The Trump administration on Tuesday canceled an additional $450 million in grants for Harvard University, a fresh broadside in the clash between the federal government and the oldest university in the country.
There were no new accusations leveled at Harvard in a statement announcing the latest cuts, issued by the administration’s task force on antisemitism. Instead, government officials accused the school of not resolving the “pervasive race discrimination and antisemitic harassment” they described as “plaguing” the campus in Cambridge, Mass.
“There is a dark problem on Harvard’s campus, and by prioritizing appeasement over accountability, institutional leaders have forfeited the school’s claim to taxpayer support,” the task force said.
The task force did not detail which grants were being canceled, though it said eight federal agencies were involved in cutting off money. The officials said the $450 million in cuts were on top of $2.2 billion the administration had already frozen.
A Harvard spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
The government has been at odds with Harvard since late March, when the task force said it would review about $9 billion in federal money designated for the university and its affiliates. Harvard later rejected a list of intrusive demands from the federal government and filed a lawsuit to challenge the suspension of the $2.2 billion in multiyear grants.
Last week, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, told Harvard not to apply for future federal grants. In a response on Monday, Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, said the university and the Trump administration shared “common ground on a number of critical issues, including the importance of ending antisemitism and other bigotry on campus.”
But, he warned, shared ambitions were “undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law.”
The Trump administration’s battle with Harvard has become the focal point of its efforts to realign what it views as the liberal tilt of elite universities. The result has been a widening effort to open a series of investigations after the college refused to comply with President Trump’s demands.
In late April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opened an investigation into whether Harvard and its affiliates had discriminated against white, Asian, male and heterosexual applicants and training program participants. The Washington Free Beacon first reported that investigation on Monday.
The university is also under scrutiny from the Education Department and the Health and Human Services Department, which are investigating the use of racial preferences at the Harvard Law Review.
The Trump administration has accused Harvard of failing to report large foreign donations to the federal government as required by law.
The Education Department has accused Harvard of submitting incomplete financial disclosures about its foreign ties and ordered the university to provide a trove of related documents. The Department of Homeland Security has threatened to block Harvard from enrolling international students unless the school hands over detailed records about the student body.
Harvard has disputed the notion that the university had not been complying with the law.
Mr. Trump has also threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status, a move that the school argued had no legal basis.
