Trump administration freezes $2B in Harvard funding after university refuses to comply (2025)

The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard University after the school refused to comply with its demands for a major overhaul.

On Monday, Harvard President Alan M. Garber sent a letter to the school community addressing the list of demands made the first week of April. The government said it would cut nearly $9 billion in Harvard funding and grants if the school did not comply with changes to its leadership structure, admissions and hiring.

Garber said the administration’s demands go ”beyond the power of the federal government,” violate Harvard’s First Amendment rights and are over “the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.”

“... It threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production and dissemination of knowledge. No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber’s letter read.

Hours after a formal rejection was sent from Harvard’s attorneys, the government’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism released a statement.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges – that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws," the statement on the U.S. Department of Education website read.

The statement announced a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60M in multi-year contract value to Harvard University.

“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable. It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support,” the statement read.

Harvard was the first school to push back against he government’s efforts to restructure top schools in the country.

The Trump administration has also threatened to pull funding from Columbia University, Brown University, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Columbia agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration after facing an ultimatum to abide by the requirements or jeopardize federal funding. The decision was met with outrage from community members and the higher education community despite it placing Columbia “on the right track” toward recovering the funding, according to The Associated Press.

The threatened funding also comes after a series of arrests by ICE, including Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk who was arrested by six masked federal immigration agents in Somerville on March 25, in apparent retaliation to an op-ed article she co-authored in the school’s newspaper last year.