The president of the United States, Donald Trump, intensified his battle with the elite universities threatening to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption status and demanding an apology for alleged anti -Semitism linked to primestine protests. | Photo credit: Faith Ninivagi/Reuters
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened to strip Harvard of his fiscal experience status on Tuesday and said the university should apologize, one day after he rejected what he called illegal demands to review academic programs or lose federal subsidies.
Starting with Columbia University, the Trump Administration has rebuked universities throughout the country for its management of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that discarded campus last year after the attacks led by Hamas 2023 within Israel.
Trump has called anti -American and anti -Semitic protests, universities accused of selling Marxism and “left radical” ideology, and promised to end federal subsidies and contracts to universities that do not agree with the demands of their administration.
Trump said in a publication on social networks on Tuesday that he was reflecting on Harvard’s tax exemption status if he continued to push what he called “political, ideological and terrorist diseases inspired/supported.” “
Hey, don’t say how I would do this. According to the United States Tax Code, most universities are exempt from the Federal Income Tax because it is considered “exclusive operated” for public educational purposes.
White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists that Trump wanted to see Harvard apologize for what he called “anti -Semitism that took place on his university campus against American Jewish students.”
He accused Harvard and other rape schools for Title VI of the Civil Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination by the beneficiaries of federal funds based on the breed or national origin.
According to Title VI, federal funds can be completed only after a research process and length hearings and a 30 -day notification to Congress, which has not happened in Columbia or Harvard.
Some teachers and students have said that protests are being unfairly combined with anti -Semitism as a pretext for a non -stituing attack on academic freedoms.
Columbia, a private school in New York City, agreed to negotiations on demands to adjust its protest rules after the Trump administration said last month that it had finished subsidies and contracts worth $ 400 million, mainly for medical and scientific investigations.
The president of Harvard, Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday said that he demands that the Trump administration made of the University of Massachusetts, including an audit to guarantee the “diversity of point of view” of its students and teachers and the end of the programs of diversity, equity and inclusion, the free constitutional expression and the act of civil rights are promoted.
Like Columbia, he said that Harvard had worked to fight semitism and other prejudices on his campus while preserving academic freedoms and the right to protest.
Hours after Garber’s letter, the Joint Task Force of the Trump administration to combat anti -Semitism said it was freezing more than $ 2 billion in contracts and subsidies to Harvard, the oldest and most rich university in the country. The administration did not answer the questions about what subsidies and contracts had a leg cut, and Harvard did not answer a request for comments.
Some professors of Columbia have sued the Trump administration, saying that subsidy terminations violated title VI and their constitutional discourse and the rights of due process. A federal judge in New York ordered the Trump administration to respond before May 1.
After reading the letter from Harvard president, the interim president of Columbia, Claire Shipman, said in a statement on Monday night that Columbia will continue with what he considered “discussions of good faith” and “constructive dialogue” with the strength of the Department of Justice.
“We would be rejected anyway in which the government dictates what we teach, investigate or with whom we hire,” he wrote.
On Monday, a group of American universities, including Princeton and the University of Illinois, settled the Department of Energy on the steep cuts to the financing of federal research in areas such as advanced nuclear technology, cyber security and novel radioactive drugs.
Trump, who assumed the position on January 20, faces judicial challenges to their immigration and setback policies of state general prosecutors who try to block their dismissal of government workers and the suspension of billion dollars, loans and financial support.
Posted on April 16, 2025