President Donald Trump’s administration has announced that it would undertake a “full examination” of federal contracts with Harvard University, as part of its repression against anti-Semitism in the United States.
But criticism fear that the prestigious University Ivy League is the last target of a purge of pro-Palestinian voice.
Monday, three departments under the control of Trump – the Ministry of Education, the General Services Administration and the Department of Health and Social Services – published a press release To say that $ 255.6 million in Harvard contracts and $ 8.7 billion in multi -year subsidies should rest under the microscope.
“Harvard has been a symbol of the American dream for generations,” said education secretary Linda McMahon in a statement.
“Harvard’s failure to protect students on the campus against anti -Semitic discrimination – while promoting division ideologies compared to a free survey – has put its reputation in serious danger.”
The announcement follows similar measures taken against another private campus of Ivy League, at Columbia University in New York, which saw millions of contracts revoked.
Ivy League – and Columbia in particular – were an epicenter of pro -Palestinian demonstrations in the United States, after Israel launched a war against Gaza in October 2023.
Student camps on the Columbia lawn in April and May 2024 inspired similar demonstrations across the country, while campus activists denounced school links with Israel and called for human rights violations in Gaza.
Human rights groups and United Nations experts accused Israel of using tactics in accordance with the genocide of the Palestinian territory.
The organizers behind campus demonstrators have largely rejected the charges of anti-Semitism, arguing that being criticizing the Israeli government is not the same as the spread of anti-Jewish hatred. They compared attempts to dirty their protests as a form of censorship, designed to alleviate freedom of expression.
But criticism accused the demonstrators of having created a dangerous learning environment. There were also isolated reports of anti-Jewish attacks, in particular the alleged assault of a Columbia student, 24, who hung pro-Israeli leaflets in October 2023.
However, the demonstrations were, overall, peaceful. And the freedom-free freedom experts denounced the Trump administration as accusations of non-semitism out of proportion in order to exercise control over major universities.
A list of requests
In the case of Columbia University, the Trump administration stripped the school of $ 400 million in subsidies and contracts on March 7, with immediate effect. He accused Columbia of having allowed “incessant violence, intimidation and anti -Semitic harassment” on his campus.
A week later, on March 13, the Trump administration published a list of requests that Colombia should comply with the $ 400 million.
They understood the ban on facial masks, the guarantee of the police could stop the “agitators” on the campus and the adoption of a controversial definition of anti -Semitism which could include the criticism of Israel.
The Trump administration also called the Middle East department, South Asian and African studies to be under the control of an external “creation”.
Critics have denounced measures as an attempt to corrode academic freedom. The foundation of individual rights and expression (fire) called on the administration’s decision “a plan to overeat the censorship of the campus”.
“The letter goes far beyond what is suitable for government to mandate and cool the discourse of the campus,” wrote the organization in a statement.
“Civil rights surveys should not be dealt with through the government’s ad hoc directives.”
But the United States has long been an ally of Israel since the country’s foundation, and the Trump administration has supported the Prime Minister of Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, even proposing that the United States “takes over” and “owned” Palestinian territory-transforming a “Middle East river”.
The criticisms said that Trump’s proposal was equivalent to an ethnic cleaning campaign against the Palestinians who call Gaza at home.
On March 22, Columbia University agreed to comply with most of Trump’s requests.
The Faculty of Law is expressed
The Trump administration presented these concessions as a victory in its press release announcing the examination of the federal contracts of Harvard.
He also said Harvard reported that he would cooperate with Trump’s priorities.
“We are happy that Harvard is willing to engage with us on these objectives,” said Sean Keveney of the Department of Health and Social Services in the press release.
But the announcement that Harvard was the next school to be distinguished comes an open letter from his law faculty, one of the oldest in the country.
More than 90 teachers have signed the document, which denounces the measures taken to “punish people for legally expressed questions of public concern”.
Although the letter does not mention Trump or the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, his publication comes after the students were arrested for expulsion following their activism.
However, the letter notes attempts to “threaten law firms and legal clinics” for their legal work or its previous government services – a reference to the actions that Trump has taken.
Trump, for example, published management orders which punished companies like Perkins Coie LLP of San Francisco, who represented his electoral rival Hillary Clinton of 2016, and he dismissed career prosecutors at the Ministry of Justice.
Harvard’s law professors warned that this violated constitutional law for freedom of expression – and created an atmosphere of fear.
“All that we could each think of a particular conduct in particular facts, we share the conviction that our Constitution, including their first amendment, was designed to make dissent and debate possible without fear of sanctions by the government,” said the letter.
“Neither a law school nor a company can function properly in the midst of such fear.”
However, the Trump administration has promised “rapid action” if Harvard did not comply with its requests.
“We mean business”, secretary McMahon poster on social networks.
