The federal government claims that it freezes over $ 2.2 billion in subsidies and $ 60 million of contracts at Harvard University, after the institution said on Monday that it will not be consistent with the demands of the Trump administration to limit activism in the campus.
In a letter to Harvard on Friday, the administration called for broad government and leadership reforms, “based on merits” and employment of politics, in addition to an audit of the research body, lecturers and leadership regarding their views on diversity.
Requirements which are an update from an earlier letter also require a ban on masks on the face-medium, which seems to attack protesters of pro-Falestinian-and pressure to the university, to stop recognizing or financing “every student group or a club that supports criminal activity, illegal violence or illegal harassment.”
The President of Harvard Alan Garber, in the Monday letter to the Harvard community, said that the demands violated the rights of the primary amendment of the university and exceed the “statutory boundaries of government authorities under title VI”, which prohibits discrimination against students based on their race, color or national origin.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate, what private universities can teach, who they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and investigations can be implemented,” Garber wrote, adding that the university has taken extensive reforms to unravel anti -Semitism.
“These goals will not be achieved thanks to the claims of the authorities, regardless of the law, to control teaching and learning on Harvard and dictating how to act,” he wrote.
“Work related to solving our shortcomings, fulfilling our obligations and the embodiment of our values is to define and take as a community.”
Harvard requirements are a part of a wider pursuit of taxpayers’ dollars to exert pressure on the important academic institutions in order to comply with the political program of the US President Donald Trump and influence campus policy. The administration also argued that universities allowed that what they consider anti -Semitism to unjustified during campus protests last 12 months against the war of Israel in Gaza; Schools deny this.
Harvard is one in all several Ivy League schools addressed to a pressure campaign by the administration, which also stopped federal funds for institutions – including the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and Princeton – to force compliance.
The letter with Harvard’s request is analogous to the one which caused changes on the Columbia University under the specter of billions of dollars in cuts.
The requirements of Trump’s administration prompted a gaggle of graduates to write down to the leaders of universities calling for “legal competing and refusal to comply with unlawful requirements that threaten academic freedom and university self -government.”
“Harvard has stood in honesty, values and freedoms that serve as the foundation of higher education,” said Anurima Bhargav, one in all the graduates standing behind the letter. “Harvard reminded the world that learning, innovation and transforming growth would not be intimidated and authoritarian whims.”
At the weekend, it also caused a protest from members of the Harvard community and Cambridge residents and a trial on Friday on the American Association of University Professors.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that Trump’s administration didn’t take the steps required in accordance with Title VI before he began cutting the funds and notify in regards to the cuts of each the university and the Congress.
“These broad but indefinite demands are not a remedy focused on the reasons for any determination of federal law. Instead, he tries to impose the political views of the Harvard University and political preferences developed by Trump’s administration and commit the university in punishing the speech,” they wrote.
