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The Trump administration is reviewing billions of {dollars} in federal grants and contracts to Harvard College over what it claimed was a failure to guard Jewish college students from antisemitism, in accordance to a Monday announcement.
President Donald Trump’s Joint Job Pressure to Fight Anti-Semitism is investigating the Ivy League establishment to make sure it’s “in compliance with federal rules, together with its civil rights obligations.” The announcement got here from the U.S. Division of Schooling, U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers, and U.S. Basic Providers Administration.
Beneath evaluate are $255.6 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard and its associatesthe most important sum but that the duty drive has focused.
“Harvard’s failure to guard college students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination — all whereas selling divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its fame in critical jeopardy,” U.S. Schooling Secretary Linda McMahon mentioned in a press release. “Harvard can proper these wrongs and restore itself to a campus devoted to tutorial excellence and truth-seeking, the place all college students really feel protected on its campus.”
The college didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark Monday.
When the Trump administration introduced an analogous probe into Columbia College on March 3, it took simply 4 days earlier than the federal authorities withdrew $400 million in funds from the Ivy League establishment.
Citing “substantial monetary uncertainties” brought on by the Trump administration’s current months vis-a-vis federal funding, Harvard enacted a universitywide hiring freeze earlier this month.
On the time, senior college leaders mentioned they have been making the transfer to “protect our monetary flexibility till we higher perceive how adjustments in federal coverage will take form and might assess the size of their affect.”
The federal antisemitism process drive is not the one method the Trump administration is attacking increased training funding. The Schooling Division has canceled a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in contracts and the Nationwide Institutes of Well being has moved to considerably restrict how a lot establishments might be reimbursed for oblique prices associated to analysis.
This month, HHS and the U.S. Division of Protection additionally cancelled $175 million in federal funding on the College of Pennsylvania, alleging the establishment’s athletics participation insurance policies violate the White Home’s ban on transgender ladies taking part in on sports activities groups aligning with their gender id. The college disputes that evaluation.