WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated its ongoing battle with Harvard, threatening to revoke the university’s ability to host international students as the president called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The Department of Homeland Security ordered Harvard late Tuesday to turn over “detailed records” of its foreign student visa holders’ “illegal and violent activities” by April 30. International students make up 27% of the campus.
The department also said it was canceling two grants to the school totaling $2.7 million.
The moves deepen the crackdown on Harvard, which on Monday became the first university to openly defy the administration’s demands related to activism on campus, antisemitism and diversity. The federal government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the Ivy League institution.
Trump suggested Tuesday on social media that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”
The hold on federal money for research at Harvard marked the seventh time the administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges. The government is attempting to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda at schools he accuses of pushing “woke” policies and allowing antisemitism to fester.
In a letter to Harvard on Friday, Trump’s administration called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, plus changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded that the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.
Harvard President Alan Garber said Monday that the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Later that day, the White House announced the freeze of more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts.
Conservative strategist Christopher Rufo said the government should respond to Harvard’s defiance by cutting all federal money and stripping nonprofit status at Harvard and other Ivies that defy federal orders. Rufo urged the government to use the same tools it used during the Civil Rights Movement to force desegregation.
“Trump needs to follow through on his threat to defund one of the Ivy League universities,” Rufo said on social media Tuesday. “Cut the funding and watch the university implode.”
Rufo said Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian American students, citing events such as graduation celebrations specific to certain ethnic groups, along with a 2021 theater performance exclusively “for Black-identifying audience members.”
For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.
Trump’s campaign started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration but took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”
Trump has targeted schools accused of tolerating antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses. Some of the government’s demands touch directly on that activism, calling on Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”
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