Harvard's scramble of $ 9 billion to prevent the next columbia

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Douglas Belkin, The Wall Street Journal 4 min Read 02 Apr 2025, 07:17 PM IST The Trump administration targeted Harvard University with an overview of $ 9 billion to federal grants and contracts. Summary The President of Ivy League School, Alan Garber, made a spate of moves before Trump opened a federal funding review. Harvard president Alan Garber has been trying to stop his school from becoming the next Columbia over the past few weeks. While watching Trump federal funds from the Ivy League counterpart of his school draws out of the concerns about anti-Semitism, and makes far-reaching demands, Garber made a flurry of his own movements. The school rejected leaders in the controversial Center for Middle Eastern Studies, strengthened the guidelines for intellectual diversity on programs and averted a partnership with a university in the West Bank. Nevertheless, Harvard is now in the hot seat. On Monday, the White House targeted the university with a $ 9 billion review of federal funds as part of Trump’s rapidly rising campaign against what it considers as leftist ideology and anti -Semitism on campuses. This effort kicked in a higher gear. The University of Princeton said on Tuesday that the Trump administration suspends a few dozen research grants. Princeton president Chris Eisgruber told students and staff in a post that “the full rationale for this action is not yet clear.” In a recent setup of the Atlantic Magazine, Eisgruber described the Trump administration’s “Attack on Columbia University” as “the greatest threat to American universities since the red scare of the 1950s.” An official of the White House called the Princeton measure a proactive break in the financing, pending an investigation into alleged anti -Semitism. In March, Princeton was among 60 colleges and universities. The education department said he would investigate similar allegations. Last month, Trump Columbia exhibition A. He drew $ 400 million to federal grants and contracts from the school and then made claims as a prerequisite to start talking about the repair of the money. Columbia largely agreed, but then provoked the Trump administration when his interim president Katrina Armstrong played the changes in faculty meetings. She retired as president shortly thereafter. Garber adopted Harvard’s presidency after his predecessor, Claudine Gay, was pushed out. Gay had criticized her handling of pro-Palestinian protests on campus, including a letter signed by student groups calling Israel “completely responsible” for the October 7 Hamas attacks. Jewish students and faculties argued that anti-ionism in anti-Semitism was methastasized on campus, and that a fear of a challenging progressive orthodoxy impeded a discussion. Garber has announced a task force that addresses anti-Semitism, and another combat of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. The Trump administration’s contempt for many elite institutions extends beyond the protests to the view that universities are suppressing conservative ideas. During a 2021 speech on the National Conservatic Conference, Vice President JD Vance, who was not in public office at the time, said: “I think if anyone of us wants to do the things we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we must honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” Meanwhile, the public mood for elite universities with great endowments – Harvard’s north of $ 50 billion – is acidic. Garber has removed statements for diversity, fairness and inclusion for the rental of faculties and launched a program for intellectual vitality, which aims to expand an open dialogue. The progress of changing culture will be measured in years, not months, the organizers say. After Trump’s election, Garber Harvard needed to move faster. On the inauguration day, the university announced the settlement of two lawsuits accusing it of tolerating anti -Semitism. But in March, Trump Harvard named among ten schools that would be investigated by a newly created government task force over anti -Semitism. Within days, the school forced the leadership in its Center for Middle Eastern studies. Former Harvard President Larry Summers on X accused the center of not properly representing the Israeli perspective in Israeli Palestinian conflict. Last week, Harvard’s Divinity School, which also criticized Israeli Palestinian programming, announced a restructuring after leadership defense in January. The same week, Harvard’s School of Public Health leaves his partnership with a controversial West Bank School, Birzeit University, Lapse. Conservative lawmakers wrote Garber last year in which he calls Harvard’s relationship with the school ‘extremely worrying’, citing Birzeit’s support for the government for Hamas. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the Harvard Th Chan School of Public Health, wrote to the community in which they set out new judgments of faculty and programs to ensure rigor and quality, while also focusing on building a pluralistic culture that is accountable to our values. ” The effect, says some faculties at the school, will be to teach professors what they regard as biased perspectives of Israeli Palestinian conflict. Many Harvard professors call on Garber to resist what they consider to be political attacks at American universities. In a letter to the school’s management council, they say “bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association and investigation”, are at stake. “I think (Garber) is hollowing out, and every person on the faculty I talked to me thinks the same,” said Ryan Enos, a political scientist at Harvard who helped set up the letter. “I don’t think a serious person believes that the Trump administration actually cares about anti -Semitism.” After the Trump administration announced a review of Harvard’s federal funding, Garber took a considered approach in a letter to the school community on Monday. He hit a personal note when he conveyed the importance of anti -Semitism. “I experienced anti -Semitism directly, even if he served as president,” he wrote, “and I know how harmful it can be for a student who comes to learn and make friends at a university or university.” Garber also emphasizes the interests. Harvard’s federal grants and contracts are distributed among the school and subsidiaries, including hospitals in Boston area. The cutting of federal funds, he wrote, would stop “life -saving research and improve important scientific research and innovation.” Catch all the education news and updates on live currency. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates and live business news. More Topics #education Mint Specials