Pratiksha Ghosh
US,Cambridge. May 20 2025:The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of USA has announced the termination of $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, citing the institution’s alleged failure to adequately address antisemitic harassment and racial discrimination on campus.
This move comes following a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape American higher education by tying federal funding to ideological concerns. Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has criticized U.S. academic institutions for what he describes as dominance by "anti-American, Marxist, and radical left" ideologies.
The administration has also frozen or canceled federal contracts and grants to Harvard worth nearly $3 billion in recent weeks. Officials accuse the university of continuing to factor ethnicity into its admissions process and of allowing an environment where antisemitism has grown—especially in the wake of last year’s pro-Palestinian student demonstrations across U.S. campuses.
Columbia University in New York has faced similar scrutiny from the administration over allegations of antisemitism.
"Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards… over their full duration," the department announced in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.
Harvard has not yet issued a public response to the latest announcement. However, the university previously acknowledged it could not fully absorb the financial impact of the frozen grants and said it was working with affected researchers to secure alternative funding sources. Harvard has also filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s grant termination decisions.
Earlier this month, the university settled a lawsuit brought by an Orthodox Jewish student who accused Harvard of failing to act on antisemitic incidents. The settlement followed Harvard’s pledge on January to strengthen protections for Jewish students, made in response to two separate lawsuits alleging the university fostered a hostile environment for Jewish members of the campus community.
The developments mark a deepening clash between federal authorities and some of the nation’s most prominent academic institutions over issues of free speech, campus activism, and civil rights protections.
