Trump calls Harvard ‘a joke’, says university should be stripped of funds
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The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 16.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump called Harvard a “joke” on April 16 and said it should lose its government research contracts after the top university refused demands
The Trump administration had also formally asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke the famed seat of learning’s tax-exempt status, US media reported, just a day after the President first made the threat.
“Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges,” Mr Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”
Mr Trump is furious with the storied university
Other institutions, including Columbia University, have bowed to less far-ranging demands
Harvard flatly rejected the pressure, with its president, Dr Alan Garber, saying this week that the university refuses to “negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights”.
Mr Trump on April 14 ordered the freezing of US$2.2 billion (S$2.89 billion) in federal funding to Harvard, a global research powerhouse.
He also said on April 15 that Harvard “should lose its Tax Exempt Status” as a non-profit educational institution if it did not back down.
CNN and The Washington Post reported that same day that the IRS tax bureau was now making plans to do so following a request from Mr Trump.
The Republican’s war against the intellectual elite
Demonstrating the broadening resonance of the row, Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr spoke out in support of Harvard after his team defeated the Memphis Grizzlies in the National Basketball Association.
Mr Kerr, sporting a Harvard T-shirt, called the demands on the university the “dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”.
“I believe in academic freedom and I think it’s crucial for all of our institutions to be able to handle their own business the way they want to, and they should not be shaken down and told what to teach and what to say by our government,” he said.
Government seeks control
The payments frozen to Harvard are for government contracts with its leading research programmes, mostly in the medical fields, where the school’s laboratories are critical players in the development of new medicines and treatments.
Mr Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programmes aimed at encouraging minorities.
The anti-Semitism allegations are based on controversy over protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses
Columbia University in New York – an epicentre of the protests – stood down in March and agreed to oversight of its Middle Eastern studies department after being threatened with a loss of US$400 million in federal funds.
The claims about diversity tap longstanding conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and giving preference to Black and other minority groups over whites.
In the case of Harvard, the White House is seeking unprecedented levels of government control over the inner workings of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university – and one of the most respected educational and research institutions in the world.
In a letter sent to Harvard, the administration’s demands included:
- Ending admissions that take into account the student’s race or national origins
- Preventing admission of foreign students “hostile to the American values and institutions”
- Ending staff hiring based on race, religion, sex or national origin
- Reducing power of students in campus governance
- Auditing students and staff for “viewpoint diversity”
- Reforming entire programmes for “egregious records of anti-Semitism or other bias”
- Cracking down on campus protests. AFP
