Harvard A 'Disgrace', Says Trump Amid Protests Over University's $2.3 Billion Funding Freeze

US President Donald Trump continued his attacks on Harvard University, calling it a "disgrace" amid backlash over freezing funding for the Ivy League institution. His remark came just a day after he dubbed the university a "joke" as hundreds of students and faculty members booed while speakers accused the Trump administration of undermining American universities.

Trump called the protests anti-American and antisemitic, accusing universities of peddling Marxism and radical left" ideology. "They're obviously anti-Semitic, and all of a sudden they're starting to behave," Trump said on Thursday, while sp eaking at the White House, doubling down on his earlier criticism of what he called Harvard's "all-woke" faculty. "I think Harvard is a disgrace," news agency Reuters quoted him as saying.  

The Trump administration froze approximately USD 2.3 billion in federal funding after it decided to go against White House demands, including shutting down equity and inclusion programs and putting academic departments under outside control.

In a letter on Monday, Harvard President Alan Garber rejected these demands as unprecedented "assertions of power, unmoored from the law" that were in violation of the constitutional free speech and the Civil Rights Act.

Reports also suggest that the Internal Revenue Service is preparing to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt status as well. Trump, on Tuesday, suggested in his social media post that he might push to end Harvard's tax-exempt status if it continues to promote "political, ideological, and terrorist-inspired/supporting sickness".

However, Trump said at the White House that he did not think a final ruling had been made, and indicated other schools were under scrutiny, Reuters reported.

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"I'm not involved in it," he said, saying the matter was being handled by lawyers. "I read about it just like you did, but tax-exempt status, I mean, it's a privilege. It's really a privilege, and it's been abused by a lot more than Harvard."

"When you take a look whether it's Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, I don't know what's going on, but when you see how badly they've acted and in other ways also. So we'll, we'll be looking at it very strongly," he added.

The Trump administration has slammed American universities over their handling of pro-Palestinian student protests in several campuses from Columbia in New York to Berkeley in 2024, after the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.

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