Trump threatens to steer Harvard grant money to trade schools
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Administration officials have demanded more oversight of foreign students, including the names of those attending Harvard.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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US President Donald Trump on May 26 threatened to divert billions in grant dollars away from Harvard University and give those funds to trade schools across the US, escalating his clash with the elite institution.
“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Mr Trump said in a post on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”
The Trump administration has already moved to freeze grant funding and block Harvard’s ability to enrol international students in an intensifying battle over what the president has cast as a failure by the Ivy League university and others to crack down on antisemitism.
The Trump administration has been using that rationale to pressure schools such as Harvard to institute wide policy changes that university officials say infringe on free speech and their academic missions. Harvard has been front and centre in Mr Trump’s campaign, with the administration already suspending more than US$2.6 billion (S$3.3 billion) in federal research grants.
The government has also moved to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, but the school won a temporary court order blocking the government from enforcing that ban.
Administration officials have demanded more oversight of foreign students,
Harvard still hasn’t turned over foreign student lists, with Mr Trump calling the university “very slow in the presentation of these documents”. The information is needed, Mr Trump said in a second post on May 26, the Memorial Day holiday, to determine “how many radicalised lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country”.
Mr Trump has claimed that nearly 31 per cent of Harvard students are foreign, questioning why the US should effectively contribute to their education when their home countries do not.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also has said the school refuses to turn over documentation about students at the government’s request. BLOOMBERG
