Washington:
US President Donald Trump on Thursday denounced Harvard University as an “anti-Semitic left and right facility.”
Since returning to the White House, Trump has tried to bring several universities to his heels, claiming to tolerate anti-Semitism on campus and threaten budgets, tax-exempt status and admissions for foreign students.
However, Harvard refused to bow and filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Monday.
The lawsuit calls for the freeze on funding and the conditions imposed on federal grants to be declared illegal, and argues political interference measures aimed at compromising the independence of Ivy League agencies.
“This place is a liberal mess,” Trump wrote on his true social platform, “slammed about acknowledging students from all over the world who want to tear our country apart.
His broadside issued executive orders aimed at higher education, with no way for federal authorities to determine which universities have access to billions of dollars from certain grants and student loans.
The executive order aims to crack down on measures that Trump brands “illegal discrimination” – that is, “racial and ethnic minority individuals.”
Anti-Semitism claims
Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against the university as an uncontrolled “anti-Semitism” response to what they say, and as a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at dealing with historical oppression of minorities.
The administration argues that protests against Israeli war in Gaza, which swept US university campuses last year, were full of anti-Semitism.
Many U.S. universities, including Harvard, cracked down on protests against the claims at the time, with the Cambridge-based facility placing 23 students on probation and denying 12 degrees, according to probation organizers.
Harvard President Alan Gerber said the Trump administration has launched a “many investigation” into the university’s business.
Trump’s claims about diversity elicit long-standing conservative complaints that American university campuses are too liberal, closing the right-wing voice and supporting minorities.
In Harvard’s case, the White House calls for an unprecedented level of government control for the internal work of the country’s oldest and wealthiest universities, and one of the world’s most respected research institutions.
Harvard rejected the government’s demand for oversight and urged the Trump administration to freeze $2.2 billion in funds.
In an executive order on Wednesday, Trump declared “American students and taxpayers are worth better, and my administration is focusing on reforming our dysfunctional accreditation system and providing high-quality academic programs for reasonable prices.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published by Syndicate Feed.)
