The administration of United States President Donald Trump has slashed another $450m in grants from Harvard University, amid an ongoing feud over anti-Semitism, presidential control and the limits of academic freedom.
On Tuesday, a joint task force assembled under Trump accused Harvard, the country’s oldest university, of perpetrating a “long-standing policy and practice of discriminating on the basis of race”.
“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination. This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement,” the task force said in a statement.
“By prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support.”
The elimination of another $450m in grants came in addition to the more than $2.2bn in federal funds that were already suspended last week, the task force added.
The feud between the president and Harvard – a prestigious Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts – began in March, when Trump sought to impose new rules and regulations on top schools that had played host to pro-Palestinian protests over the last year.
Trump has called such protests “illegal” and accused participants of anti-Semitism. But student protest leaders have described their actions as a peaceful response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has elicited concerns about human rights abuses, including genocide.
Columbia University was initially a centrepiece of the Trump administration’s efforts. The New York City school had seen the first major Palestine solidarity encampment rise on its lawn, which served as a blueprint for similar protests around the world. It also saw a series of mass arrests in the aftermath.
In March, one of Columbia’s protest leaders, Mahmoud Khalil, was the first foreign student to be arrested and have his legal immigration status revoked under Trump’s campaign to punish demonstrators. And when Trump threatened to yank $400m in grants and research contracts, the school agreed to submit to a list of demands to restore the funding.
The demands included adopting a formal definition of anti-Semitism, beefing up campus security and putting one of its academic departments – focused on Middle East, African and South Asian studies – under the supervision of an outside authority.
Free speech advocates called Columbia’s concessions a capitulation to Trump, who they say has sought to erode academic freedom and silence viewpoints he disagrees with.
On April 11, his administration issued another list of demands for Harvard that went even further. Under its terms, Harvard would have had to revamp its disciplinary system, eliminate its diversity initiatives and agree to an external audit of programmes deemed anti-Semitic.
The demands also required Harvard to agree to “structural and personnel changes” that would foster “viewpoint diversity” – a term left ambiguous. But critics argued it was a means for Trump to impose his values and priorities on the school by shaping its hiring and admissions practices.
Harvard has been at the centre of controversies surrounding its admissions in the past. In 2023, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that Harvard’s consideration of race in student admissions – through a process called affirmative action – violated the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution.
Tuesday’s letter referenced that court decision in arguing that “Harvard University has repeatedly failed to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus”.
A pair of reports in April, created by Harvard University’s own task forces, also found that there were cases of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish violence on campus in the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza, a divisive issue in US politics.
Ultimately, on April 14, Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, rejected the Trump administration’s demands, arguing they were evidence of government overreach.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber wrote in his response.
But Trump has continued to pressure the campus, including by threatening to revoke its tax-exempt status. Democrats and other critics have warned that it would be illegal for the president to influence the decisions of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with regard to individual taxpayers, like the university.
Under Trump, the Department of Homeland Security has also threatened to bar foreign students from enrolling at the university if Harvard did not hand over documents pertaining to the pro-Palestine protests.
On Monday, Garber, Harvard’s president, wrote a response to Trump’s secretary of education, Linda McMahon, defending his campus’s commitment to free speech while also addressing the spectre of anti-Semitism.
“We share common ground on a number of critical issues, including the importance of ending antisemitism and other bigotry on campus. Like you, I believe that Harvard must foster an academic environment that encourages freedom of thought and expression, and that we should embrace a multiplicity of viewpoints,” his letter read.
But, he added, Harvard’s efforts to create a more equitable learning environment were “undermined and threatened” by the Trump administration’s “overreach”.
“Harvard will not surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government,” Garber said.
“I must refute your claim that Harvard is a partisan institution. It is neither Republican nor Democratic. It is not an arm of any other political party or movement. Nor will it ever be.”
Leave a comment