The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard University on Monday after the elite university announced it would not comply with demands for reforms to stop antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.
As Breitbart News reported:
Harvard University revealed that it will not comply with the Trump administration’s list of demands for the university to make changes to its policies regarding hiring, governance, student admissions, and antisemitism.
In a letter issued on Monday, lawyers for the university criticized an earlier letter from the Trump administration as disregarding “Harvard’s efforts” to make “changes to its campus use policies,” to address and combat hate and bias on campus, and enhance campus safety and security measures, among other efforts.
The university added that the demands from the administration “invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court.
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In the letter from Josh Gruenbaum, the Commissioner of the Federal Acquistion Service; Sean Keveney, the Acting General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Thomas Wheeler, the Acting General Counsel for the U.S. Department of Education, some of the demands called for Harvard to “make meaningful governance reform” by August 2025.
Other demands called for Harvard to “adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, the related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership,” by August 2025.
“By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” another demand read.
In response, the Trump administration has suspended some $2.2 billion of nearly $9 billion in federal grants at risk.
The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student-run newspaper, reported:
The Trump administration paused $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard over its decision earlier today to reject the White House’s demands — a dramatic escalation in its crusade against the University.
The move came just hours after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 issued a resounding rebuke of the Trump administration’s demands, calling them coercive and beyond federal authority.
The federal antisemitism task force wrote that Garber’s decision was a clear sign that Harvard was refusing to “commit to meaningful change” to address antisemitism on campus.
Harvard is the latest Ivy League university to come under scrutiny from the Trump administration, and one of ten universities nationwide that are being watched closely by a federal antisemitism task force. One of the others, Columbia University, chose to comply with the administration’s demands rather than risk its federal funding.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
