The Trump administration is reportedly contemplating forcing fellow Ivy League college Columbia right into a consent decree that may legally bind the varsity to observe federal pointers in the way it combats antisemitism.
Some Columbia professors, like these at Harvard, have sued the federal authorities in response. The federal government has suspended US$400 million in federal funding and grants to Columbia.
Harvard President Garber stated the federal authorities’s calls for that it “audit” the viewpoints of its college students, school and workers to ferret out left-wing thinkers usually against the Trump administration clearly violated the college’s First Modification rights to freedom of speech.
“The College is not going to give up its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Garber wrote.
He added that whereas Harvard is taking steps to deal with antisemitism on campus, “these ends is not going to be achieved by assertions of energy, unmoored from the regulation, to regulate educating and studying at Harvard and to dictate how we function”.
Harvard agreed in January to offer extra protections for Jewish college students below a settlement resolving two lawsuits accusing the Ivy League college of turning into a hotbed of antisemitism.
To ease any funding crunch created by any cutoff in federal funding, Harvard is working to borrow US$750 million from Wall Avenue.
