Government escalates row with university over demands to curb pro-Palestine student activism and change racial diversity policies.
The administration of US President Donald Trump will move to sever remaining federal contracts with Harvard University, escalating a row centred on issues such as pro-Palestine student activism and racial diversity.
The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday that a draft letter from the General Services Administration (GSA) instructs all federal agencies to review and possibly cancel existing contracts with Harvard, worth an estimated $100m.
A copy of the draft letter shared by the Times states that Harvard has continued to engage in “race discrimination, including in its admissions process” and that the university’s failure to halt alleged acts of anti-Semitism suggests a “disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students”.
The move would be the latest effort by the government to use federal funds to force universities to accept changes sought by the Trump administration, including greater control over curricula, harsher steps against pro-Palestine students, and an end to policies that encourage racial diversity and greater opportunities for racial minorities.
The Trump administration has portrayed efforts to encourage greater racial diversity at US universities as a form of discrimination that prioritises racial identity over merit. Supporters say that such efforts, such as using race as one factor of many in admissions decisions, are necessary to remedy long histories of racist discrimination and exclusion in US higher education.
“GSA understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life,” the letter reads.
The administration has also taken an aggressive stance on pro-Palestine activism on university campuses, which erupted after the beginning of Israel’s most recent war in Gaza in October 2023.
Critics have portrayed those steps as part of a larger assault on US universities, which Trump has depicted as hotbeds of political dissent and radical ideas at odds with the goals of his administration.
“The Trump administration has gone after Harvard because of the pro-Palestinian protests, and also has made a list of demands that goes far beyond any of that,” Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located.
“It wants detailed information on foreign students that Harvard is refusing to give. It wants basically a political audit to see where people’s ideologies are. So Harvard University has sued in court to stop many of these moves, and this will undoubtedly be the next one that goes before a judge.”
In March, the GSA and the Departments of Education (DOE) and Health and Human Services (HHS) announced an official review of $255.6m in Harvard contracts and $8.7bn in multi-year grants, stating that the review was part of an effort to combat alleged anti-Semitism on college campuses.
The administration also cut $400m in grants to Columbia University in New York City in March, despite a series of concessions to government demands.
The administration has said that campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and the US provision of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel are driven by anti-Semitism and create an unsafe environment for Jewish students on campus.
Several international students have been arrested and detained by the administration for their involvement in pro-Palestine activism, including a Turkish international student named Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University, who was arrested on the street by federal agents for co-signing an op-ed calling for an end to the war.
Trump has consistently threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and moved last week to block the university’s ability to accept international students, who currently make up about 27 percent of the university’s total enrolment.
A judge blocked that effort, which Harvard had called an act of retaliation for “our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body”.
