By Rick Sobey
Boston Herald
(TNS)
After the feds froze more than $2 billion in grants to the Cambridge campus and threatened its tax-exempt status, Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in Massachusetts federal court.
The Trump admin last week sent a list of demands to Harvard for the university to receive federal research funding. Those demands included an “audit” of the viewpoints of Harvard’s student body, faculty, and staff, eliminating DEI programs, and more.
Hours after Harvard rejected the demands, the feds froze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the university, and President Trump pushed for the IRS to strip the campus of its tax-exempt status.
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Now on Monday, Harvard filed a lawsuit against the Trump admin “to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote.
“Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands,” Garber told the campus community.
“These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world,” he added.
The Trump administration has been citing the university’s response to antisemitism as a justification for freezing the grants and taking other actions.
“As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism,” Garber wrote. “To address it effectively requires understanding, intention, and vigilance. Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative.
“Before taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism,” he added. “Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach.”
For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.
Trump’s campaign started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration but took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”
Trump has targeted schools accused of tolerating antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses. Some of the government’s demands touch directly on that activism, calling on Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”
Herald wire services were used in this report.
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