Dispute with Trump's government: Harvard defends himself against “direct state influence”

The American government's answer came quickly. A few hours after Harvard President Alan Garber had decisively rejected a “direct state influence” to academic freedom at his university, the government's anti-Semitism-Taskforce published a five-set explanation. The last was the greatest force: due to the lack of cooperation, funding of $ 2.2 billion and contracts worth $ 60 million due to the lack of cooperation.

Officially, it is about the supposedly inadequate fight against anti -Semitism on campus, which had become apparent during the Propalestinian protests last year. But the debate is accompanied by President Donald Trump's attempt to bring “left -wing radical -radical dominated” and “woken” universities in the country.

The escalation with the Harvard University started last week with a government's catalog of claims. Friday's letter said that Harvard had not fulfilled “both the intellectual and civil law conditions” for federal funds in recent years. In order to continue to receive financing, the university must therefore take several steps. In addition to a reform of programs against anti -Semitism, an end to all diversity programs was also required to have harder disciplinary measures against students (specifically examinations of the protests in the past year) and progress reports to the government every four months. Harvard was also supposed to commission an “external” group that should “check the diversity of opinion”. A corresponding report must be submitted to the government by the end of this year.

The Harvard President Garber's answer on Monday was unmistakable. “No government- regardless of which party is in power- should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can accept and hire and which study and research areas they can pursue,” he wrote in the open letter.

Such an intervention violates the constitutional right to freedom of expression and exceeds the government's legal powers as part of the “Civil Rights Act”, which prohibits discrimination based on origin or religion. The formulated goal of fighting anti -Semitism cannot be obtained through legally non -covered “claims for power”, which “control the teaching and learning in Harvard and prescribe how we should work”.

In his letter, Garber warned that the government will jeopardize the health and well -being of millions of people with the “retreat from these partnerships”, as well as their economic security and the “vitality of our nation”. This is likely to relate that many funds flow into research into diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and the development of technologies such as AI and quantum computers.

For Harvard, the withdrawal $ 2.2 billion accounts for only part of the total of nine billion dollars. However, seven billion dollars go to the eleven university hospitals connected to the eleven and two billion directly to the University of Research Granting. At first it was not clear which programs would be recorded by the stop. Overall, the university had a foundation asset of around $ 53 billion in the past year.

In Harvard, too, a back door is apparently left open for possible negotiations. In a first version of the letter it said that one would not “negotiate” the independence or constitutional rights of the university. Later we talked about it would not be “given up”. According to media reports, lawyers of the university also wrote to the government on Monday that it was “open to dialogue”, but will not accept any conditions that went beyond the “statutory authority” of the government.

The “Taskforce for the fight against anti -Semitism”, founded in February, is committed to the goal of “exposing anti -Semitic attacks at schools and universities”. However, the group also acts against other principles that are a thorn in the side of the Trump government, for example. It is about ending the “ideological capture” of the universities.

Trump had already promised in the election campaign to “recapture the” once great “American educational institutions from the left -wing radicals”. The lever of the task force is the federal money. Trump had already announced this tactic in 2023. At that time he spoke of the financial support for “communist indoctrination” and “Marxist attacks on our American heritage” will soon come to an end. They will be “turned the money tap”.

The anti-Semitism group is under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice, but is promoted by people who are largely unknown to the American public. Head of Taskforce is Leo Terrell, a civil rights lawyer and former Fox News commentator, who was criticized in March when he shared the contribution of a well-known neo-Nazis on the X platform.

Patrick Casey, leader of the dissolved right -wing extremist group “Identity Evropa”, commented on a video of Trump, in which he said about the democratic minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, he was “no longer a Jew, but Palestinian”. Casey wrote that Trump had the power to “withdraw the Jewish card”. Among the other members are Sean Keveney, the incumbent chief lawyer of the Ministry of Health, as well as a software developer, an official of the Federal Creational Service and a former consultant of the Ministry of Education.

The task force follows the approach: first threaten, then talk. At the end of March, Katrina Armstrong, the head of the Columbia University, was shown at the end of March. She had made far-reaching concessions to the government, but then said in a publicly become a zoom discussion that she did not want to comply with certain agreements-a ban on mask on campus and, for example. The group reacted with a brief statement: The resignation was “an important step to advance the negotiations”.

A few days earlier, the lawyer Keveney Armstrong was keen in a survey: her answers would “absolutely no sense” that he was “amazed” about her leadership style. In the Columbia case, it was about $ 400 million, which the Trump government had initially held back.