The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure the Ivy League school into policy changes.
In a post on X on Monday, HHS said the decision to revoke multiple multi-year grants stems from the university’s “continued failure to address anti-Semitic harassment and race discrimination.”
“In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus,” the post reads. “Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students.”
HHS responded to a request for comment by referring to a report by The Daily Caller, which stated that the cancellation was for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-related funding.
Harvard did not respond to a request for comment. Harvard President Alan Garber maintained that the university has “devoted considerable effort” to address anti-Semitism on campus since the Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s response in Gaza, which triggered a wave of protests across the United States.
The HHS announcement follows two much larger cuts by the Trump administration and brings the total amount of canceled or frozen federal funding at Harvard to more than $2.7 billion over the past two months. The administration is also seeking to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
The escalating tensions between Harvard and the Trump administration initially centered around campus anti-Semitism but have since broadened to include issues such as ideological bias and Harvard’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, which the administration says run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.
In a letter dated April 11, the administration accused Harvard of failing “to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” The letter outlined sweeping demands, including shutting down all DEI offices, overhauling the international admissions process to screen out applicants deemed “hostile to American values” or “supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” and commissioning an external audit of faculty, students, and leadership to assess “viewpoint diversity.”
The administration also called for an audit of specific programs—most notably the Center for Middle Eastern Studies—that allegedly “fuel anti-Semitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” The audit would need to identify any faculty who had “discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students” or “incited students to violate Harvard’s rules” in campus protests.
On April 16, Harvard publicized both the administration’s letter and Garber’s response, in which he categorically rejected the proposed conditions, stating that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
On April 14, the administration announced it was freezing $2.2 billion in multi-year federal grants to Harvard.
On May 13, the administration said it would revoke an additional $450 million in federal grants to Harvard, citing the university’s failure “to confront the pervasive race discrimination and anti-Semitic harassment plaguing its campus.” The decision was also linked to accusations that the Harvard Law Review, a student-run publication, discriminated against white applicants in its selections of articles and editorial members.
Harvard has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the funding freeze, asking the court to halt and declare unlawful the $2.2 billion suspension as well as any future freezes imposed based on what it describes as “unconstitutional conditions.”
Bill Pan
Reporter
Bill Pan is an Epoch Times reporter covering education issues and New York news.
