US President Trump wants to bring the US universities in line. But the Elite University of Harvard is now going on a confrontation course. There is a billion in the game. The government reacted promptly.
The US elite university Harvard does not want to implement the course change required by President Donald Trump, for example when admission of students.
No government – regardless of which party is in power – should indicate what private universities can teach, who they can allow and hire and which study and research areas they can pursue
It was said in a letter from university president Alan Garber. The university will not give up its independence and constitutional rights.
In response to the letter, the Trump government has now blocked federal funds of $ 2.3 billion. The department to combat the anti-Semitism of the US Ministry of Education justified the step with “a troubling standards”, which prevails in the most renowned universities and universities in the USA: “that federal investments are not associated with responsibility to comply with civil rights laws”.
Billions of funding are at stake
Trump's government, based in Cambridge in the US state of Massachusetts, asked in a letter on Friday to make several changes and to enter into obligations. In the letter, the university asked to report foreign students to the federal authorities in violation of the rules of conduct, to have the diversity of expression checked among students and university staff, and to end the approval of students and to hire personnel according to diversity criteria.
According to US media, the equivalent of around 7.9 billion euros in federal funding for Harvard – for example for research programs, have a total of around 7.9 billion euros. Trump's government had recently targeted universities. On the one hand, she disrupted diversity programs. They had been introduced to counteract historical disadvantages of blacks or women. The Trump government is also a thorn in the side of the Propalestinian protests at various universities last year.
Another student of Columbia arrested
Other elite universities see themselves under pressure from the White House. According to threats from Washington, the New York University of Applied Sciences has already made concessions from Washington. Another student there was now arrested for propalestinian protests – just when he came from the naturalization test. This is reported by the television stations ABC and NBC, citing the man's lawyers. He had therefore formed a propalestinian group together with the activist Machmud Chalil arrested weeks ago.
Obama calls for unis to resistance
Former US President Barack Obama recently demanded universities to which the government deprived of its diversity programs should use their foundation funds or save costs instead of fulfilling Trump's demands.
In his replica on the letter from Trump's government, Harvard President Garber continued to write that the freedom of thinking and research as well as the long-term commitment of the government of respecting and protecting it, universities would have made it possible to contribute to a free society in a decisive way. With regard to the commitment to anti -Semitism required by Trump's government, Garber replied that the letter made it clear that there is no intention to work with the university in order to combat anti -Semitism in cooperative and constructive ways.
Harvard is now striving for loans of $ 750 million in order to cushion the reduction in federal funds.
