The Trump administration has escalated its battle against Harvard University, canceling all remaining contracts with the elite Ivy League institution as President Donald Trump threatened to divert research grants to trade schools. The administration claims that Harvard has failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and has illegally given preferences in admissions to racial minorities.
However, Harvard and its supporters say the fight threatens both academic freedom and the future of scientific discovery at the nation’s top universities.
“What is perplexing is the measures they have taken to address this don’t even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems,” Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, told NPR. “Why cut off research funding? Sure, it hurts Harvard. But it hurts the country.”
The case against Harvard
The General Services Administration sent a letter to all federal agencies on Tuesday, May 27, instructing them to terminate any contracts with Harvard that had not already been pulled.
Those contracts are worth about $100 million, according to The New York Times, which obtained a draft of the letter. That amount is in addition to the $3.2 billion in grants and contracts that have been frozen over the past several weeks.
The letter — signed by Josh Gruenbaum, the commissioner of the federal acquisition service — detailed the Trump administration’s case against Harvard, including “a disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students.”
Gruenbaum cited what he called “shocking, to say the least” racial discrimination in Harvard’s admissions policies. He wrote that among applicants who placed in the top 10% of their high school graduating classes, the admission rate for Black applicants was 56%, compared to 31% for Hispanics, 15% for whites and 13% for those of Asian descent.
He suggested this has led to a diminution of the university’s academic standards.
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The Trump administration has frozen about $3.3 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard University. Most of the money went toward biomedical research.
“Harvard has shown no indication of reforming their admissions process – to the contrary, Harvard now has to offer a remedial math course, which has been described as ‘middle school math,’ for incoming freshmen,” Gruenbaum wrote. “These are the direct results of employing discriminatory factors, instead of merit, in admission decisions.”
He also complained that the Harvard Divinity School selected a student who participated in a pro-Palestinian protest on campus last year as a “class marshal” for this spring’s commencement and that the Harvard Law Review offered a $65,000 fellowship to a protester accused of assaulting a Jewish student on campus.
Gruenbaum did not mention that the protester avoided criminal prosecution on a misdemeanor assault charge that was filed after he confronted a student filming a protest. The case was resolved without the protester having to admit wrongdoing, according to The Harvard Crimson.
Gruenbaum said all the episodes reflect an untenable atmosphere on campus perpetuated by the school’s administrators.
“At best, this sort of leadership suggests staggering incompetence; at worst, it’s deliberate malice disguised as ignorance,” he wrote.
‘Troublemakers’
The cancellation of Harvard’s remaining federal contracts comes days after the Trump administration barred the school from admitting international students. About 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, accounting for 27% of its total enrollment.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem justified the ban by asserting that Harvard is “perpetuating an unsafe environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.’”
On his Truth Social account over the weekend, Trump said the university had refused to identify its international students.
“We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump wrote. “Harvard is very slow in the presentation of these documents, and probably for good reason!”
In a separate post, Trump said he had plans to reallocate Harvard’s federal grants.
“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” he wrote. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”
Reuters reported, however, that most of the federal money flowing to Harvard was awarded by the National Institutes of Health for biomedical research.
‘Their fire is misdirected’
Harvard has sued the Trump administration, asking a court to reinstate its federal funding. On Friday, May 23, a federal judge temporarily restored the university’s ability to enroll international students.
Garber told NPR that the school wants to address some issues raised by White House officials, particularly the contention that conservative voices on campus are often stifled.
“We want people to be able to address difficult topics with one another, especially when they disagree,” Garber said. “We shouldn’t be in an echo chamber. Everyone in our community needs to hear other views.”
But he said the attacks on Harvard and other elite institutions are part of a larger cultural battle that has little to do with the universities themselves.
“They don’t like what’s happening on campuses and sometimes they don’t like what we represent,” Garber said. “There are people who would like to see these universities brought down. I think that their fire is misdirected, because we have a common interest in making the nation and indeed the world a better place.”
