Harvard University sued several United States agencies and top officials for freezing billions of dollars in federal funding, significantly intensifying a high-stakes showdown with the President Donald Trump-led administration.
LEADERSHIP recalls that the Trump administration accused the nation’s oldest and richest university of failing to combat anti-semitism on campus.
Trump escalated his fight with Harvard after the school refused to bow to his administration’s demands.
Since threatening its funding, Trump suggested that the Internal Revenue Service should tax the university as a “political entity.”
Senior administration officials, including Vice President James D. Vance have criticised tax breaks given to the school’s $53 billion endowment.
The government suspended Harvard’s funding after it refused to comply with “unconstitutional demands” to overhaul governance, discipline and hiring policies, as well as diversity programmes, lawyers for the university argued in a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Massachusetts.
“Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands,” the university’s president, Alan Garber, said.
“We filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.”
In his statement on the university’s website, Garber cited the Trump administration’s pause on $2.2 billion in federal funding, threats to block an additional $1.1 billion in grants, a crackdown on foreign students, and the possible revocation of Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The administration is pushing for sweeping changes at the most elite US universities and has frozen or is reviewing federal funding to Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern, and Columbia universities.
On April 14, the government halted $2.2 billion of multi-year grants to Harvard, claiming the school failed to enforce civil rights laws to protect Jewish students.
Harvard’s lawsuit claimed that the funding freeze violated its First Amendment guarantee of free speech and the Administrative Procedures Act.
It asked a judge to block the US from freezing the funding and declare the government’s actions unconstitutional.
“The government has not, and cannot, identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation,” the lawsuit claimed.
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