- Friday, June 20, 2025
The US president says such an action will be “a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”
By: India Weekly
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has intensified his running battle with Harvard University and now threatens to cut off federal funding and redirect billions to trade schools.
The Trump administration had earlier tried to bar the Ivy League institution from enrolling foreign students, after they refused to provide information sought by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding some of these students.
The department had alleged that the university had enrolled some radical international students and was promoting antisemitism.
DHS secretary Kristi Noem had said that Harvard has been poisoned by anti-American, pro-Hamas ideology, and “America demands more from universities entrusted with taxpayer dollars.”
Harvard filed a lawsuit last week against the move and a federal judge had overturned it in hours.
Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3 billion of previously awarded grant money for scientific and engineering research away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools.
His comments on his social media platform Truth Social come less than a week after his administration sought to block the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students.
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.
In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “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!!!”
Trump also accused the university of dragging its feet in disclosing data on foreign students, implying a national security threat.
“We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” he said, adding, “Harvard is very slow in the presentation of these documents, and probably for good reason!”
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.
It was not clear whether Trump was referring to Harvard grants his administration has already frozen.
Harvard has said it was told that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked earlier in May, in a series of letters by the NIH, the US Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense and other agencies.
The letters each said the grants were being suspended because they “no longer effectuate agency priorities.”
Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. The White House did not respond to questions about the specific funds Trump wants to repurpose.
On Friday, a US judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, a policy the university said was part of Trump’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence.”
The order provides temporary relief to thousands of international students, who were faced with potentially having to transfer under a policy that the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts called a “blatant violation” of the US Constitution and other federal laws.
It said the move would have an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders, and over 700 from India.
Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, representing 27 per cent of total enrollment and a significant chunk of its revenue from tuition fees.
The move was the latest escalation in a broader battle between Harvard and the White House, as Trump seeks to compel universities, law firms, news media, courts and other institutions to align with his agenda.
Trump and fellow Republicans have long accused elite universities of left-wing bias and wants to seize government control of these institutions.
In recent weeks, the administration has proposed ending Harvard’s tax-exempt status and hiking taxes on its endowment, and opened an investigation into whether it violated civil rights laws by discriminating against “white, Asian, male, or straight employees” or job or training program applicants.
Harvard has said its hiring and admissions are compliant with the law.
