The Trump administration said on Monday that it was reviewing roughly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard, claiming that the university had allowed antisemitism to run unchecked on its campus.
In a statement on Monday, the administration said that it was examining about $256 million in contracts, as well as an additional $8.7 billion in what it described as “multiyear grant commitments.”
The announcement of the investigation suggested that Harvard had not done enough to curb antisemitism on campus but was vague about what the university could do to satisfy the Trump administration.
“While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized antisemitism — though long overdue — are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” Josh Gruenbaum, a senior official at the General Services Administration, said in a statement.
“This administration has proven that we will take swift action to hold institutions accountable if they allow antisemitism to fester,” he added. “We will not hesitate to act if Harvard fails to do so.”
In an email message to the Harvard community Monday evening, Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, noted that “we are not perfect” and said that Harvard would work with the federal government “to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.”
“If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” he wrote.
He also referenced his personal experience with antisemitism. “I have experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president, and I know how damaging it can be to a student who has come to learn and make friends at a college or university,” he said.
He may have been referring to a poster showing him with horns and a tail that was displayed by a student group during Harvard’s encampment last year.
The Harvard announcement followed the same template as a similar move against Columbia University last month. In its Monday announcement, the government did not fail to note the outsize role that Harvard plays in the public imagination, which makes it all the more tantalizing a target.
“Harvard has served as a symbol of the American dream for generations — the pinnacle aspiration for students all over the world to work hard and earn admission to the storied institution,” Linda McMahon, the secretary of education, said in the announcement.
“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy.”
The statement said the government would collaborate with contracting agencies to assess whether to issue stop-work orders for any of the contracts under review.
It was not clear how the government had arrived at the figure of nearly $9 billion in grants for Harvard and its affiliates. But in his message, Dr. Garber indicated that it included money for hospitals affiliated with Harvard’s medical school, like Mass General Brigham, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Harvard and other universities have taken a number of steps in the wake of campus protests against the war in Gaza that some said veered into antisemitism, including highly contested chants by some pro-Palestinian demonstrators such as “from the river to the sea.”
For example, Harvard adopted a definition of antisemitism that labels some criticism of Israel as antisemitic, a move praised by some Jewish students and faculty members but condemned by free expression advocates. It clarified that both Jewish and Israeli identities are covered by its anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies.
Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary and former Harvard president, called the review “a pretext for going after truth-seeking institutions that are threatening to would-be authoritarians.”
Antisemitism has been a genuine problem at Harvard, he said. “Just because Donald Trump says something doesn’t make it wrong, and Harvard has been way too slow in responding to the antisemitism,” he said.
“Harvard has made real errors,” Mr. Summers said. “But Harvard’s flaws do not remotely justify what is being threatened.”
In the case of Columbia, the same three agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department and the General Services Administration — announced an investigation on March 3 into the school’s federal grants and contracts. They said the review was being conducted in conjunction with “ongoing investigations for potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.” (Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs receiving federal subsidies.)
A few days later, the government stripped $400 million in federal funding from Columbia.
In an effort to recover that money, Columbia acceded to an initial set of demands by the Trump administration, including strengthening its campus security force and imposing greater oversight of its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department, among other concessions.
Some faculty members fiercely objected to the concessions, and on Friday, the university replaced the interim president who had overseen the negotiations, Katrina Armstrong, with Claire Shipman, a journalist who had been the co-chair of the university’s board of trustees.
The government has not said that the university’s funding will be reinstated.
Harvard and Columbia were among the 10 universities that a federal task force said in February it was reviewing because of possible antisemitic activity on campuses. Soon after, Harvard said it was placing a freeze on staff and faculty hiring, given the uncertain environment.
In a way, the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism was inspired by events at Harvard.
Immediately after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, a coalition of Harvard student groups, under the banner of Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, wrote a letter declaring “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
At the time, Mr. Summers condemned the university’s leadership for not denouncing the student letter.
Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, tried to make amends but was ultimately pressured to resign after testimony in front of a congressional committee. Under questioning, she said that whether students would be punished for antisemitic remarks, like advocating for genocide, depended on the context.
In the following months, Harvard adopted a posture of institutional neutrality, saying it would no longer take positions on matters outside the university.
Throughout the last school year, Harvard’s campus was rocked by demonstrations and confrontations between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students. At one point the university locked its gates to restrict who could enter Harvard Yard.
Students set up tents in an encampment last spring, and in the fall, the statue of John Harvard was vandalized with red paint. In October, pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged a silent protest at Widener library, the main library, where they taped signs like “free Palestine” and “Harvard Divest from Death” to their laptops.
Harvard, like other universities, began to crack down with new rules on protests and speech. In recent months, the protest movement has been quieter.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent graduate who is suing Harvard for not taking antisemitism seriously, said he was “elated” on Monday.
“This is precisely why I campaigned and voted for President Trump,” said Mr. Kestenbaum,
, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, said he had been in communication with members of the Trump administration. “If Harvard is not scared,” he said, “it simply means they’re not paying attention, because more accountability is on the way.”
Harvard is among the world’s wealthiest institutions, with an endowment fund of more than $50 billion. Just recently, it announced that it was increasing its financial aid package for students, making tuition free for families with income of $200,000 and under.
The administration’s attack on universities has profound implications for the First Amendment and the government’s power to police protests, even when they occur on private campuses. There are also likely to be enormous economic and academic repercussions if, for example, the government cuts off substantial money to Harvard.
Although private philanthropy is important, federal funding has long been the lifeblood of American academic research, and university leaders have warned that few institutions can continue marshaling the financial firepower for projects if Washington stops helping with the bills. Shutdowns, even temporary ones, of research programs could lead to new layoffs and hiring freezes that could trickle through local economies.
But the administration came to power in January bristling with rage toward the most elite realms of American higher education. As candidates, Donald J. Trump depicted top universities as overrun by “Marxists, maniacs and lunatics,” and JD Vance derided them as “insane.” (Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance both hold degrees from Ivy League universities.)
And Mr. Trump himself subsequently vowed on social media that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”
Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, warned Monday that the government was adopting a pattern of persecution.
“The administration has clearly found a playbook, and we’re seeing it again,” said Dr. Mitchell, who decried what he called the use of “unsubstantiated, amorphous claims of antisemitism against an institution and pre-emptive hostage-taking” tied to funding.
The government, Dr. Mitchell noted, had long used a measured, back-and-forth process with colleges to address potential civil rights violations. He said he feared that the Trump administration’s strategy would undermine due process while threatening research and doing little to protect Jewish people on campuses.
Other institutions targeted by the antisemitism task force were George Washington University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California.
Although much of the administration’s focus has been on what it sees as endemic antisemitism on American campuses, it also paused about $175 million in funding for the University of Pennsylvania because it had allowed a transgender woman onto its women’s swim team in 2022.
Vimal Patel contributed reporting.
