The Trump administration announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard University after the institution rejected a list of demands from the government.
Harvard University filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Trump administration’s decision to freeze more than $2.2 billion in funding, calling it “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.”
The action by the administration follows Harvard’s “refusal to comply with its illegal demands,” Alan M Garber, the university’s president, said in a letter announcing the lawsuit.
“Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.” – President Alan Garber https://t.co/F65kW4GaL1
— Harvard University (@Harvard) April 21, 2025
The demands, in a letter earlier this month, included appointing “an external party” to oversee the reform of programs with “egregious records of antisemitism or other bias,” as well as “a comprehensive mask ban” on the campus in line with “student discipline reform and accountability.”
‘Intrusive Demands’
Garber said the government was doubling down on the letter’s “sweeping and intrusive demands, which would impose unprecedented and improper control over the University.”
He explained that the government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, “considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status.”
“These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world,” Garber stated.
In addition to the impact on research projects pertaining to certain medical conditions such as pediatric cancer and Parkinson’s disease, he said, the government “has cited the University’s response to antisemitism as a justification for its unlawful action.”
Antisemitism Concerns
“As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism,” he stated, adding that addressing it required “understanding, intention, and vigilance.”
“We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative,” Garber said.
The president noted that before “taking punitive action, the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism.”
“Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach,” he said.
Garber said the university will soon release the reports of the Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias and the Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias that he had established last year.
‘Gravy Train’ – White House
In response to the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Massachusetts, a White House spokesperson, Harrison Fields, reportedly said the “gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard … is coming to an end.”
“Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege,” he added.
According to a CNN report last week, the International Revenue Service was making plans “to rescind the tax-exempt status” of Harvard. Two sources were cited in the report as saying that a final decision was expected soon.
US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
Harvard is seeking in its lawsuit to, amongst others, to declare unlawful the government’s freeze on funding and “attendant unconstitutional conditions in the April 3 and April 11 Letters.”
Campus Protests
In 2024, protests led by students erupted at universities across the US against the government’s support for Israel in its ongoing genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip that has, to date, killed over 50,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children.
Eight Palestinians, including two women and two children, were killed, and others were injured, in an Israeli bombing of a house in the center of Khan Yunis city, in the southern Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/qxuJ0azkWV
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) April 22, 2025
Thousands were detained during the protests, which also called for universities to divest from Israel.
The US administration has begun clamping down on students involved in the campus protests. Among those detained is Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, who was involved in the protests at the university, which sparked protests at campuses elsewhere.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
The reality is that the Trump Administration by disappearing lawfully resident and present students of these universities on trumped-up charges (play on words intended) is acting as a terrorist entity; whereas students holding political opinions and universities hosting such, are acting lawfully. Harvard should show some guts for once and lay charges of state terrorism against the Trump administration.
“a comprehensive mask ban” on the campus — but allowing ICE thugs masks. Or, will ICE thugs must have to take off theirs? Appalling naked lawless grab at power.
Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee