Trump Responds to Harvard’s Defiance by Freezing $2.3 Billion More in Grant Funding
“troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws”
On Monday afternoon, Harvard made it clear that it would not comply with the Trump administration’s demands. Things heated up quickly from there as Trump moved to freeze yet another $2.3 billion in funding from the elite school.
It looks like neither party is going to back down. At some point, Harvard might finally have to dip into its famously massive endowment.
Reuters reports:
Harvard rejects Trump demands, gets hit by $2.3 billion funding freeze
Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.
Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.
The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.
On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism accused America’s oldest university of having a “troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”
The exchange escalates the high-stakes dispute between the the Trump administration and some of the world’s richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.
This video from WBZ News in Boston is pretty fair in its reportage:
Harvard President Alan M. Garber has posted an open letter on this topic. Here are some excerpts:
Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
For three-quarters of a century, the federal government has awarded grants and contracts to Harvard and other universities to help pay for work that, along with investments by the universities themselves, has led to groundbreaking innovations across a wide range of medical, engineering, and scientific fields. These innovations have made countless people in our country and throughout the world healthier and safer. In recent weeks, the federal government has threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses…
The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI. And it threatens our 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.
Like many current defenders of higher education, Garber is falling back on a supposed commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech. I simply don’t buy it. I have been covering higher education for Legal Insurrection since 2012 and I have lost count of how many speakers have been shouted down on college campuses simply because the students disagreed with the politics or opinions of the speaker.
If Harvard wants to prove its commitment to free speech, it can invite someone like Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, or even President Trump himself to give this year’s commencement address.
If such a speech is allowed to happen without incident, I’ll apologize to Harvard personally. Until then, none of their talk about Harvard’s lofty ‘values’ is worth anything.
Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and other elite schools could have avoided all of this by simply shutting down the open Jew hatred on their campuses. They chose poorly.
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
“They chose poorly…”
Their coddling of antisemitism is only the tip of the iceberg.
To say that they’re decidedly un-American is being generous. Those in Cambridge have more in common with those living in Beijing and Moscow than Main Street, USA.
Their pompousness and pretentiousness are legendary – far more Charles Emerson Winchester than Thurston Howell III – to the point where they think they’re deserving of tax dollars while simultaneously sitting on a mountain of their own cash.
The crying and moaning will be spectacular. As if forcibly removing their snout from the Federal trough is somehow a violation of their entitlement to funding without any corresponding constraints or obligations.
Making popcorn…
i have frozen dark chocolate
goes really good with hot buttery popcorn
Seems to me Trump just wants Harvard to kiss the ring, say they’ll get rid of DIE programs (wink, wink) and the $$ floodgates will open again. Universities want to use DIE? Let them. Eventually, they will collapse (not a bad outcome). What needs to happen, at every level of education, is to get the government out of the classroom! Stop funding research, most of which is worthless anyway. Harvard pays its profs very nicely. They can reduce that a good bit and shovel it toward research. Put another way, the real problem is government involvement in university research. It’s bigger than DIE. Trump doesn’t see this at all. As soon as a Dem gets back in, or Dems get a greater hold on congress, the $$$ will be flying back to the schools. Make that impossible.
Did you read the letter from the government to Harvard with the demands? It was very tough, appropriate but tough. Required all sorts of regular reporting, staff changes and firings, it would have put them under real surveillance.
Not just “kiss the ring”. I applaud Trump’s boldness here, Harvard never expected the government to actually fight them. They can afford to self-fund the students if it were student loans that were affected, and that would bother the populace more. The research funding is bigger and Harvard takes about a 70% tax on all research grants to suck into the general Harvard coffers, so this will make them truly unhappy.
Good. They have plenty of billions left, let them use some up now.
The letter to Harvard seemed over the top to me but I took it as an initial negotiating position. Harvard doesn’t seem to want to negotiate anything probably much to the delight of their arts and letters community and the likely dismay of their medical, economics, mathematics, and science communities who are recipients of most of the federal grants and contracts. The internal Harvard debates should be entertaining if not informative.
“Universities want to use DIE? Let them. Eventually, they will collapse (not a bad outcome).”
Before exorbitant student loans for everyone warmer than room temperature were entitlements funded by your tax money, this would have been a swell idea.
And these innovations make Harvard even wealthier with the 5,800+ patents (as of 2024) they possess and the technology licenses that they issue to “industry partners”. All at U.S. taxpayer expense.
Harvard Office of Technology Development
Yeah like that chemistry department chair that was working on what seemed to be injectable microelectronics with the Chinese. I think he got fired when it became public. This was a few years ago during Covid.
I’ve learned that Civil Rights only apply to BIPOC people as they are all victims of white oppression. Jews don’t have any civil rights since they are horrible evil dirty white oppressors that kill, maim and torture beautiful wonderful and perfect Palestinians , who are G-D’s gift to humanity and capable of no wrong doing. Palestinians even though they might look light skinned are black and Jews even though they might look darker toned are white. So there! It’s simple really ; I just needed to spend 90,000 a year on my education to learn that formula. Of course I could have learned it on Tic Toc for free but hey who’s gonna know!
Huh. I don’t remember Harvard or the other Ivy League schools getting their panties in a wad when the IRS revoked the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University. Back then the heavy hand of the Feds was a thing to be applauded.
At any rate – Harvard does not have the right to wink at violence aimed at Jews while simultaneously demanding Federal handouts. Shove it, Commie dirtbags!
Hillsdale College
@Hillsdale
There is another way:
Refuse taxpayer money.
https://x.com/Hillsdale/status/1911868692280861074
Hillsdale should offer to send an expert consultant to Harvard to show them how to run a college independent of federal money, so they can do it any way they want.
For an obscenely stiff fee, of course.
Antisemitism is legal. Intimidation is not. The college has standing to prevent trespassing on its property but Trump does not.
It’s getting into content control instead of compliance with civil rights laws.
The Jewhate incidents, not to mention racist DEI, are very clear violations of civil rights laws.
The federal government is NOT establishing content control; rather, it is saying unless Harvard fixes its ILLEGAL racist policies it won’t get fedbucks. No stick, but no carrot either.
The feds are NOT preventing Harvard from continuing to break the law (your so-called content control) , merely refusing to contribute money toward it.
I know that Jewhate ties you up in rhetorical knots, but it is no more justifiable than other forms of overt racism.
Since Harvard takes our tax money, they have to accept our rules.
as a taxpayer, am wondering how or more importantly why am obligated to invest in / support ANY organization that, under the guise of “free speech” blatantly practices / encourages /abets discrimination and known terrorist organizations ?–not a huge difference between harvard and these muslim ” communities ” who adhere to only sharia ” law ” in these united states
They most definitely don’t adhere to Sharia here. Sharia for themselves, the opposite for us to weaken us, all sorts of sexual degeneracy.
Let’s let Harvard do what they want
And let’s not fund them and save a couple of billion a year
Not seeing the value of most of their research or education … so let others fund it
Not taxpayers.
Just when you think this maggot can’t outdo himself in being a MORON, he proves me wrong.
At one point are you redhat cult goobers going to WAKE UP.
You provide no positive contribution here.
It is a constant source of amazement to me that the Professor continues to allow you to log in.
How dare i not post anything but how splendiferous the great dear leader is!!!
Dershowitz says that Harvard hired Trump’s former lawyers to fight this case, and it means they are begging for a deal and want to play nice.
Yeah… they want to play nice until they don’t — just like Zelenskyyy did.
The good people at Harvard have forgotten the golden rule, as promulgated by the Wizard of Id: “he who has the gold makes the rules.”
When you take a couple billion dollars a year from the Feds, the Feds own you. Harvard may have a $53 billion endowment (much of which they can’t just spend), but they DON’T have $2 billion sitting in the vault to cover the budget shortfall. The Feds are making requests that appear to be reasonable to reasonable people — don’t endorse antisemitism, don’t allow people to riot and destroy property (that Fed dollars likely paid for in part), don’t allow malicious lawbreaking, don’t allow men into women’s sports, and so on.
Harvard could yield on these things and proceed to argue, quiet and diplomatically, behind the scenes on the rest. That likely would restore the funding. But of course they can’t, because progressives can’t yield on ‘muh principles’ and most especially can’t yield to Mr. Trump. Quelle horror!
So now they have a $2 billion shortfall. That’s going to be difficult to cover.
And one more thing: I’m a university physician scientist. The arts and letters crowd at the Ivy League universities have (mostly) biffed things, but it’s the scientists who (mostly) pay with the lost grants and funds. The biological / biomedical / physical scientists have little say on how a major research university responds to the Feds, but we’re the first ones who lose funds.
There’s nothing else we can do. Perhaps you need to have your own universities that teach science and rate people by merit. The system you’re in is corrupt, so corrupt and powerful we cannot let it continue to protect you.
The lesson being you can’t ignore the wing bats in Arts if you are doing hard research in STEM.
The days of let the lunatics run the asylum are over.
The time for choosing has come.
Speaking from a position of total ignorance, but isn’t it time to transfer to another institution that doesn’t subscribe to the dingbat, “progress”ive, DEI position? I suspect it would be hard to do but it would be less likely that STEM research would be threatened by loss of funding due to the poor judgment of leftist students and other faculty. Universities in more conservative locations (I’m thinking UAB, Old Miss) don’t tolerate the leftist shenanigans quite as much as those in the northern states. It’s getting to the point that the prestige of an Ivy League school isn’t what it once was.
.
According to Democracy Now! (I do listen to the other side too, mainly as a spy) this funding is about 2 billion in grants and maybe just 60 million in research contracts. Cutting grants will hurt the worst, which is the best!
Why is it that University endowments are not taxed? I thought paying a fair share is a simple idea.
Why are we giving any taxpayer money to these rich universities at all??! Whose idea was that?!
No wasting of more taxpayer funds via lawyer’s fees, etc. Just cancel the funds for all universities who do not operate within the confines of the Constitution. They don’t deserve any tax money. The squealing from the left is probably due to how much grift is floating away to the usual leftist causes and suspects.
Leave a Comment