Harvard Refuses to Comply With Trump’s Antisemitism Measures and Gets Hit With $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze

Harvard refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to change its governance structure to stop antisemitism on campus.

The Trump administration has been conducting probes at elite universities over their handling of antisemitism on their campuses. It has already reduced some of its funding for schools like Princeton, where students participated in protests last year.

College campuses and most especially the Ivies have become hotbeds of radicalism – terrorist hatcheries.

Trump suggests Harvard lose its tax exempt status as university rejects administration's demands https://t.co/Vd7KLdkHe7

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) April 15, 2025

Harvard student activist Shabbos Kestenbaum explains:

Eight quick and easy points:

1. This entire showdown boils down to Harvard insisting on violating civil rights law and the Trump administration refusing to allow Americans to fund said violations of civil rights law anymore.

2. The federal government withheld funds to racist schools that refused to integrate. The federal government withheld funds to sexist schools that refused to combat sexual assault. Stop pretending this is somehow an unprecedented threat on higher education and instead recognize these campuses have egregiously violated the rights of Jewish American students.

3. Harvard has no rights under the constitution to federal funds. Harvard students have a right under the constitution not to be discriminated against. Harvard is insisting on the first point but not the second.

4. If Harvard doesn’t want the federal government to have a say in their education, then they can choose at literally any point in time to stop taking 9 billion dollars in American taxpayer money.

5. Harvard is neither brave nor principled for refusing to comply, they’re elites who’ve been paying less in taxes for decades than school teachers and firemen. They expect you to keep subsidizing their classes, classes that have consistently been proven to teach kids to hate America and discriminate against Jews, Asians, and Whites.

6. Harvard wrote the federal government can’t tell them who to “admit and hire.” They literally can. It’s called the Civil Rights Act. It’s truly remarkable to see that even after a year and a half, Harvard is still run by some of the lowest IQ lawyers at WilmerHale who don’t even bother to read their statements aloud anymore.

7. Jewish American students should not be facing discrimination in class. Due to their university refusing to fix that problem, there is no other solution than for the federal government to intervene.

8. The federal government forcing Harvard to comply with the constitution or lose funding is a damning indictment on how unaccountable and reckless American colleges have become, all the while amassing billions in tax breaks.

Just The News: Harvard President Alan Garber told the university in an email that it has received an updated list of demands from the current administration, which includes reforming its acceptance of international students who are “hostile to the American values and institutions.”

“It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” Garber said. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”

Another demand was allowing the government to audit programs offered at the school “that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”

Garber claimed that the demands were “unprecedented” and were a federal overreach because the government was trying to control the school. He added that the university has formally rejected the demands through legal counsel.

Harvard rejects Trump demands, gets hit by $2.3 billion funding freeze

By Brad Brooks and Ismail Shakil, Reuters, April 15, 2025:

Department of Education freezes funding, citing civil rights
Harvard says federal demands violate academic freedom
Some Harvard professors already sued Trump administration

April 14 (Reuters) – Harvard on Monday rejected numerous demands from the Trump administration that it said would cede control of the school to a conservative government that portrays universities as dangerously leftist.

Within hours of Harvard taking its stand, the administration of President Donald Trump announced it was freezing $2.3 billion in federal funding to the school.

The funding freeze comes after the Trump administration said last month it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard as part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.

On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism accused America’s oldest university of having a “troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”