Washington:
US President Donald Trump called Harvard a “joke” on Wednesday and said that after the prestigious university denied demands, he should lose his government research contracts that he accepts out of political supervision.
Trump’s administration also threatened to ban the famous learning seat from accepting foreign students, until it tilted for the requirements, as the US media reported that the authorities were considering cancellation of the tax-free situation of the university.
Trump said on his true social platform, “Harvard can no longer be considered a good place to learn, and should not be considered in any list of great universities or colleges of the world.”
“Harvard is a joke, teaches hatred and stupidity, and should not get federal money now.”
The Republican stored institute is furious – which has produced 162 Nobel Prize winners – to admission, hiring and dismiss their demand for government supervision on political slant.
Other institutions, including Columbia University, have tilted the demands less than the Trump administration, which claims that the educational aristocracy is very leftist.
Harvard clearly dismissed the pressure with his President Alan Garber, stating that the university “refuses to negotiate its freedom or its constitutional rights.”
Tax discount
Trump ordered a global research power plant, Harvard, a $ 2.2 billion in federal funding this week.
He also said on Tuesday that Harvard should “lose his tax exemption status” as a non -profit educational institution “if it did not return.
The CNN and Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was now planning to do so after Trump’s request.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields told AFP by email that “any upcoming action by IRS will be conducted independently of the President.”
Meanwhile, the Homeland Security Department said on Wednesday that “If Harvard cannot verify that it is in full compliance with its reporting requirements, the university will lose the privilege of nomination to foreign students.”
According to the website of the institution, international students enrolled 27.2 percent of Harvard’s enrollment.
Demonstrating the widespread resonance of the row, Golden State Warriors Basketball Coach Steve Cair spoke in support of Harvard.
Kerr, playing the Harvard T-shirt, said the demands on the university “Dumbest Thing I have ever heard” and cited their support of “academic freedom”.
Government wants control
Frozen payments to Harvard are for government contracts with their major research programs, mostly in medical fields where school laboratories are important in the development of new drugs and remedies.
Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities, as what they say need to reversed the variety programs with the aim of encouraging uncontrolled anti-protests and minorities.
Anti-Jewish allegations are based on a controversy over the protest against the Israeli war in Gaza which was swept away in the US college complexes last year.
Columbia University in New York – A subscription to protests – stood down last month and agreed to monitor his Middle Eastern Studies Department after federal funds threatened with loss of $ 400 million.
Claims about diversity tap in long -standing conservative complaints that American universities are very generous, closing right -wing voices and giving priority to black people and other minority groups on whites.
In the case of Harvard, the White House is demanding unprecedented levels of government control over the internal functioning of the country’s oldest and wealthiest university – and one of the world’s most respected educational and research institutes.
In a letter sent to Harvard, the administration’s demands include:
– End end admissions that keep in mind the student’s race or national origin
– Stopping the entry of foreign students “hostile to American values and institutions”
– Elimination of employees hiring based on breed, religion, sex or national origin
– Reducing the power of students in campus governance
– Auditing students and employees for “approach diversity”
– Improve the entire programs for “Anti-Jewish or other prejudice records”
– Campus break on protests
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