Trump admin takes significant financial action against Harvard
Trump has officially terminated $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds to Harvard University after ordering a review of the school's federal financing. A letter sent from a Trump National Institutes of Health (NIH) official to Harvard University President Alan Garber on Tuesday notified the administrator that the federal grants flowing to the college for research have been canceled.
It comes days after the administration announced a crackdown on the university after allowing anti-Semitic protests and violence on campus. Harvard fired back with a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's funding freeze. The Daily Mail exclusively obtained the letter from NIH to Harvard stating that taxpayer funds must be 'carefully' used to 'benefit the American people and improve their quality of life.' 'Your project does not satisfy these criteria,' the letter to Garber continues.
The face value of the total grants terminated comes to $2.2 billion, a White House official confirmed. 'President Trump means what he says,' the official told the Daily Mail. 'Harvard has a $53 billion endowment that they're free to use.' The letter from the Trump administration to the Massachusetts school confirms the billions in NIH funding for the university will be canceled. Though the university may appeal the decision, according to the letter.
The letter specifically condemned the school for alleged race discrimination. It also accuses the Ivy League of allowing anti-Semitism to fester on campus unabated, despite faculty awareness of the 'widespread abuse of Jewish and Israeli students.' 'As relevant to NIH's policies, NIH understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination including in its admissions process, and in other areas of student life, such as access to the Law Review at Harvard Law School,' the letter continued. 'Supporting research in such an environment is plainly inconsistent with NIH's priorities.'
On Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote a letter to the university saying it should not apply for any more federal cash. 'This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,' she wrote. The university, along with other elite institutions, have been hotbeds for antisemitic and anti-Israel protests. Some pro-Palestinian Harvard student activists received assault and battery charges for confronting pro-Israel demonstrators, for example.
In its lawsuit challenging the funding freeze, Harvard said the move was 'arbitrary and capricious' and violated its First Amendment rights. 'The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen,' the lawsuit, filed in Boston federal court, stated.
Attorneys representing Harvard noted the government has not acknowledged 'the significant consequences that the indefinite freeze of billions of dollars in federal research funding will have on Harvard's research programs, the beneficiaries of that research, and the national interest in furthering American innovation and progress.' In a letter to Harvard earlier this month, the Trump administration had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university as well as changes to its admissions policies.
The letter from the NIH to Garber (pictured) sent Tuesday claims that Harvard did not achieve these reforms. Harvard President Alan Garber initially said the university would not bend to the demands. 'The consequences of the government's overreach will be severe and long-lasting,' Garber said in a statement last month. 'Research that the government has put in jeopardy includes efforts to improve the prospects of children who survive cancer, to understand at the molecular level how cancer spreads throughout the body, to predict the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, and to ease the pain of soldiers wounded on the battlefield.' He noted that the victims aren't necessarily the researches and Harvard students - they will be 'future patients and their loved ones who will suffer the heartbreak of illnesses that might have been prevented or treated more effectively.'
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