After rejecting demands from President Donald Trump and his administration, Harvard University had $2.3 billion in federal funding frozen.
According to Reuters, the funding was frozen after Trump announced a review of $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard for its part in supporting antisemitism on its campus during pro-Palestine protests over the last 18 months.
The Department of Education (DOE) accused the university on Monday 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.”
Harvard is not the only university to face funding cuts, with Reuters reporting that the Trump administration has been putting pressure on institutions to change their respective policies to combat antisemitism on campuses.
International students at Harvard who have participated in anti-Israel protests have also been detained, while others have had their visas revoked and cancelled.
Harvard’s President Alan Garber said in a public letter on Monday that the demands by the DOE would allow the 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,” Garber wrote.
In a statement released Monday, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Trump was “working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard’s support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence.”
On Friday, the DOE said Harvard had “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” and further demanded that Harvard work to reduce the influence of faculty, staff, and students who are more interested in promoting activism than “scholarship.”
Harvard will also be required to have an external panel conduct an audit of faculty and students to ensure “viewpoint diversity.”
