Attorneys for Harvard are suing the Trump administration to demand access to $2.2. billion in grants that were frozen when the Ivy League school refused to comply with a lengthy list of demands from the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Those demands, referred to as “reforms” in the five-page letter, include big, detailed changes to the campus such as screening prospective international students for anti-American views; adopt a hiring and promotion policy for faculty and staff that is not based on a person’s race or sex; and end all DEI-related programs, offices, and initiatives on campus.
The letter also addresses anti-Israel protests on the school campus by demanding better disciplinary penalties for students who disrupt the campus and violate its rules, and for student groups that allow criminal activity, violence, and harassment.
The letter only uses the words “Jewish” and “antisemitism” once, but much of the letter is directed at a campus that allowed its Jewish students to be harassed and bullied by faculty and fellow students. Only a few students were punished for that conduct, the letter states, and they were later rewarded with lighter punishments by Harvard after time went on.
Many of those incidents were described in detail in another related letter, sent to Harvard in June, from a federal antisemitism task force. Citing protests that called for genocide and blocked Jews from campus spaces, that investigation concluded Harvard was in “violent violation” of the U.S. Civil Rights Act.
Harvard engaged in “racial hierarchies” in which antisemitism “festered” because some students are viewed as “oppressed,” the task force concluded.
Back in April, faced with making big reforms, Harvard President Alan Garber vowed the university "will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights."
He also stated no political party “will dictate” what is taught and who can be hired at Harvard, but the private school is also in court demanding access to billions in federal grants and another $60 million in contracts.
Harvard is currently sitting on an endowment fund of $53.2 billion, the largest endowment in higher education in the world, which is managed by Harvard Management Company, Inc.
Masha Merkulova, a Jewish activist, leads a teen-centered Zionist organization named Club Z. She questions why Harvard needs taxpayers’ money with an endowment that large.
“If they do require government assistance, then they need to follow the rules just like the rest of us,” she tells AFN. “So they need to clean house. Get rid of the Jew haters, the haters of America."
During a court hearing this week over Harvard’s lawsuit, the federal judge suggested the Trump administration was making “ad-hoc” decisions to cancel Harvard’s research grants. Those grants are not antisemitic, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said.
“Harvard claims the government is anti-Harvard. I reject that,” Michael Velchi, a Trump administration attorney, replied. “The government is pro-Jewish students at Harvard. The government is pro-Jewish faculty at Harvard.”
