{"id":41883,"date":"2025-05-05T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=41883"},"modified":"2025-05-05T22:53:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:53:42","slug":"trump-administration-freezes-all-federal-research-funding-for-harvard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=41883","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration freezes all federal research funding for Harvard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The US Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was ending billions of dollars in research grants and other aid unless the school concedes to a list of demands from the Trump administration<\/a> that would effectively cede control of the nation\u2019s oldest and wealthiest to the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The news was delivered to Dr Alan Garber, Harvard\u2019s president, in a deeply partisan, scathing letter<\/a> from Linda McMahon, the education secretary, which she also posted on social media. \u201cThis letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,\u201d McMahon wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main reason for the crackdown on Harvard is the school\u2019s rejection of a long list of demands<\/a> from the Trump administration\u2019s antisemitism task force, prompted by campus protests against Israel\u2019s brutal military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. McMahon also accuses the university of \u201ca systematic pattern of violating federal law\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Garber explained<\/a> in a message to the Harvard community last month, the university decided to sue the federal government only after the Trump administration froze $2.2bn in funding, threatened to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, \u201cinitiated numerous investigations of Harvard\u2019s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard\u2019s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government\u2019s \u201csweeping and intrusive demands would impose unprecedented and improper control over the university\u201d, Garber wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its lawsuit against the Trump administration, Harvard said the government\u2019s funding cuts will have stark \u201creal-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff [and] researchers\u201d by ending crucial medical and scientific research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The text of McMahon\u2019s letter, like a Truth Social post from the president, is littered with all-caps words. \u201cWhere do many of these \u2018students\u2019 come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country \u2013 and why is there so much HATE?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHarvard University has made a mockery of this country\u2019s higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus,\u201d McMahon claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university recently published its own, in-depth investigation<\/a> of allegations that Gaza solidarity protests had crossed the line into antisemitism, and a second that looked at anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But McMahon\u2019s letter is not mainly about the claim that Jewish students feel unsafe at Harvard \u2013 a view the president, who is himself Jewish, has some sympathy with \u2013 but is filled with extended diatribes about a series of other grievances, including: the supposed far-left politics of Penny Pritzker, a member of the university\u2019s governing board who previously served as US commerce secretary during the Obama administration; the complaints of Harvard alumnus and Trump supporter Bill Ackman; what McMahon calls the \u201cugly racism\u201d of Harvard\u2019s efforts to diversify its student body; complaints about what Fox News has termed a \u201cremedial math\u201d course which is intended to address gaps in new students\u2019 math skills following the Covid-19 pandemic; accusations that the Harvard Law Review has discriminated against white authors<\/a>; and two brief fellowships the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health offered to the former mayors of New York and Chicago, Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In language that seemed to echo Donald Trump\u2019s own, McMahon told Harvard\u2019s president that de Blasio and Lightfoot, who were recruited to share their experiences of bringing universal pre-kindergarten to New York<\/a>, and leading Chicago through the pandemic<\/a>, are \u201cperhaps the worst mayors evert to preside over major cities in our country\u2019s history\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is like hiring the captain of the Titanic to teach navigation,\u201d McMahon wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHarvard 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,\u201d McMahon wrote. \u201cYou have an approximately $53bn head start.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was ending billions of dollars in research grants and other aid unless the school concedes to a list of demands from the Trump administration that would effectively cede control of the nation\u2019s oldest and wealthiest to the government. The news was delivered to Dr Alan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":41884,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5781],"tags":[33181,21535,8495,1230],"class_list":["post-41883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-federal-research-funding","tag-freeze","tag-harvard","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41883"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41885,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41883\/revisions\/41885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}