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Donald Trump’s administration has terminated an additional $450mn in grants to Harvard University, marking a further escalation in the US president’s attack on the elite university.
The US government said on Tuesday that Harvard’s failure to “confront the pervasive race discrimination and antisemitic harassment plaguing its campus” had resulted in eight federal agencies terminating about $450mn in grants to the university. This is in addition to the $2.2bn that was cut last week.
The decision intensifies the battle between Harvard and Trump, who said earlier this month that he would scrap the university’s tax-exempt status. The administration also said recently that the institution would no longer be eligible for new federal government research grants.
House Republicans also included a tax increase for elite universities in draft legislation for their sweeping fiscal package. Under the proposal, unveiled on Monday by members of the House ways and means committee, universities with more than 500 students and endowments totalling more than $2mn per student would pay a tax rate of 21 per cent on net investment income, up from 1.4 per cent.
The government’s task force to combat antisemitism, which was created earlier this year following an executive order from Trump, said in a statement on Tuesday that Harvard’s leaders “have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support”.
The statement highlighted instances that it claimed had demonstrated antisemitism on campus, including the findings of Harvard’s own recent report on the matter. Harvard’s president Alan Garber last year established a task force to address antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, as well as another to address anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.
Garber hit out against demands from the Trump administration last month, which he condemned as seeking “direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard”. The administration made demands including that Harvard make changes to its admissions process and governance structure, which it said the university had to fulfil to maintain its “financial relationship” with the government.
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The White House has also cut funding to other Ivy League universities, including Columbia and Princeton.
Trump promised to take on universities on the campaign trail last year, denouncing them as “dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics”.
The administration’s back-and-forth with Harvard has been particularly intense, partly because the university has not ceded to all its demands.
The president last week accused leading US universities, including Harvard, of violating federal laws on large foreign donations.
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
