Trump wants to squeeze a billion dollars out of Harvard

Donald Trump has announced that he is suing Harvard for $1 billion in damages. The US president accuses the prestigious university of "wokeness" and anti-Semitism.

"We are now seeking $1 billion in damages and will no longer do business with Harvard University in the future," Donald Trump said.

Investigations against Harvard should now be considered "criminal and not civil matters [...] Harvard will have to face the consequences of its wrongdoing," he concluded.

The day before, the New York Times had reported that Trump had dropped his initial demand for $200 million from Harvard, which angered the president:

"The highly anti-Semitic Harvard University has provided a lot of 'nonsense' to the failing New York Times," he said six hours after the article in question was published.

"Harvard has been behaving very badly for a long time [...] Alan Garber, the president of Harvard, has done a terrible job [...] He was hired after the accusations of anti-Semitism were made. I wonder why???"

Tensions between Harvard and Trump had eased over the summer.

In September, the president said that a $500 million deal with the university was about to be finalized. According to him, part of the money would be used to open vocational schools. However, the agreement never materialized, and on, the president doubled down by demanding $1 billion from Harvard for any agreement to restore federal funding.

Harvard has been in the president's crosshairs since his return to the White House.

His aides have cut billions of dollars in federal research funding to the Ivy League school and attempted to prevent it from accepting foreign students after it rejected a series of government demands last April. Faced with the president's repeated attacks, Harvard leaders argue that they are being subjected to illegal reprisals for refusing to adopt the Trump administration's ideological positions. Harvard has filed two lawsuits against the administration. A federal judge has ruled in Harvard's favor in both cases.

The Trump administration has appealed.

"This is about destroying institutions of knowledge because they are centers of independent thought and information," said former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who resigned in January 2024, in September.

"There is no justification or explanation for this, except that authoritarian powers do not like independent centers of thought and information," said the woman who was the first Black woman to head Harvard in 368 years.

The Trump administration has filed lawsuits and demanded massive compensation from at least 75 universities, according to a recent New York Times investigation.

Harvard is far from being the only university targeted by the Republican president, who is putting pressure on those he considers "woke," an ideology that promotes strong sensitivity to injustices related to racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination.

He also targets institutions that he believes do not sufficiently protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Trump is attempting to impose his priorities on education.

In particular, he is asking universities to adhere to "biological" definitions of male and female and to end affirmative action based on factors such as "gender, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religious affiliations" in their admissions and scholarship processes.

Several of them have ended up agreeing to pay huge sums of money: Columbia $200 million, Brown $50 million, and Cornell $60 million. Columbia University has also committed to "eliminating racial preferences" and "ending" the promotion of diversity.

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to ban transgender women from participating in women's competitions.