The United States Department of Health and Human Services has cut $60 million in grants from Harvard University, adding to nearly $3 billion already frozen.
“HHS [Health and Human Services] is taking decisive action to uphold civil rights in higher education. Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination,” the department said.
“In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students,” the department said.
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The cut comes after a wave of federal research grant terminations at Harvard University took shape on Wednesday, in addition to a $450 million cut and a $2.2 billion freeze.
U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has also told the institution that the federal government would be barring Harvard University from acquiring new federal grants while the university continues to refuse to comply with the administration’s demands for change on its campus.
“Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination. This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it‘s not academic freedom; it‘s institutional disenfranchisement. There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support,” the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism said.
President Alan Garber wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon that they share the same “common ground,” but the university “will not surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear.”
Garber pushed back on the administration through a lawsuit in April. The institution argues that its constitutional rights had been violated by the government‘s threats to pull billions of dollars in funding if the school didn’t comply with demands for an overhaul.
Following the $450 million announced cuts, the university amended its lawsuit.
“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” the suit reads.
Due to the federal cuts, Harvard announced that it was committing $250 million of “central funding” to support research impacted by suspended and canceled federal grants.
