Escalating his ongoing feud with Harvard University, President Trump announced today that he is considering a substantial shift in funding — proposing to reroute $3 billion in grant money from the renowned Ivy League institution to trades schools across America. In a statement released on Truth Social, he branded the university as "very antisemitic," and suggested that the reallocation of funds would be "a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!", as reported by CBS News.
Mr. Trump's proposition follows a sequence of moves that includes the Trump administration's efforts to freeze $2.2 billion of Harvard's federal funding and, in a subsequent action, the White House's unsuccessful attempt to bar the institution from enrolling foreign students, which sparked a legal challenge resulting in a temporary setback for the administration, when a federal judge halted the ban — detailed by NBC10 Boston.
While the method of transferring these funds remains unclear, the President's direction is apparent, his aggressive stance against Harvard intensifying with the additional scrutiny of its foreign student body, as he suspects that they may include "radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all," and claims to require evidence to ensure national security, a notion he expressed vehemently in another post on his social media platform, according to NBC10 Boston.
Harvard, defending its position, has refuted the allegations of antisemitism and declared Trump's past actions to restrict funding as unlawful; moreover, Harvard Kennedy School professor Cornell William Brooks told NBC10 Boston last week that "Harvard subject to demand letter after demand letter after demand letter with little law cited, fewer facts relied upon," contesting the legitimacy of the government's claims. Alan Garber, president of Harvard, in a second lawsuit, condemned what he termed as retaliation "against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence," according to the interview with CBS News.
In the wider spectrum, it seems that Harvard is not the only target, as the Trump administration has also yanked federal funding from other elite institutions, including Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University, seen by many as a broader attempt to strong-arm universities into bending to the White House's will.
