh McNeillcontributed research.Michael C. BenderandStephanie Saulcontributed reporting.
