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The Trump administration leveled another blow at Harvard University on Tuesday, directing federal agencies to cancel or redirect contracts with the Ivy League school.
According to a senior administration official, the U.S. General Services Administration will send a letter to federal agencies Tuesday asking them to identify any contracts with Harvard and whether they can be canceled or redirected elsewhere.
The review would include about 30 contracts that federal agencies hold with Harvard, worth about $100 million, according to a Trump administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal communications. Contracts with Harvard-affiliated hospitals are not part of the review.
The Trump administration has cut or frozen research funding to multiple universities and warned scores more that they are under scrutiny, in some cases criticizing schools for not doing enough to combat antisemitism. But it has acted most forcefully against Harvard, freezing billions of dollars in federal funding, launching federal investigations and revoking the school's ability to enroll international students.
Harvard has responded with two lawsuits, and a federal judge Friday issued a temporary restraining order on the Department of Homeland Security's revocation of the school's certification to enroll foreign students.
The letter from Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner at GSA, will be sent Tuesday and asks each agency to evaluate its contracts with Harvard and consider whether they efficiently promote the priorities of the agency. He asks agencies to consider "other vendors" in the future.
The letter cites a litany of concerns with Harvard related to racial discrimination and antisemitism. "GSA understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life," Gruenbaum wrote. "The statistical evidence of Harvard's racial discrimination in their admissions - as revealed in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard - is shocking, to say the least."
Two years ago, in cases challenging Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Supreme Court ruling overturned decades of precedent allowing race to be considered in college admissions. Universities across the country changed their admissions practices to comply with the ruling. Last fall, the share of students at Harvard who identified as Black was lower than it had been the previous year.
Gruenbaum also wrote that "troubling revelations have come to light regarding Harvard and its affiliates' potential discriminatory hiring practices and possible violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
If work is determined to be a critical need, contracts could be transitioned to another vendor, the Trump administration official said Tuesday. If a contract is not considered critical - such as some executive training - it would be terminated.
Spokespeople for Harvard did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday.
In an interview with NPR that aired Tuesday, Harvard's president, Alan Garber, said that the school has problems it needs to address but that he doesn't understand how the Trump administration's actions align with the stated goal of combating antisemitism.
"What is perplexing is the measures that they have taken to address these that don't even hit the same people that they believe are causing the problems," Garber said. "Why cut off research funding? … The research funding is given to universities and other research institutions to carry out work - research work - that the federal government designates as high-priority work. It is work that they want done. They are paying to have that work conducted. Shutting off that work does not help the country, even as it punishes Harvard, and it is hard to see the link between that and, say, antisemitism."
On Monday, President Donald Trump posted a message on social media: "I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!"
Jason Altmire, president and chief executive of Career Education Colleges and Universities, welcomed Trump's words. "The best way to support trade schools is to reduce the regulatory burden facing private career schools while increasing funding that allows students interested in the trades to choose the highest quality school," he said in a statement. "President Trump has taken significant steps in this direction and we are optimistic that his announcement Monday will continue that momentum."
Several unions at Harvard condemned the Trump administration attacks and said the attempt to revoke the school's certification to enroll international students was unlawful.
"I have been a non-citizen researcher in the United States for almost 12 years," Ozan Baytas, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement. "My research here has not only contributed to our understanding of the brain but also generated potential therapeutics for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases."
He said that more than half of postdoctoral researchers at Harvard are non-citizens. "If we are kicked out, universities will never be the same, and indeed neither will the country that houses them."
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