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Monday, April 14, 2025

Harvard refuses Trump admin demands to curtail antisemitism on campus

 Harvard University said it will not comply with demands issued by the Trump administration aimed at curtailing antisemitism on campus, potentially putting billions in federal contracts and grants at risk.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” the Ivy League school’s president, Alan Garber, wrote in a statemet Monday.

In March, the Trump administration warned it was looking at $256 million in federal contracts for the elite Cambridge, Mass.-based school, as well as $8.7 billion in additional “multiyear grant commitments,” claiming Harvard had failed to take meaningful action to root out antisemitism.

Demonstrators rally on Cambridge Common in a protest demanding Harvard leadership resist interference at the university by the federal government in on April 12, 2025.REUTERS
A Jewish student surrounded by pro-Palestinian protesters at a Harvard Business School “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” protest on Oct. 18, 2024.X/@AvivaKlompas
The Trump administration had threatened to withhold federal funding unless Harvard curbed antisemitism on campus.Getty Images
The Ivy League was ordered to implement multiple changes to maintain its “financial relationship with the federal government,” in a letter earlier this month from President Trump’s newly formed Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism

Some of them included reforming its student discipline policies, dismantling all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and stepping up its admissions screening of international students to “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values,” including “students supportive of terrorism or antisemitism.”

The prestigious university was also ordered to make admissions decisions based on merit alone and “cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof.”

Garber called the administration’s demands “unprecedented,” and said the laundry list of required reforms “makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner.”

He further claimed the task force’s missive “goes beyond the power of the federal government … violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.”

He added that it “threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”

Columbia University was given a similar set of demands last month from Trump’s task force, to which it largely agreed to adhere to avoid losing around $400 million in federal grants.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/14/us-news/harvard-refuses-trump-admin-demands-to-curtail-antisemitism-on-campus-putting-billions-in-federal-aid-in-jeopardy/

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