A draft letter from the General Services Administration (GSA) instructs all federal agencies to review and possibly terminate existing contracts with Harvard, which are estimated to be worth $100 million, according to the New York Times and Reuters news agencies.
According to a draft letter shared by the Times, Harvard has continued to practice “race discrimination, including in its admissions process,” and that failing to put an end to alleged anti-Semitism suggests a “disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students.”
The government’s latest attempt would be to use federal funds to compel universities to accept changes demanded by the Trump administration, including stricter sanctions against pro-Palestine students, stricter curricula, and ending policies that promote racial diversity and better opportunities for racial minorities.
The Trump administration has portrayed efforts to promote greater racial diversity in US universities as discriminatory practices that place racial identity preceding merit. Supporters contend that efforts like utilizing race as one of many factors in admissions decisions are required to end decades of racism and exclusion in US higher education.
The letter states that “GSA understands that Harvard continues to practice race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life.”
The administration has also taken a bold stance on pro-Palestine activism on university campuses, which exploded after Israel’s most recent conflict in Gaza in October 2023.
Those actions are seen by critics as part of a larger assault on US universities, which Trump has portrayed as a haven for radical ideas and political discord in opposition to his administration’s objectives.
According to Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane from Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Trump administration has pursued Harvard in response to the pro-Palestinian protests, as well as making a list of demands that go far beyond that.
It requests detailed information about foreign students, which Harvard is ostensibly refusing to provide. It wants to examine people’s ideologies in general through a political audit. Thus, Harvard University has filed a lawsuit in court to stop a number of these actions, and a judge will undoubtedly hear from you as well.
A formal review of $255.6 million in Harvard contracts and $ 8.7 billion in multi-year grants was announced by the GSA, the Department of Education (DOE), and Health and Human Services (HHS), as part of a campaign to combat alleged anti-Semitism on college campuses.
Despite making a number of concessions to government demands, the administration also cut $400 million in grants to Columbia University in New York City in March.
According to the administration, anti-Semitism is the cause of campus protests against Israel’s occupation of Gaza and US military supply to Israel, which creates an unsafe environment for Jewish students.
A Turkish international student named Rumeysa Ozturk from Tufts University was detained by federal agents after co-signing an op-ed calling for the end of the war, along with other international students.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and he recently made a move to curtail the university’s ability to accept international students, who currently account for about 27 percent of the total enrollment at the university.
A judge thwarted the effort, which Harvard had described as “an act of retaliation for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s unlawful assertions of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body.”
Source: Aljazeera
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