<p>Harvard University rejected several demands from the US President Donald Trump administration that it would effectively hand over the school to a conservative government as it views the institution as excessively left-leaning.</p> <p>According to Reuters, just hours after the school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took its stand, President Trump's administration announced a freeze on $2.3 billion in federal funding allocated to the university.</p> <p>This comes after the Trump administration froze $9 billion in federal contracts and grants to Harvard last month after a review. It was part of a crackdown on what it said was antisemitism that erupted on college campuses during pro-Palestinian protests in the past 18 months.</p> <p>On Monday, a Department of Education task force on combating antisemitism criticised the nation's oldest university, accusing it of exhibiting a "troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation's most prestigious universities and colleges - that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws."</p> <p>This confrontation escalates the high-stakes dispute between the Trump administration and some of the world’s richest universities. It has sparked concerns over freedom of speech and academic independence. The administration froze millions in federal funding to several universities in a move to pressure them to implement policy changes and claimed it is a failure to adequately address antisemitism on campus, as per the Reuters report.</p> <p>Deportation proceedings have been initiated against several detained foreign students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and visas for hundreds of other students have been revoked.</p> <p>Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a public letter that said that the Department of Education demands last week would allow the federal government to control Harvard and threaten the school’s "values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge."</p> <p>"No government - regardless of which party is in power - should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," Garber wrote, according to Reuters.</p> <p><strong>ALSO READ: <span style="color: #e03e2d;"><a style="color: #e03e2d;" href="https://ift.tt/UEMvP3X Korea Boosts Chips Support Package With $23.25 Billion Amid Global Uncertainty</a></span></strong></p> <p>The issue of antisemitism on campus surfaced before Donald Trump’s second term in office in the wake of pro-Palestinian student protests held at multiple universities last year. In 2023, demonstrations followed the Hamas attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli military response in Gaza.</p> <h3><strong>Harvard Files Suit</strong></h3> <p>On Friday, the Harvard faculty chapter of the American Association of University Professors, along with the national organisation, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. This was in response to a request from the professors for an immediate temporary restraining order to prevent the government from cutting off Harvard’s federal funding, CNN reported.</p> <p>The lawsuit argued that the cancellation of federal funding for Harvard "is imminent" and pointed to the Trump administration’s previous actions, such as cutting $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University, the first college to be targeted.</p> <p>“What the President of the United States is demanding of universities is nothing short of authoritarian,” Harvard Law School professor Nikolas Bowie said Monday told CNN.</p> <p>He further added that Trump was “violating the First Amendment rights of universities and faculty by demanding that if universities want to keep this money, they have to suppress our speech and change what we teach and how we study”.</p> <p> </p>
source https://news.abplive.com/news/world/harvard-university-rejects-us-president-donald-trump-demands-hit-by-2-3-billion-federal-funding-freeze-1765268
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