Trump Administration Freezes Harvard's Federal Funding

The Trump administration announced Monday it has frozen $2.3 billion in federal funding to Harvard University, just hours after the university rejected a series of government demands that Harvard President Alan Garber characterized as an attempt to "control the Harvard community."

The funding freeze escalates a growing dispute between the Trump administration and elite universities over campus responses to protests and allegations of antisemitism that have unfolded since October 7^th of 2023.

Harvard becomes one of a few Ivy League schools to be urged by the Trump administration to comply with its agenda, which also has stopped federal funding for the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, and Princeton.  

In a public letter released Monday, Harvard president Alan Garber strongly rebuffed demands made by the Department of Education last week, stating that compliance would threaten Harvard's "values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge."

"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," Garber wrote.

The Department of Education responded swiftly, accusing America's oldest university of having a "troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges - that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."

White House spokesman Harrison Fields stated that President Trump was "working to Make Higher Education Great Again by ending unchecked anti-Semitism and ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard's support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence."

The Department of Education had previously announced a review of $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of what it described as a crackdown on antisemitism that emerged on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests since late 2023.

Among the government's demands were requirements that Harvard reduce the influence of faculty, staff, and students "more committed to activism than scholarship," have external panels audit departments to ensure "viewpoint diversity," and screen international students "to prevent admitting students hostile to American values."

Last week, a group of Harvard professors sued to block the administration's review of federal funding to the university. Harvard itself is reportedly seeking to borrow $750 million from Wall Street to ease any financial constraints resulting from federal funding cuts.

Similar tensions have emerged at Columbia University, where the administration has suspended $400 million in funding and is reportedly considering forcing the school into a consent decree regarding antisemitism policies. Some Columbia professors have also filed lawsuits in response.

Harvard had previously agreed in January to provide additional protections for Jewish students under a settlement resolving two lawsuits that accused the school of becoming a hotbed of antisemitism following the October 2023 Hamas attack inside Israel and subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza.