On Tuesday, the federal government’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced that it had terminated research grants to Harvard totalling $450 million, spread out across eight federal agencies. The move comes on the heels of $2.2 billion in earlier cuts and an announcement that the university will be prevented from receiving any future grants. The ongoing campaign appears to be heading toward a point where no researchers at Harvard will receive federal funding.
The announcement reiterates accusations that are familiar from earlier federal funding terminations. It references antisemitic incidents during earlier protests about Israel’s actions in Gaza and the fact that the Harvard Law Review has taken steps to diversify the authors it publishes, which the government considers illegal discrimination. Notably, the letter does not mention any more recent events, nor Harvard’s efforts to address antisemitism on campus, saying:
Harvard’s campus, once a symbol of academic prestige, has become a breeding ground for virtue signaling and discrimination. This is not leadership; it is cowardice. And it’s not academic freedom; it’s institutional disenfranchisement. 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.
It’s generally difficult to understand the big picture of these cuts and the reasons for them from this announcement. Instead, it has to be pieced together from the multitude of letters that individual agencies have sent Harvard.
Multiple federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, also sent letters announcing the grant terminations on Tuesday. These sometimes contain more specific accusations, such as the Department of Energy letter, which specifically terms Harvard’s efforts to address past problems as insufficient. “Harvard has refused to take immediate, definitive and appropriate remedial action,” the letter said.
