Trump’s escalating battle against Harvard

By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

Hello!

It's hard to ignore U.S. President Donald Trump and his battle against the Ivy League Harvard University. This week, Trump aired plans to reallocate $3 billion of previously awarded grant money for the university's research and give it to trade schools after his administration sought to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students.

The U.S. president used his social media platform Truth Social to share his thoughts about the research grants. It was not clear whether Trump was referring to Harvard grants his administration has already frozen.

Trump, a Republican, has frozen some $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard in recent weeks, complaining that it has hired Democrats, "Radical Left idiots and 'bird brains'" as professors.

Harvard, a private university, has sued to restore the funding, saying the cuts are an unconstitutional attack on its free speech rights and unlawful.

For context, this issue relates to United Nations Sustainable Development (UN SDGs) as it raises concerns about academic freedom, access to scientific research funding and the role of governance and accountability in ensuring fair and transparent institutions, which are all covered by UN SDG goals four, nine and 16. Click here for more on those UN goals.

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 Yu-Hsuan Lin, 27, lays out a Harvard hat, mug, hoodie and her admission letter to Harvard University on a table in Taipei, Taiwan. REUTERS/Ann Wang

So, what did Trump specifically say on his social media platform?

Trump posted: "I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!"

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not respond to questions about the specific funds Trump wants to repurpose or how it could be reallocated to trade schools under the law.

Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at trade schools.

Harvard has said it was told that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked earlier in May, in a series of letters from the NIH, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and other agencies.

The administration has accused Harvard of continuing to consider ethnicity when reviewing student applications and of allegedly allowing discrimination against Jewish students as a result of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that has roiled American campuses since last year.

Trump's latest move against the institution was to revoke Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students, which was temporarily blocked by a U.S. judge.

"Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard," the 389-year-old school said in its lawsuit filed in a Boston federal court. Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, equal to 27% of total enrollment.

Harvard University President Alan Garber said the administration was illegally seeking to assert control over the private university's curriculum, faculty and student body.

"The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence," Garber wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, without providing evidence, accused the university of "fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party."

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