The Trump administration continues its crusade against universities. On Monday, March 31, the 47th President of the United States announced that it was planning to deprive the prestigious Harvard University of around $ 9 billion in federal subsidies after a “full exam”. As with Columbia before him, the establishment is accused by the executive of letting the “anti -Semitism” prosper on his campus. Since the billionaire’s return to the White House, the American government has continued to target the major universities of the country, theaters in various degrees for more than a year of a student movement against the war waged by Israel in Gaza.
Dated March 10, a letter sent to 60 establishments, signed by Craig Trainor, acting head of civil rights to the Ministry of Education, focused on anti -Semitic activities that occurred following Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023. The missive warned that the administration of Donald Trump would not tolerate “anti -Semitic acts”, and that the establishments concerned their federal funding. According to the press agency Reutersa third – 19 in total – university institutions subject to an investigation for anti -Semitism by the Trump administration had however already resolved previous complaints or had never been the subject of such complaints.
“Although the recent measures taken by Harvard to curb institutionalized anti -Semitism (…) are welcome, the university must do much more to maintain the privilege of receiving the money harder by taxpayers,” the government wrote in a joint statement of several federal and ministries, including that of Education. In detail, the administration ensures that it will make the “full exam” of $ 255.6 million in contracts between Harvard and the federal government, as well as “more than $ 8.7 billion in multi -year subsidies”. Note that Harvard is one of the richest institutions in the world, with an endowment fund of more than $ 50 billion.
The risk of jeopardizing important programs
Harvard president Alan Garner objected in a declaration that “if this funding is interrupted, this will end research that saves lives and will jeopardize important scientific research and innovations programs”. “The government informed us that he was considering this action because it feared that the university had not fulfilled its obligations in the fight against anti-Semitic harassment,” he observed. But Harvard “has strengthened (his) rules and (his) disciplinary approach with regard to those who violate them” in the last 15 months in order to fight anti-Semitism on the campus, he said.
A few weeks earlier, the government had withdrawn $ 400 million in federal funding in Columbia. In order to recover this money, the University based in New York has accessed a first series of requests from the Trump administration, “in particular the strengthening of its security force on the campus and the taxation of a greater monitoring of its study department on the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, among other concessions”, specifies the New York Times.“The actions undertaken today by the Task Force follow a similar examination still in the course of Columbia University,” added the administration on Monday in its press release.
The other institutions targeted by the anti -Semitism working group were George Washington University, that of New York or that of Berkeley in California. In addition, Johns Hopkins University has announced that it was dismissing more than 2,000 employees after losing more than $ 800 million in funding, according to The CNN news channel. Although the administration was mainly focused on what it considers an endemic anti -Semitism on American campuses, it also suspended about $ 175 million in funding at the University of Pennsylvania, or around 17.5 % of its total federal funds, because it had admitted a transgender woman in her female swimming team in 2022.