- Harvard says that federal demands violate academic freedom.
- Some Harvard teachers have already sued Trump Admin.
- The US government has frozen federal funds for numerous universities.
Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands of the Trump administration who said he would give the school control to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.
A few hours after Harvard took his position, the administration of President Donald Trump announced that he was freezing $ 2.3 billion in federal funds for school.
The freezing of funds occurs after the Trump administration said last month that it was reviewing $ 9 billion in federal contracts and subsidies to Harvard as part of a repression of what it states is the anti-Semitism that exploded in the university campuses during the pro-Palestinian protests in the last 18 months.
On Monday, a working group from the Department of Education to combat anti -Semitism accused the oldest university of the United States of having a “worrying rights mentality that is endemic in the most prestigious universities and colleges of our nation, that federal investment does not have the responsibility of maintaining civil rights laws.”
The exchange increases the high -risk dispute between the Trump administration and some of the richest universities in the world that has expressed concerns about speech and academic freedoms.
The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds for numerous universities, pressing institutions to make policy changes and cite what it says is a lack of fighting anti -Semitism on campus.
Deportation procedures have begun against some foreign students detained who participated in pro-palestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been canceled.
The president of Harvard, Alan Garber, wrote in a public letter on Monday that the demands made by the Department of Education last week would allow the federal government to “control the Harvard community” and threaten the “values of the school as a private institution dedicated to the search, production and dissemination of knowledge.”
“No government, regardless of what party is in power, must dictate that private universities can teach, who can admit and hire, and what areas of study and research can,” Garber wrote.
However, he also said, seeing accusations of anti -Semitism, “as we defend Harvard, we will continue to encourage a prosperous culture of open research on our campus; develop the necessary tools, skills and practices to participate constructively with each other; and expand intellectual diversity and points of view within our community.”
The theme of anti-Semitism on the campus broke out before Trump assumed the position of his second term, after the protests of pro-palestinian students last year in several universities.
White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement on Monday that Trump was “working to make higher education again again at the end of anti -Semitism without control and ensure that federal dollars of taxpayers do not finance Harvard's support for dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence.”
In a letter on Friday, the Department of Education declared that Harvard had “not fulfilled the conditions of intellectual and civil rights that justify federal investment.”
The department demanded that Harvard work to reduce the influence of teachers, staff and students who are “more committed to activism than the scholarship” and have an external panel auditting the faculty and students of each department to guarantee the “diversity of views.”
The letter also declared that Harvard, for this August, should only hire teachers and admit students based on merit and cease all preferences based on race, color or national origin. The University must also evaluate international students “to avoid admitting hostile students to US values” and informing federal immigration authorities to foreign students who violate the rules of behavior.
Last week, a group of Harvard teachers demanded to block the Trump administration review of almost $ 9 billion in federal contracts and subsidies granted to school.
According to reports, the Trump administration is considering forcing the columbia of the Ivy League school to a consent decree that would legally link to the school to follow federal guidelines on how anti -Semitism fights. Some professors from Columbia, such as Harvard's, have sued the federal government in response. The Government has suspended $ 400 million in federal funds and subsidies to Columbia.
Harvard president, Garber, said that the federal government's demands that “audit” the views of their students, teachers and staff to discover the leftist thinkers generally oppose the Trump administration clearly violated the rights of the first amendment of the University to freedom of expression.
“The University will not deliver its independence or resign from its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote.
He added that while Harvard is taking measures to address anti -Semitism on the campus, “these purposes will not be achieved by means of power, without being fine with the law, to control teaching and learning in Harvard and dictate how we operate.”
Garber said: “Freedom of thought and research, together with the Government's long -standing commitment to respect and protect it, has allowed universities to contribute vital to a free society and more healthy and more prosperous lives for people everywhere.”
Harvard agreed in January to provide additional protections for Jewish students under an agreement that resolved two demands that accuse the Ivy League school of becoming a seedbed of antisemitism.
To relieve any financing creak created by any limit in federal funds, Harvard is working to borrow $ 750 million of Wall Street.
