Harvard’s $9 billion scramble to avoid becoming the next Columbia
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Harvard President Alan Garber has spent the past few weeks trying to keep his school from becoming the next Columbia. As he watched Trump pull federal funds from his school’s Ivy League peer over antisemitism concerns, and impose far-reaching demands, Garber made a flurry of moves of his own.
The school dismissed leaders at its controversial center for Middle Eastern studies, reinforced intellectual diversity guidelines across programs and unwound a partnership with a university in the West Bank. Nonetheless, Harvard now finds itself in the hot seat. On Monday, the White House targeted the university with a review of $9 billion in federal funds as part of Trump’s rapidly escalating campaign against what he views as left-wing ideology and antisemitism on campuses.
This effort has kicked into a higher gear. Princeton University said Tuesday the Trump administration is suspending “several dozen" research grants. Chris Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, said in an email to students and staffers that “the full rationale for this action is not yet clear." In a recent Atlantic magazine essay, Eisgruber described the Trump administration’s “attack on Columbia University" as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s." A White House official called the Princeton measure a proactive pause in funding pending an investigation into alleged antisemitism.
In March, Princeton was among 60 colleges and universities the Education Department said it would investigate for similar allegations. Last month, Trump made Columbia exhibit A. He pulled $400 million in federal grants and contracts from the school, then set out demands as a precondition to start talks about
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