Harvard refuses Trump admin demands to curtail antisemitism on campus — and loses over $2B in federal grants, contracts
Harvard University said it will not comply with demands issued by the Trump administration aimed at curtailing antisemitism on campus, resulting in the White House freezing billions in federal contracts and grants.
“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,” the Ivy League school’s president, Alan Garber, wrote in a statement Monday.
The Trump administration quickly shot back at the university’s refusal — announcing a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts mere hours later.
“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the 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,” President Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said in a statement to The Post.
“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.”
In March, the Trump administration warned it was looking at $256 million in federal contracts for the elite Cambridge, Mass. school, as well as $8.7 billion in additional “multi-year grant commitments,” claiming Harvard had failed to take meaningful action to root out antisemitism.
The Ivy League was ordered to implement multiple changes to maintain its “financial relationship with the federal government,” in a letter earlier this month from Trump’s newly formed antisemitism task force.
Some of them included reforming its student discipline policies, dismantling all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and stepping up its admissions screening of international students to “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values,” including “students supportive of terrorism or antisemitism.”
The prestigious university was also ordered to make admissions decisions based on merit alone and “cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof.”
Garber called the administration’s demands “unprecedented,” and said the laundry list of required reforms “makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner.”
He further claimed the task force’s missive “goes beyond the power of the federal government … violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.”
He added that it “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”
Columbia University was given a similar set of demands last month from Trump’s task force, to which it largely agreed to adhere to avoid losing around $400 million in federal grants.
Among them, enforcing a ban on masks for protesters and crackdowns on anti-Israel demonstrators who break the law, including punishing those responsible for the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall in April 2024, during which dozens of masked rioters smashed their way into the academic building and barricaded themselves inside.
Columbia was given a month to comply, and hours before the deadline imposed by the task force expired, the Ivy League agreed to sweeping new policy changes, including new, stricter rules governing facial coverings and empowering campus cops to make arrests.
The school also committed to installing new leadership tasked with overseeing curricula for its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department, as well as its Center for Palestine Studies, according to a memo from administrators.
However, days later, the school’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, was ousted by the prestigious school’s board of trustees after publicly agreeing to uphold the school’s mask ban but promising faculty she would not behind closed doors.
