President Donald Trump’s administration is slashing one other $450 million in federal grants to Harvard College, simply someday after the Ivy League big pushed again in opposition to rising accusations from authorities officers that it promotes liberal bias and antisemitism.
In a letter despatched Tuesday, a joint federal process power charged with preventing antisemitism knowledgeable Harvard that eight federal companies are terminating grants to Harvard along with the $2.2 billion the administration has already frozen.
The message? Toe the road—or pay the worth.
Signed by representatives from the Division of Training, the Division of Well being and Human Providers, and the Normal Providers Administration, the letter accuses Harvard of repeatedly failing “to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus” and warns that the college faces a “steep, uphill battle” to reclaim its popularity for educational excellence.
“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination,” the letter reads. “This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement.”
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It continues: “There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support.”
The $450 million in query is unfold throughout grants from eight unnamed federal companies. Whereas the letter doesn’t specify which of them, the transfer is a part of a broader marketing campaign by the Trump administration to exert ideological management over America’s universities, beginning with the nation’s wealthiest and most distinguished.
Harvard has but to reply publicly to the newest declaration from the White Home, however the administration’s strain marketing campaign has clearly entered a brand new part.
Tensions escalated after Harvard grew to become the primary U.S. college to brazenly defy White Home calls for to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activism on campus and dismantle its variety, fairness, and inclusion efforts. College officers stated the calls for have been not solely excessive however a direct assault on its autonomy.
Trump responded by calling for Harvard to lose its tax-exempt standing. The Division of Homeland Safety has even threatened to revoke the varsity’s eligibility to host worldwide college students.
Final week, the Division of Training introduced that Harvard received’t see one other dime in new federal grants till it complies with a sweeping checklist of calls for—together with bans on masks, eliminating DEI in admissions and hiring, and implementing ideological vetting for international college students.
These calls for aren’t restricted to Harvard. The Trump administration is making use of comparable strain on different universities like Columbia and the College of Pennsylvania, in some instances slicing off federal funding solely till establishments fall in line.
Harvard has already sued the federal authorities over the sooner $2 billion freeze and college president Alan Garber has publicly rejected the administration’s claims, significantly the accusations of antisemitism. Garber defended Harvard as a nonpartisan establishment that has taken “real, tangible steps” to deal with hate on campus, whereas calling the federal actions “an unlawful attempt to control fundamental aspects of our university’s operations.”
“Harvard will not surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government,” he wrote.
Trump and his goons, nevertheless, seem undeterred. Their technique is obvious: bleed Harvard dry till it capitulates. Whether or not it’s via lawsuits, funding cuts, or threats of extinction, that is how Trump governs—by punishing dissent and daring anybody to resist.
And now, he and his minions are pushing exhausting to get Harvard to blink.
