Beril Canakci
May 14, 2025•Update: May 14, 2025
ISTANBUL
The Trump administration is revoking another $450 million in federal grants to Harvard University, claiming the Ivy League school has a “long-standing policy and practice of discriminating on the basis of race” and has failed to curb antisemitism on campus.
The decision comes as part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and crack down on pro-Palestinian voices on US campuses, including by seeking to deport foreign students who have only expressed their views on the issue peacefully. Harvard was among the first universities to openly resist federal demands to roll back DEI initiatives and restrict student demonstrations.
The decision to cut more funds, announced Tuesday by the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, brings the total amount of federal funding withheld from Harvard in recent weeks to nearly $2.7 billion.
The task force accused Harvard of fostering a hostile environment for Jewish students, referencing recent findings by the university’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.
The statement described a pattern of “pervasive insults, physical assault, and intimidation” directed at Jewish students, with little intervention from university leadership.
However, some advocates for Palestine say some of the allegations are meant to paint all criticism of Israel as “antisemitic,” even though many Jews in both Israel and the US publicly challenge Israel’s oppressive and genocidal policies against Palestinians.
The university has not immediately responded to the latest funding cuts.
The conflict began after Harvard publicly released an April 11 letter from the administration’s antisemitism task force, which called for federal oversight of the university’s admissions, faculty hiring and campus policies.
Harvard refused to comply and later sued the administration, arguing the government was using the threat of withholding federal funding to take control of its academic decisions.
Several US universities have followed Harvard’s lead in challenging the Trump administration’s threats to cut funding if they do not end programs the administration has criticized, saying the threats are an illicit effort to violate the universities’ academic independence.
