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The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force said Monday night it is cutting more than $2 billion in research funding to Harvard University.
The announcement comes hours after Harvard’s leaders defied the Trump administration’s attempt to impose an extraordinary set of policy changes on the university.
Harvard refuses to comply with Trump’s demands, says it won’t ‘allow itself to be taken over by the federal government’
“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges,” the task force said in a statement to the Globe.
“The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support,” the statement said.
The funding freeze includes $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts, according to the task force, which is a joint enterprise of several federal agencies.
In an open letter to the campus community Monday afternoon, Harvard president Alan Garber said, “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 also pointed to what he described as the decades-long partnership between universities and the American government that “has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields.”
“These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history,” he said.
It was not immediately clear Monday night which grants and contracts were to be frozen. But on March 31, the task force announced a review of $9 billion in federal funding destined for Harvard and affiliated institutions, including Mass General Brigham, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute.
Many of the grants and contracts included in the review fund biomedical research on topics including tuberculosis, traumatic brain injuries, and HIV.
‘This looks bad.’ A Harvard infectious disease researcher is targeted in Trump’s review.
Garber’s open letter followed a Friday letter from the task force telling Harvard’s leaders to agree to a lengthy list of conditions in order to “maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government.”
The letter directed Harvard to weaken the influence of students and faculty involved in activism on university affairs. It ordered external audits of specific academic programs accused of antisemitism or other forms of bias. It told the school to reorient its admissions and hiring practices to prioritize “viewpoint diversity” and deemphasize race, religion, and sex. It said the university must “reform” the way it admits international students to screen out anyone “hostile” to “American values” or “supportive of terrorism or antisemitism.”
And it demanded that Harvard regularly reportvarious kinds of information to the federal government, including all admissions data and any rule violations by foreign students.
In their response Monday, lawyers representing Harvard said the university “has undertaken substantial policy and programmatic measures” during the last 15 months to fight antisemitism, promote ideological diversity, and maintain order on campus.
“Harvard remains open to dialogue about what the university has done, and is planning to do, to improve the experience of every member of its community. But Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration,” the lawyers wrote.
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