Trump administration threatens to cut Harvard funding amid alleged violation of Jewish students' rights
US President Donald Trump's administration on Monday informed Harvard University that its investigation had revealed that the Ivy League university violated civil rights laws over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students.
"Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government," the letter sent to Harvard President Alan Garber said, as per a Wall Street Journal report, quoted by Reuters.
This is the latest development in the Trump administration's vigorous campaign against Harvard University—one of America's oldest universities—on multiple levels, including funding freezes, investigations, and tax threats.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration had even frozen $2.2 billion worth of government grants for Harvard, which led to the university filing a lawsuit at a federal court in Massachusetts, claiming that the move was a major escalation, and that the government was trying to "gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard".
The White House had demanded that Harvard comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”.
However, in a lawsuit against the White House, Harvard called these demands "illegal”, and alleged that the Trump administration, in doing so, wanted to “impose unprecedented and improper control over the university”.
"The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2bn in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status," Garber wrote in a Harvard announcement in April.
Trump's rationale for the campaigning against Harvard was that they had been captured by leftist "woke" thought and had become bastions of antisemitism.
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