Harvard hit by 450 mln USD federal cut over antisemitism

NEW YORK, May 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has said it will terminate 450 million U.S. dollars in grants to Harvard University, a day after the institution's president criticized the government for threatening key freedoms.

The latest cuts, announced by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism on Tuesday, are on top of more than 2.2 billion dollars in federal funds that were frozen last month. Harvard is suing the Trump administration over demands the government has made over its academic and disciplinary policies.

President Alan Garber on Monday wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon to deny her allegation that the school has a partisan political bias, warning that government "overreach" is threatening key freedoms.

The government coalition slammed Harvard in a letter on Tuesday for failing to confront "pervasive race discrimination and antisemitic harassment."

"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," Bloomberg News cited the officials.