(The Hill) – President Trump’s administration announced that it is cutting another $450 million in grants for Harvard University, alleging the school has failed to combat “pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment” on campus.
The reduction, which was announced by the White House’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism on Tuesday morning, comes on top of the $2.2 billion federal funding slashed from the Ivy League school last week.
“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. “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 Hill has reached out to Harvard for comment.
Apart from cutting funding, the administration has threatened to revoke the Massachusetts-school’s tax-exempt status, with Trump slamming the institution as a “threat to democracy” and a “Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE.”
Harvard filed a suit in late April over the administration’s funding cuts, alleging the White House was violating the First Amendment and asking for the federal funds to be reinstated. The administration has asked the elite school to do away with its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts and alter its hiring and admissions processes.
Earlier this month, Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent a letter to the school, informing it that it is no longer eligible for new federal research grants until it is able to “demonstrate responsible management.”
Harvard University President Alan Garber responded to McMahon this week, writing that both the school and the administration “share common ground on a number of critical issues, including the importance of ending antisemitism and other bigotry on campus.”
Garber, in the letter, added that those shared goals are “undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law.”
