US freezes $2-B funding for Harvard over DEI, antisemitism
The U.S. Department of Education on Monday froze more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, just hours after the school rejected President Donald Trump’s demands that it make deep policy changes on diversity.
A Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism said in a statement that it was freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to Harvard University.
The move marks a new level of contentiousness between President Donald Trump’s administration and American universities it accuses of being captured by the extreme left.
Trump’s administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing the institutions to make policy and other changes and citing what it says is a failure to fight antisemitism on campus.
‘No to federal control’
Deportation proceedings have begun against some detained foreign students who took part in proPalestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been canceled. The crackdown has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.
Harvard on Monday rejected Trump administration demands that to receive federal funding it end diversity efforts and take other steps that the university said would stifle intellectual freedoms of faculty and students.
Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter that demands made on Friday by the federal Department of Education would allow the federal government “to control the Harvard community” and threaten the school’s “values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”
“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,” he added.
