Harvard University has become the latest target in the Trump administration’s campaign to use federal grant money to reprove colleges it portrays as hotbeds of antisemitism.
The administration will conduct “a comprehensive review” of more than $255 million in current federal contracts with the university, along with $8.7 billion in grants spread over multiple years, according to an announcement issued jointly on Monday by three government agencies.
The announcement referred to a “similar ongoing review” of Columbia University, which was thrown into chaos earlier in March when the federal government canceled $400 million in grants, citing a pervasive antisemitic culture. Columbia agreed to a sweeping list of demands from the administration as a condition to negotiate for the return of the money.
Unlike Columbia, Harvard does not face the immediate cancellation of federal grants. The government provided few details about its review process, which will be conducted by the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, established by Trump shortly after taking office.
Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, pledged in a message to the campus community that the university would “engage” with the federal task force “to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.”
“If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research, and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” Garber wrote. “Much is at stake here.”
Harvard declined to answer other questions about the grant review.
The university was among 60 institutions that received letters earlier in March from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, warning of “potential enforcement actions” if they failed to protect Jewish students on campus.
Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, upbraided the institution in the announcement of the grant review. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” she said.
The Trump administration has threatened universities’ grants and contracts not only over allegations of antisemitism but also over transgender athletes’ participation in sports. The administration has paused $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania amid an investigation into its athletics policies. And it temporarily paused more than $100 million in funding to the University of Maine system after the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, said she would not observe the president’s executive order on transgender athletes, which does not carry the force of law.
