Can Trump Yank Harvard's Remaining Federal Funding?

For weeks, the Trump administration has been waging a war against Harvard University, releasing a series of conflicting demands, suggesting pulling the school’s tax-exempt status, and barring the school from taking international students. Now, the administration is attempting to pull all remaining federal contracts from the university. 

In a letter released on Tuesday, the General Services Administration directed all federal agencies that have contracts with Harvard to consider dropping their affiliation with the school, citing nebulous claims of racial discrimination and antisemitism.

“In light of this deeply troubling pattern, each agency should consider its contracts with Harvard University and determine whether Harvard and its services efficiently promote the priorities of the agency,” the letter reads. “We recommend that your agency terminate for convenience each contract that it determines has failed to meet its standards, and transition to a new vendor those contracts that could be better serviced by an alternative counterparty. Going forward, we also encourage your agency to seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard.” 

This move is just the latest in a series of attempts to wield the federal government to punish Harvard. In April, several federal agencies sent the school a demand letter paradoxically ordering the school to make all hiring and admissions decisions based upon pure merit, but also demanding that the school increase ideological diversity. When the school announced its intentions to defy the letter, the Trump administration pulled billions in federal funding and suggested that the IRS would also revoke the school’s tax-exempt status. Last week, Homeland Security officials informed Harvard that it would be barred from taking international students. On Wednesday, the State Department announced that it would be temporarily halting visa interviews for all prospective international students pending a new procedure to scrutinize students’ social media posts.

Can the government unilaterally pull funding for Harvard? The answer is probably no. While Harvard isn’t entitled to receive federal funding, that doesn’t give the government latitude to withdraw funding whenever it feels like it, for whatever reason.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a First Amendment group, there’s a fairly complex, multi-step process required for the government to pull federal funding from a school over discrimination claims. First, the Education Department has to conduct an investigation, and if the investigation finds discrimination, it has to work with the school to fix those issues. If the school is still noncompliant, the government has to give notice to the school and allow the school to challenge the government’s decision at an administrative hearing.

“Those are a lot of steps, but they’re important,” reads a Friday press release from FIRE. “They protect students by making sure colleges live up to their obligations. And they protect colleges by making sure they have an opportunity to contest the allegations as well as a chance to make things right. These rules are also important because they provide a safeguard against political bias, risk of error, and governmental overreach.”

While Trump is trying as hard as he can to quash Harvard—and setting an authoritarian precedent in so doing—there’s some hope that the school can demand due process in court.

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