Trump Admin Terminates $60 Million in Harvard Grants: What To Know
By Khaleda Rahman
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has said it is terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, saying that the institution failed to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination on campus.
"HHS is taking decisive action to uphold civil rights in higher education. Due to Harvard University's continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards—totaling approximately $60 million over their full duration," HHS said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday.
"In the Trump Administration, discrimination will not be tolerated on campus. Federal funds must support institutions that protect all students."
Newsweek has contacted Harvard and HHS for comment via emails sent outside regular business hours.
A person runs past Dunster House
Harvard University in March this year. The Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that it was terminating $60 million in federal grants to the university. Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Why It Matters
Harvard has faced sanctions from the Trump administration after becoming the first U.S. university to openly defy demands to limit pro-Palestinian activism and end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices.
The administration has already frozen or canceled federal grants and contracts for Harvard worth almost $3 billion in recent months. President Donald Trump is pushing to strip the school of its tax-exempt status, while the Department of Homeland Security has threatened to revoke the school's eligibility to host foreign students.
The university filed a lawsuit in April to block the cuts, alleging the Trump administration's actions were unconstitutional and a threat to academic freedom.
What To Know
The reason for the termination of the grants was detailed in a May 19 letter to Harvard from Jamie Legier, the director of the Office of Grants Services at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to The Daily Caller.
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It cited the findings of a Harvard task force report on campus antisemitism, which was commissioned alongside a report on anti-Arab bias in the aftermath of pro-Palestinian protests that took place at Harvard and other universities last year against Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza.
The report said Israeli and Jewish students "faced bias, suspicion, intimidation, alienation, shunning, contempt, and sometimes effective exclusion from various curricular and co-curricular parts of the University and its community—clear examples of antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias."
Grants "should only support institutions that comply with principles and laws of nondiscrimination," Legier wrote in the letter, according to the Daily Caller.
Harvard is now moving to self-fund research to compensate for at least some of the money lost to the federal funding cuts.
Harvard President Alan Garber and Harvard Provost John Manning said in a message last week that the university will redirect $250 million for the coming year to support research affected by the recent freezes and cancellations.
But they said Harvard could not "absorb the entire cost of the suspended or canceled federal funds."
Harvard has a $53 billion endowment—the largest in the nation—but there are restrictions on how the university can spend the funds.
"Nonprofit endowments are not savings accounts or rainy day funds," Liz Clark, vice president of policy and research for the National Association of College and University Business Officers, previously told Newsweek. "They are very different, and they are unique strategic finance tools. Endowments are managed in a way that those organizations can rely on them for support in the here-and-now, but also far into the foreseeable future."
What People Are Saying
Harvard President Alan Garber and Harvard Provost John Manning said in a message on May 14: "We will continue to fight the unlawful freeze and termination of our federal grants and to advocate for the productive partnership between the federal government and research universities that has for more than eighty years resulted in pathbreaking scientific discoveries, innovations, and advances in engineering, medicine, and public health."
Trump wrote on Truth Social on May 2: "We are going to be taking away Harvard's Tax Exempt Status. It's what they deserve!"
What Happens Next
Arguments in Harvard's lawsuit against the government has been scheduled for July 21.
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