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2025-04-01 Fifth Column
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Trump admin reviews $9 billion in Harvard funding amid campus antisemitism crackdown
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Oh dear. That sounds serious. [IsraelTimes] School president acknowledges antisemitism problem, but says it’s being addressed and warns that cut would ‘halt life-saving research, imperil key scientific research and innovation’
The Trump administration said on Monday that it was reviewing $9 billion in federal contracts and grants awarded to Harvard University, part of a crackdown on what it says is antisemitism on college campuses.
The Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and the US General Services Administration said in a written statement that $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard, its affiliates and the federal government were being reviewed, along with $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments.
The investigation is the latest move by the Trump administration to pressure American universities to change their policies on a number of issues at the heart of culture wars that have beset the US in recent years.
Supporters of Trump’s efforts say it is a long-needed check on far-left extremism at US colleges. Critics say the crackdown is a draconian over-reaction that stomps on academic freedom and the right to free speech.
"If this funding is stopped, it will halt life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation," Alan Garber, the president of Harvard, said in a written statement.
Some of that, yes. But at Harvard as in the rest of academia, most of the research is a waste of money and never should have been approved. Garber said that antisemitism "is present on our campus" and that he had experienced it himself, even as the university president.
He said Harvard had been enacting reforms to combat antisemitism during the past 15 months, though, he acknowledged that "we still have much work to do," and the university will work with the federal government’s antisemitism task force on the matter.
The focus on Harvard comes after the Trump administration this month canceled $400 million in federal funding for fellow Ivy League school Columbia University. It was the epicenter of anti-Israel protests that broke out on college campuses following the October 7, 2023, Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
attack inside Israel, and Israel’s subsequent incursion in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
, the Paleostinian enclave controlled by Hamas.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the administration conflates their criticism of US ally Israel’s assault on Gaza with antisemitism and their support for Paleostinian rights as sympathy for Hamas.
Columbia earlier this month announced it had made some changes demanded by the Trump administration to start negotiations to win back its federal funding. The university’s interim president announced over the weekend that she was stepping down after an outcry by some students and faculty over what they characterized as the school’s acquiescence to the federal demands. In addition to targeting funds, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have detained some foreign student protesters in recent weeks and are working to deport them.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration suspended $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania, another Ivy League school, over its transgender sports policies.
The Department of Education this month sent a letter to 60 universities — including Harvard — warning that it could bring enforcement actions against them under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act if they failed to protect Jewish students on their campuses. It said antisemitic "eruptions" have disrupted life at elite schools around the country for a year.
"Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from antisemitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled ...
ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy," said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon
 ...business executive, and former professional wrestling performer. She was the 25th administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019. McMahon has been nominated to lead the Department of Education under the second Trump administration. McMahon, along with her husband, Vince McMahon, founded sports entertainment company Titan Sports, Inc. (later World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.) where she worked as the president and later CEO from 1980 to 2009. During this time, the company grew from a regional business in the northeast to a large multinational corporation. She made occasional on-screen performances, most notably in a feud with her husband that culminated at WrestleMania X-Seven. In 2009, she left World Wrestling Entertainment to run for a seat in the United States Senate from Connecticut as a Republican, but lost to Richard Blumenthal in the 2010 general election. She was the Republican nominee for Connecticut's other Senate seat in the 2012 race, but lost to Chris Murphy because that's the kind of guy people in Connecticutt like best. ...
. "Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus."
Harvard and other elite universities came into the crosshairs of conservatives in late 2023, when the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology appeared before a congressional committee looking into a rise in antisemitism on campuses.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, along with the other school leaders, declined to give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer when asked if calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free-speech protections.
Cornell’s new Jewish president says he’s ‘very comfortable’ with where university is currently
[IsraelTimes] As at Columbia University, its fellow Ivy League school, Cornell University, has had a pro-Paleostinian, anti-Israel student protest leader sought for deportation — as well as a handful of disruptive protests this year of the sort that drew attention from the Trump administration.
But Mike Kotlikoff, Cornell’s new president, says he isn’t too worried that protest activity on his campus will ignite the kind of sweeping federal sanctions Columbia has faced.
"I’m very comfortable with where Cornell is currently," Kotlikoff said in an interview on Thursday, five days after being appointed permanently to the position he has held on an interim basis since July 2024.
"We’ve had a relatively peaceful two semesters this year," he added. "We’ve had a couple of situations where individuals who were protesting really went over the line and infringed on other people’s rights, and in both of those cases, there were consequences for those infringements."
Kotlikoff said he believed that conditions on campus for Jewish students are "pretty close" to where they stood on October 6, 2023, the day before the Hamas-led massacre that saw some 1,200 people slaughtered in southern Israel and 251 kidnapped to the Gazoo Strip ignited a war that has elicited widespread protests on campuses and elsewhere.
He noted that both Hillel and Chabad are in the process of constructing new buildings and said there were more than 30 active Jewish organizations at Cornell.
"There’s really a lot of Jewish activity, Jewish life that [is] celebrated on campus," he said. "I periodically go to Shabbat. I’m going to go to Passover Shabbat. So I think it’s pretty normal. If you ask most kids, it’s quite comfortable on campus."
Trump signed an executive order within days of taking office in January that vowed to deport "Hamas sympathizers" on campus under the mantle of combating antisemitism. One, Momodou Taal, is a Cornell graduate student. He has sued the Trump administration to block his deportation, saying that his free speech and that of his fellow pro-Paleostinian students is being infringed upon. A federal judge issued a preliminary ruling against him on Thursday.
Kotlikoff said Cornell had adopted four core principles "for how we would meet the political pressures that we’re currently seeing" that would allow the school to stick to its own values in such a contested environment. They include ensuring access for all, prioritizing diversity and making decisions based on merit. The last principle, he said, was obeying the law: "That is obeying the law as it’s written, not necessarily what’s asserted, but what is we believe is a lawful way to proceed."
The Trump administration applied financial penalties to pressure Columbia into agreeing to overhaul supervision of some of its academic departments that teach about the Middle East. It’s in an unusual intervention of the federal government into academics at a private university, and the American Association of University Professors has decried the move.
Kotlikoff drew criticism last year from the American Association of University Professors for challenging a professor, in private emails that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency obtained, over the content of his course on Gaza. Kotlikoff said the incident reflected the way things are supposed to work — and noted that the course ultimately enrolled only a handful of students, while another course on the Middle East that calls on students to "leave your politics at the door and have a free exchange" of ideas enrolled hundreds.
"The choice of what to teach as faculty is a really a key part of academic freedom," he said. "My private criticism of a course that was publicized was one around balance within the classroom. It’s something that we expect, and we’ve talked a lot about."
But ultimately, he said, expectations for professors are the same as they are for students — and both retain a core right to express themselves, no matter what any advocate or the Trump administration may argue.
"We’re not suppressing speech, we’re not suppressing individual opinions," he said. "But we are saying [to] you there are guidelines that protect all of our community’s rights, and my job as a university president is to protect everybody’s rights." 
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-04-01 2025-04-01 01:41||
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File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
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Posted by Skidmark 2025-04-01 07:29||
2025-04-01 07:29||
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Posted by Muggsy Peacock6312 2025-04-01 08:39||
2025-04-01 08:39||
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