The Trump administration announced it will freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts at Harvard University after the university said it would not comply with government requests to change its policies, putting nearly $9 billion in federal funding at risk.
The university received a letter from a federal task force last week that outlined additional policy conditions to “maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.” “We have informed the Administration, through our legal counsel, that we will not accept their proposed settlement,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber said in a statement. “The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights.”
The Trump administration has threatened numerous colleges across the United States with funding cuts unless they make changes to school policies, and Harvard’s move is the first by an elite university to reject the White House’s demands.
These include eliminating Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, banning masks during campus protests, reforming merit-based hiring and admissions, and reducing the power of faculty and administrators “who are more engaged in activism than in academic research.”
“President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring that federal taxpayer funds do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence ,” a White House spokesperson said in a statement. “ Harvard or any institution that seeks to violate Title VI is, by law, ineligible for federal funding .”
(Online Union)
