The president of the United States, Donald Trump, described Harvard a “joke” on Wednesday and said he should lose his government research contracts after the superior American university refused to accept the demands of external political supervision.
“Harvard cannot even be considered a place of decent learning, and should not be considered in any list of the world’s great universities or schools,” Trump said in his real social platform. “Harvard is a joke, he teaches hate and stupidity, and he should no longer receive federal funds.”
Trump is furious in the historic University, which has produced 162 winners of the Nobel Prize, for rejecting his demand to submit to government supervision on admissions, hiring and political inclination.
Other institutions, including the University of Columbia, have inclined to less scope of the Trump administration, which states that the educational elite is too left.
Harvard flatly rejected the pressure, with its president, Alan Garber, saying this week that the university refuses to “negotiate on its independence or its constitutional rights.”
Trump ordered this week the freezing of $ 2.2 billion in federal funds for Harvard, a global research power. He also threatened to strip the university of his state exempt from taxes as a non -profit educational institution.
His campaign against the intellectual elite echoes similar and unprecedented pressure campaigns against the main law firms and large media groups, including The Association press.
Demonstrating the expansion of the resonance of the row, the basketball coach of the Golden State Warriors, Steve Kerr, spoke in support of Harvard after his team defeated the Mephis Grizzlies.
Kerr, wearing a Harvard shirt, described the demands at the university “darker I’ve heard.”
“I believe in academic freedom and I think it is crucial that all our institutions can handle their own businesses in the way they want, and they should not be shaken and tell him what to teach and what to say with our government,” Kerr said.
The Government seeks control
Frozed Harvard payments are for government contracts with their main research programs, mainly in the Medicine field, where school laboratories are critical players in the development of new medicines and treatments.
Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is unusual anti -Semitism and the need to reverse diversity programs aimed at encouraging minorities.
Anti -Semitism accusations are based on the controversy about protests against Israel’s conflict in Gaza that extended through the United States university campus last year.
The University of Columbia in New York, an epicenter of the protests, withdrew last month and agreed to supervise its Department of Middle East studies after being threatened with a loss of $ 400 million in federal funds.
The statements about diversity take advantage of long -date conservative complaints that the United States university campuses are too liberal, they close the right -wing voices and give preference to black groups and other minority groups about whites.
In the case of Harvard, the White House seeks unprecedented levels of government control over the internal functioning of the oldest and rich university in the country, and one of the most respected educational and research institutions in the world.
In a letter sent to Harvard, the administration’s demands included the end of the admissions that take into account the race of the student or the national origins; avoid the admission of foreign students “hostile to US values and institutions”; Finish the contracting personnel based on race, religion, sex or national origin; reducing the power of students in the Government of the Campus; audit students and staff for the “diversity of views”; reform complete programs for “atrocious records of anti -Semitism or other bias”; and take energetic measures against campus protests.
