All future funds to the university will be at the Trump administration’s discretion, a White House official said.
Harvard University will no longer be eligible for government grants, a senior White House official said on May 5.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon will send a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber on Monday night to inform the university that it is not eligible for federal grants until it makes significant changes to its management, the official said.
The letter will cite low public confidence in higher education, Harvard’s alleged failure to combat anti-Semitism on campus, and take issue with the virtually untaxed status of Harvard’s significant financial endowment.
On Friday, President Donald Trump threatened to go after Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he wrote in a social media
post.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education
sent Harvard a list of demands—including combating anti-Semitism on campus and eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs—that the university needed to fulfill or risk losing billions in federal funding.
In its
response, Harvard said it was “not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
The Trump administration then froze $2.26 billion from the university, with nearly $9 billion in funding set aside for Harvard put under review.
The administration had also pushed for Harvard to disclose information about potential foreign ties, with the Department of Homeland Security threatening to remove the university’s ability to enroll foreign students.
Weeks later, Harvard
released two reports describing how Jewish, Israeli, Zionist, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian students all reported feeling marginalized or targeted over their identities and views after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the campus protests that followed.
“Especially disturbing is the reported willingness of some students to treat each other with disdain rather than sympathy, eager to criticize and ostracize, particularly when afforded the anonymity and distance that social media provides,” Garber wrote in a letter to the campus community.
Trump
suggested on April 30 that his administration would no longer give government grants to Harvard if it did not agree to fulfill his demands to eliminate DEI and combat on-campus anti-Semitism.
“A grant is at our discretion, and they are really not behaving well. So it’s too bad,” Trump said.
Harvard has sued the administration to unfreeze its funds, and Garber
said on Friday that it would be “highly illegal” for Trump to compel the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status.
“If the government goes through with a plan to revoke our tax-exempt status, it would … be highly illegal unless there is some reasoning that we have not been exposed to that would justify this dramatic move,” Garber
told The Wall Street Journal.
“The message that it sends to the educational community would be a very dire one, which suggests that political disagreements could be used as a basis to pose what might be an existential threat to so many educational institutions.”
On Monday, the White House official announcing McMahon’s letter took issue with recent
Harvard data showing that less than 3 percent of surveyed faculty identify as conservative, and suggested the school could do more to bring diverse viewpoints to campus.
The official also accused the university of abandoning rigor and academic excellence, citing a plagiarism scandal involving former Harvard President Claudine Gay.
All future funds to the university will be at the Trump administration’s discretion, the official said.
T.J. Muscaro, Aaron Gifford, Chase Smith, and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
