BOSTON — US President Donald Trump’s administration escalated its feud with Harvard University on Wednesday (July 9), declaring the Ivy League school may no longer meet the standards for accreditation and that it would subpoena it for records about its international students.
The move is the latest in a series of actions the administration has taken against Harvard, which sued the federal government after officials terminated billions of dollars in grants awarded to the school and moved to bar it from admitting international students.
The administration has said it is trying to force change at Harvard and other top-level universities across the US, contending they have become bastions of leftist “woke” thought and antisemitism.
Trump said on June 20 that talks with Harvard that could soon produce a settlement were under way. He told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he remained optimistic about the prospect of a settlement and that “they’ll absolutely reach a deal.”
“Harvard’s been very bad — totally antisemitic,” he said.
But as of Wednesday morning, when the latest actions by the administration were announced, talks had stalled, and the parties were “far from an agreement,” a person familiar with the matter said.
“Harvard remains unwavering in its efforts to protect its community and its core principles against unfounded retribution by the federal government,” Harvard said in a statement.
The US Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said on Wednesday that they formally notified Harvard’s accreditor, the New England Commission of Higher Education, that Harvard had violated a federal antidiscrimination law by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students on campus.
The agencies said there was “strong evidence to suggest the school may no longer meet the commission’s accreditation standards,” after the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights last month concluded that Harvard had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon in a statement said her agency expects the commission to “keep the department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
The commission, a nonprofit accreditor, is not slated to comprehensively evaluate Harvard again until mid-2027. It confirmed it received a letter from the departments and said the federal government cannot direct it to revoke a school’s accreditation and that a university found to run afoul of its standards can have up to four years to come into compliance.
The departments’ announcement came shortly after the Homeland Security Department said it would issue administrative subpoenas seeking records concerning the “criminality and misconduct” of student visa holders on Harvard’s campus.
Harvard argues the Trump administration is retaliating against it and trampling on its free-speech rights under the US Constitution’s First Amendment after it refused to meet the Trump administration’s demands to cede control over the school’s curriculum and admissions. It also says it has been unfairly targeted based on what officials view as the university’s left-leaning orientation.
A federal judge last month blocked the administration from implementing a proclamation Trump signed that sought to bar foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard University.
The administration has appealed that ruling, and the Homeland Security Department is pursuing through an administrative process a possible revocation of Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.
Such an action would significantly hit Harvard’s tuition base. Almost 6,800 international students attended the 388-year-old university in its most recent school year, making up about 27 per cent of its student population.
US District Judge Allison Burroughs, the same judge as in the case involving international students, is set to hear arguments on July 21 in a separate lawsuit Harvard has filed, which seeks to unfreeze around US$2.5 billion (S$3.19 billion) in grant funding that has been blocked by the Trump administration.
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