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21-05-2025
CAMBRIDGE: The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has said it is terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard University, further escalating an ongoing feud between the Ivy League institute and President Donald Trump’s administration over alleged anti-Semitism, presidential control and the limits of academic freedom.
“Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards totaling approximately $60 million over their full duration,” the department said on X on Monday. It said discrimination will “not be tolerated” on campus, adding that “federal funds must support institutions that protect all students.”
The Trump administration has already frozen more than $2.2bn in federal grants to Harvard.
Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon also announced earlier this month that the university would no longer be receiving public funding for research as it had made a “mockery” of higher education, in a letter addressed to Harvard.
“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote in the letter.
Harvard has sued the administration in response, alleging that the funding freeze violates the First Amendment and federal law, which bars the president from directly or indirectly ordering the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to conduct or terminate an audit or investigation.
Harvard President Alan Garber announced last week that the university will use $250m of its own funds to support research.
The feud between the president and Harvard, a prestigious Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts began in March, when Trump sought to impose new rules and regulations on top schools across the country that had played host to pro-Palestinian protests over the past year.
Trump has called such protests “illegal” and accused participants of anti-Semitism but student protest leaders have described their actions as a peaceful response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has elicited concerns about human rights abuses, including genocide.
The Trump administration announced the first funding freeze in April. Harvard had rejected the administration’s series of demands to tackle alleged anti-Semitism, saying they would subject it to undue government control. The demands had included revamping its disciplinary system, eliminating its diversity initiatives and agreeing to an external audit of programs deemed anti-Semitic by the administration.
Trump and prominent conservatives in the US have also long accused Harvard and other universities of propagating extreme left-wing views and stifling right-wing perspectives.
Last month, Harvard University has rejected demands from United States President Donald Trump’s administration that would see the university cede control to what it described as a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.
Within hours of Harvard taking its stand on Monday, the Trump administration announced it was freezing $2.3bn in federal funding to the Ivy League school.
Trump also floated that Harvard could lose its tax exempt status, under which most US higher education institutions are relieved of paying income tax.
In a post on Truth Social, he warned Harvard could “be taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness’”. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
