United States of America President Donald Trump’s administration is cutting another $450 million in federal grants to oldest institution of higher learning in the United States Harvard University.
The termination of approximately $450 million in grants to Harvard is in addition to the $2.2 billion that was terminated.
Trump administration war against the university include pulling federal funding from the universities, cancelling support for approved grants and terminating thousands of student visas.
White House’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said on Tuesday in a statement that called Harvard’s campus “a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination.”
“There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support,” said the statement signed by attorneys for the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services.
In May, Trump had also announced that Harvard would be stripped of its tax-exempt status Trump’s education secretary Linda McMahon had written to Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, announcing that the government will no longer award any grants to the institution.
The institutions is the biggest but not the only target in the Trump administration’s broader funding battle against elite educational institutions over a long list of grievances, including diversity initiatives, financial controls and international student admissions.
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Columbia University and Ohio State alma mater Vance are among the other institutions that have lost federal dollars, even after acquiescing to some of the government’s demands.
In April Harvard leadership said they would not agree to several changes requested by the government in including “governance and leadership reforms” and an audit of the “viewpoint diversity” of students and employees.
Harvard had filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration telling a judge the government was attempting to “use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard.”
The university President and Fellows of Harvard College one of the university’s two governing boards had sued the heads of federal agencies to halt the funding freeze, describing it as unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.
The university’s lawsuit requests that the court declare the Trump administration’s funding freeze illegal.
Universities, researchers, academic groups and attorneys general from a number of US states are now using the legal system to fight back against the Trump administration’s moves to cut billions of dollars from science agencies and research institutions.
The presidents and chancellors of nearly 600 colleges and universities from the US signed a public statement, released by the American Association of Colleges and Universities on 22 April, warning about ‘unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education’.
By Obegi Malack
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