New York: US President Donald Trump threatened to strip Harvard University of his tax exemption status after rejecting what he described as an illegal government requires changing his academic programs or risking losing federal funding.
From the University of Columbia, the Trump administration reprimanded universities across the country for their management of the protest movement for pro-Palestinian students who made a tour of the campuses last year.
Trump called the anti-American and anti-Semitic demonstrations, accused universities to peddle Marxism and the radical ideology of the “left”, and promised to end federal subsidies and contracts to universities that do not accept the requests of his administration.
Some university teachers, students and presidents have declared that the demonstrations were unjustly confused with anti -Semitism as a pretext for an unconstitutional attack against academic freedoms.
Columbia, a private school in New York, accepted negotiations after the Trump administration said last month that it had dismissed subsidies and contracts worth $ 400 million, mainly for medical and other research.
Harvard president Alan Garber, in a letter on Monday, said that Trump administration made the Trump administration of the University of Massachusetts – including an audit to guarantee the “diversity of the point of view” of its students and its teachers, and the end of all diversity, equity and inclusion programs – were “unprecedented civilians.
Like Columbia, he said that Harvard had worked to combat anti -Semitism and other forms of discrimination on his campus while preserving academic freedoms and the right to protest.
A few hours after Garber has published his letter, the Trump administration’s joint working group to fight anti -Semitism said that it was frozen more than $ 2 billion in contracts and subsidies at Harvard, the country’s oldest university and the country. The administration did not answer questions about grants and contracts that had been reduced, and Harvard did not respond to a comment request.
Trump, a Republican, said on Tuesday in an article on social networks he was thinking about whether he should seek to end the Harvard tax exemption if he continued to push what he called “ideological, ideological and terrorist inspired / supported” disease “.
He didn’t say how he would do this. Under the American tax code, most universities are exempt from federal income tax because they are deemed “exploited exclusively” for educational purposes.
The white house press secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists that Trump wanted Harvard apologizing for what she called “the anti -Semitism that took place on their university campus against Jewish American students”.
She accused Harvard and other schools of having violated title VI of the civil rights law, which prohibits discrimination by federal funding beneficiaries according to the race or the national origin.
Under Title VI, federal funds can only be terminated after a long investigation and audience process and a 30 -day notification in Congress – which did not occur in Columbia or Harvard.
