The Trump administration referred to as on Harvard College to apologize Tuesday and questioned the aim of federal funding after it froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants to the college on Monday.
White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt framed the administration’s motion as an effort to curb antisemitism on faculty campuses. However the administration can be demanding the college get rid of its variety, fairness and inclusion packages, ban masks at campus protests, and guarantee merit-based hiring practices.
Pressed on President Donald Trump’s threat earlier Tuesday to tax Harvard as a political entity and take away its tax-exempt standing, Leavitt deferred inquiries to the Inner Income Service. However she mentioned broadly that the college wanted to apologize.
Trump, Leavitt mentioned, “needs to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard ought to apologize for the egregious antisemitism that passed off on their faculty campus towards Jewish American college students.”
Leavitt pointed to remarks throughout a congressional listening to from the college’s former president, Claudine Homosexual, who mentioned calling for the genocide of Jews “can” violate Harvard’s guidelines of bullying and harassment “relying on the context.” Homosexual has apologized for the remarks.
Leavitt additionally pointed to what she described as Harvard’s failure to self-discipline college students concerned in an encampment on campus and the disruption of courses. “The president believes Harvard ought to apologize to its Jewish American college students for permitting such egregious conduct,” Leavitt mentioned.
She additionally reiterated questions on the way forward for the college’s federal funding, a combat the Trump administration clearly believes is a profitable political difficulty.
“I believe the president can be begging a superb query: greater than $2 billion out the door to Harvard once they have a greater than $50 billion endowment — why are the American taxpayers subsidizing a college that has billions of {dollars} within the financial institution already? And we actually shouldn’t be funding a spot the place such grave antisemitism exists,” she mentioned.
Learn extra in regards to the Harvard funding freeze within the video beneath:
