Harvard rejects Trump demands, gets hit by $2.3 billion funding freeze

Harvard rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government, on Monday.

Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion (AED 8.45 billion) in federal funding to the school.

The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion (AED 33 billion) in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.

On Monday, a Department of Education task force accused 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".

The exchange escalates the high-stakes dispute between the the Trump administration and some of the world's richest universities that has raised concerns about speech and academic freedoms.

The administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for numerous universities, pressing the institutions to make policy changes. Deportation proceedings have begun against some detained foreign students who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while visas for hundreds of other students have been cancelled.

Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter on Monday that demands made by the Department of Education last week would allow the federal government "to control the Harvard community" and threaten the school'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.

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement on Monday that Trump was "working to Make Higher Education Great Again by... ensuring federal taxpayer dollars do not fund Harvard's support of dangerous racial discrimination or racially motivated violence".

The department demanded that Harvard, work to reduce the influence of faculty, staff and students who are "more committed to activism than scholarship" and have an external panel audit the faculty and students of each department to ensure "viewpoint diversity".

The letter also stated that Harvard, by this August, must only hire faculty and admit students based on merit and cease all preferences based on race, colour or national origin. The university must also screen international students "to prevent admitting students hostile to American values" and report to federal immigration authorities foreign students who violate conduct rules.

Last week, a group of Harvard professors sued to block the Trump administration's review of nearly $9 billion (AED 33 billion) in federal contracts and grants awarded to the school.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering forcing fellow Ivy League school Columbia into a consent decree that would legally bind the school to follow federal guidelines in how it combats antisemitism. Some Columbia professors, like those at Harvard, have sued the federal government in response. The government has suspended $400 million (AED 1.4 billion) in federal funding and grants to Columbia.

Harvard President Garber said the federal government's demands that it "audit" the viewpoints of its students, faculty and staff to ferret out left-wing thinkers generally opposed to the Trump administration clearly violated the university's First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.