Harvard University challenges Trump’s demands, facing $ 2.3 billion in financing discounts Education News

Ivy League becomes the first university for challenge from the Trump administration’s demands after the pro -Palestinian campus protests.

Harvard University He rejected the demands From the administration of US President Donald Trump, which will see the university, it waives control of what it described as a conservative government depicting universities as a serious left.

Within hours of Harvard took its position on Monday, the Trump administration announced that it is freezing $ 2.3 billion of federal funding for the Ivy League school.

The freezing of financing comes after the Trump administration said last month that it was declining 9 billion dollars in contracts and scholarships to Harvard University as part of the campaign of what it says War protests in support of the Palestinian and the control of Gaza During the past 18 months.

The freezing followed that the President of Harvard University, Alan Garper, issued a public letter calling for the Trump administration calling for an attempt to “control the Harvard community” and threaten “the values ​​of the school as a special institution dedicated to seeking, producing and spreading knowledge.”

Garbar said that the rejection of the government’s demands, which include reporting foreign students for the violations of the law, reforming its governance and leadership, and stopping their diversity, stock and integration programs (Dei), as well as changing employment and acceptance policies, especially for international students, if an unprecedented overlap “and” outside power in the federal government “.

“No government – regardless of the party in power – should dictate what private universities can study, who can recognize and employ it, and any areas of the study and inquiries that they can follow,” continued the Garper message.

The Joint Labor Squad of the US Department of Education to combat anti-Semitism, in a written statement, said that Garper’s speech “enhances the disturbing Mental mentality that is considered a settlement in our most famous universities and colleges-that federal investment does not come with the responsibility of supporting civil rights laws.”

Al -Jazeera correspondent in Washington, DC, Patti Kohan, noted that although Harvard University is not the first institution to be targeted, it was “the first of a challenging voice”, and to indicate “they may be ready to fight it in court.”

“Therefore, a very large turning from what we saw from other universities, but if anyone can do this, he is Harvard,” said Kohan.

The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of millions of dollars from federal funding for many universities, and pressure institutions to make changes in politics and indicate what it says has failed to fight anti -Semitism on the campus.

Columbia University It was stripped of $ 400 million In grants and contracts on March 7 because of what the Trump administration claimed was to allow “unavoidable violence, intimidation, and anti -Semitic harassment” on its university campus.

The deportation procedures began against many of the detained foreign students who participated in the demonstrations supporting the Palestinians, while visas were canceled for hundreds of other students.