The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has said it is terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard University, further escalating an ongoing feud between the Ivy Leave institute and President Donald Trump’s administration over alleged anti-Semitism, presidential control and the limits of academic freedom.
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Trump administration cuts another $450m in Harvard grants in escalating row
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Harvard University sues Trump administration over funding freeze
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Harvard University defies Trump’s demands, faces $2.3bn in funding cuts
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Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon also announced earlier this month that the university would no longer be receiving public funding for research as it had made a “mockery” of higher education, in a letter addressed to Harvard.
“Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni,” McMahon wrote in the letter.
The feud between the president and Harvard – a prestigious Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts – began in March, when Trump sought to impose new rules and regulations on top schools across the country that had played host to pro-Palestinian protests over the past year.
Trump has called such protests “illegal” and accused participants of anti-Semitism. But student protest leaders have described their actions as a peaceful response to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has elicited concerns about human rights abuses, including genocide.
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The Trump administration announced the first funding freeze in April. Harvard had rejected the administration’s series of demands to tackle alleged anti-Semitism, saying they would subject it to undue government control. The demands had included revamping its disciplinary system, eliminating its diversity initiatives and agreeing to an external audit of programmes deemed anti-Semitic by the administration.
Trump and prominent conservatives in the US have also long accused Harvard and other universities of propagating extreme left-wing views and stifling right-wing perspectives.
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