Pentagon official: Cutting off Harvard project endangers national security
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) director of contracting said the grant funded a Harvard research team that had reached a 'pivotal juncture' in a project addressing the 'biological threat landscape,' according to Monday court filings in the university's lawsuit against the Trump administration, first reported by The Boston Globe.
The official was unnamed in the filings.
Harvard, which is suing the administration over roughly $2.5 billion in frozen funding, has declared the cuts to be illegal and haphazard and obtained government records to prove their case.
In the filing, the lawyers detail the risk of cutting off funding to projects related to public health and national security concerns.
In one instance, Harvard researchers were working on a military project known as the AMPHORA program, aimed at increasing awareness of emerging biological threats, when the Department of Defense (DOD) on May 12 informed the university it had terminated the grant funding the effort, according to a memorandum filed by Harvard's lawyers in federal court.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the cancellation of that military grant, as well as others, the filing notes.
After learning the DOD grant was terminated by senior officials, the DARPA contracting official 'pleaded to save it, noting that Harvard was the 'critical' and 'top performing team' on the program, and that '[i]nadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security' and threatens military servicemember safety,' the memo states.
'The Government's thoughtless and retaliatory strategy meant that contracting officers and policy experts took a back seat in deciding whether to terminate grants that continued to benefit the public.'
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill as to whether the Harvard grant for the AMPHORA program remains terminated.
The White House has frozen the funding after Harvard would not acquiesce to demands such as changing its hiring and admissions process and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The Trump administration accuses the university of being 'deliberately indifferent' to antisemitic harassment on campus, favoring others over white people and men in its hiring and admissions processes and creating a culture intolerant of conservative viewpoints.
Harvard's lawyers, meanwhile, say the administration has failed to acknowledge 'the dozens of steps Harvard has taken and committed to take to address antisemitism and bias.'
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