Obama supports Harvard as he supports faculty at Yale University to stand up to Trump Harvard University
Barack Obama came to support Harvard University after the Trump administration chose to reduce $ 2 billion from granting federalism after the Ivy Association School in Massachusetts rejected what she said was the “government regulation” attempt for the university.
Meanwhile, faculty at Yale-another prominent institution in the Ivy League-has requested its leadership “resistance and challenge legally any illegal demands that threaten academic freedom and … autonomy.”
“Harvard University has provided an example of other higher institutions-an illegal and polite attempt to strangle academic freedom, while taking concrete steps to ensure that all students at Harvard University can benefit from an environment of intellectual inquiries, strict discussion and scientific respect,” says a statement issued by Obama, the US President from 2009 to 2017.
“Let’s hope that other institutions will follow.”
The confrontation between some of the most famous universities in the United States and the federal government overnight was deepened on Monday after Harvard University rejected high demands by the Donald Trump administration, which the President described as efforts to reduce anti -Semitism on the campus. However, many teachers believe that demands are a very veiled effort to reduce academic freedoms on a larger scale.
“No government – regardless of the party in power – should not dictate what private universities can study, which they can recognize and employ, and any areas of study and investigation that they can follow,” said Alan Garper, President of Harvard University.
The Trump administration, through the joint work squad between the multi -federal agency to combat anti -Semitism, responded by freezing $ 2.2 billion in multi -year grants and $ 60 million in the value of Harvard’s multi -year contract.
On Tuesday, Trump published himself a post on the social truth platform that says, “Perhaps Harvard should lose her tax exempt and taxes are imposed on it as a political entity.”
The intervention by Obama came after 876 faculty members at Yale University published a letter to their leadership, expressing its support to determine the Trump administration.
“We stand together at a crossroads,” Read the message. “American universities face unusual attacks that threaten the principles of the basis in a democratic society, including freedom of expression, societies, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty members, to ask you to stand with us now.”
Although the message does not specifically say Harvard, she asks Yale’s leadership “to work intended and replace with colleges and other universities in collective defense.”
Columbia University in New York, the site of protests in support of the Palestinians in 2024, agreed to partially comply with a series of demands from the Trump administration on how to deal with these demonstrations, academic departments, and anti -Semitism after they received warnings that they will lose federal funding, but also defended academic freedoms.
Princeton in New Jersey said it had not received a specific list of demands from the government. The university president, Christopher Esgerper, said in an e -mail to the community earlier in April that while the logical basis for the administration’s threat to finance financing was not yet clear, the university “will comply with the law.”
“We are committed to combating anti -Semitism and all forms of discrimination, and we will cooperate with the government in combating anti -Semitism,” added Esgerper. “Princeton will defend the power of academic freedom and the rights of legal procedures at this university.”
“The Trump administration uses the threat of financing discounts as a tactic to force universities to undergo government control of research, teaching and speech in private universities. It is very illegal,” said a statement issued by Rachel Godman, the lawyer of the American Association of University Professors.
Colombia has agreed to impose a ban on facial masks for the purposes of hiding the identity of the individual, exchanging protests within academic buildings and reviewing how to give Middle East studies programs. It also highlights the expansion of “intellectual diversity”, including by appointing new faculty members at its institute for Israel and Jewish studies.
The declared goal of the anti -Semitic team in the Trump administration is to “remove anti -Semitic harassment in schools and in the campus of universities.” But many believe that this is a cover for a set of conservative goals, including eliminating racist classes in acceptance-and rehabilitating what the administration sees as a left-wing bias in academic circles.
Trump said in 2023: “We will suffocate money to schools that help the Marxist attack on our American heritage and the Western civilization itself. The days of support for communist indoctrination will end in our colleges,” Trump said in 2023.
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On Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitte, said that Trump wants to see Harvard apologizing for “what he called” the terrible anti -Semitism that occurred on the campus.
“When it comes to Harvard University … the president was quite clear: they should follow federal law,” Levitte said.
“We will bankrupt these universities” if they do not “play the ball”.
In total, the administration freezed or canceled more than $ 11 billion as financing from at least seven universities as part of its efforts to end what it calls “ideological capture”. At least 300 students, modern graduates and post -PhD students have been canceled and their legal immigration conditions were canceled as part of the campaign.
Sally Cornellth, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Monday that nine students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have seen their visas on the previous week – that the cancellation that has had a chilling effect on “higher talents” around the world and that “they will harm the American competitiveness and the scientific leadership for years to come.”
But Trump The Minister of Education, Linda McMahon, told the Wall Street Journal It is within the authority of the federal government to ask universities to make changes to campus policies.
McMahon said: “If you are taking federal money, we want to make sure that you are committed to federal law,” although it refused that the administration was trying to curb academic freedom and the right to protest or not approve it safely.
A White House spokesman, Kush Disai, told the port that the work group “is driven by one thing and only one thing: the treatment of anti -Semitism.”
Disai said: “The hostile demonstrators who suffer from violence and control over the entire campus buildings are not only a raw offer of intolerance against Jewish Americans, but they are completely exposed to intellectual research and research that aims to support federal funding for colleges.”