Seth McLaughlin | May 28, 2025
(The Washington Times) — President Trump’s push to cancel more, if not all, federal contracts with Harvard University has intensified his battle with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest institution of higher learning.
Harvard is questioning the administration’s logic.
In a matter of months, the Trump administration has frozen billions of federal grants to Harvard, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status and sought to stop the university from enrolling foreign students.
It cited concerns about antisemitism on campus and political bias and demanded more merit-based hiring and admissions policies aimed at boosting the American student population.
Harvard’s critics also question why the school needs federal funding when it has a $50 billion endowment.
Harvard President Alan Garber acknowledged Tuesday that the university has problems to address but said the administration’s steps are “perplexing.”
“Why cut off research funding?” Mr. Garber said on NPR’s “Morning Edition.” Sure, it hurts Harvard, he said, but it hurts the country because the research funding is not a gift to the school.
“The research funding is given to the university and other research institutions to carry out research work that the federal government designates as high-priority work,” Mr. Garber said. “It is work that they want done. … Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard, and it is hard to see the link between that and, say, antisemitism.”
A draft memo that surfaced Tuesday signaled that Harvard could lose an estimated $100 million more in federal grants.
In the letter, Josh Gruenbaum, the head of the Federal Acquisition Service, informs federal agencies that the General Services Administration would assist them in “a review for termination or transition of their federal contracts with Harvard University and affiliates.”
“GSA understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life,” Mr. Gruenbaum said. “GSA is also aware of recent events at Harvard University involving antisemitic action that suggests the institution has a disturbing lack of concern for the safety and well-being of Jewish students.
“Each agency should consider its contracts with Harvard University and determine whether Harvard and its services effectively promote the priorities of the agency. We recommend that your agency terminate for convenience each contract that it determines has failed to meet its standards and transition to a new vendor those contracts that could be better served by an alternative counterparty.”
Federal agencies are instructed to submit a list of terminated contracts by June 6.
For years, Republicans have insisted that elite colleges and universities have become twisted bastions of liberal orthodoxy that shut out the conservative perspective.
Mr. Trump took that to heart and leveled stiff criticism at universities for pro-Palestinian demonstrations over the war in the Gaza Strip. The protests included antisemitic and anti-Israel elements.
At an encampment in Harvard Yard, protesters demanded that the university cut ties with Israel and companies they viewed as complicit in the “genocide.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in grants and contracts after Harvard refused to bow to demands that it change its hiring and admissions policies.
More recently, the White House accused the university of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.
The Department of Homeland Security told Harvard last week that it could no longer enroll international students. The agency said the thousands of current students must transfer to other institutions or leave the country.
“We are still waiting for the foreign student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of billions of dollars, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our country,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Garber insisted that Harvard had “provided ample information in line with the law.”
In a social media post over the weekend, Mr. Trump threatened to strip federal grants from Harvard and shift that money to trade schools.
Harvard has denied any wrongdoing and is fighting the administration’s push to freeze federal funds and revoke the university’s ability to host international students.
Harvard argued in court documents that the university’s “students, faculty, and researchers have helped identify and solve some of society’s most pressing problems.”
“Federal funding has enabled researchers at Harvard to develop novel drugs to fight Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, engineer nanofibers to protect servicemembers and first responders, support American astronauts in space, and design an artificial intelligence system that can be used to diagnose and treat cancer,” it said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Garber said he didn’t know the motivations behind the Trump administration’s moves, but “there are people who are fighting a cultural battle.”
“They don’t like what is happening on campuses, and sometimes they don’t like what we represent,” Mr. Garber said.
He noted that the university’s large international student population is an integral part of ensuring diverse views on campus.
“There is so much they contribute to our environment, and they enable everyone else to open their minds,” Mr. Garber said.
He also questioned Mr. Trump’s flirtation with shifting money away from Harvard and toward trade schools.
“The money that goes to research universities in the form of grants and contracts, which is almost all of the federal support we get, is used to pay for work that we perform at the behest of the government,” he said. “The real question is how much value does the federal government get from its expenditures on research?”
