Battle heats up: Earlier this month, the Trump administration, which has declared war on elite universities and threatened to pull their funding, "sent Harvard a list of demands that included auditing professors for plagiarism, reporting to the federal government any international students accused of misconduct, and appointing an outside overseer to make sure that academic departments were 'viewpoint diverse,'" per The New York Times. The administration has repeatedly voiced that elite schools' failure to act to stamp out antisemitism on campus is part of the reason they're being targeted.
Then, last week, Harvard said it would not comply with what it says are unlawful demands by the administration, which led to the Trump administration pulling its funding.
"The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard's operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status," writes Harvard President Alan Garber. Now, Harvard is filing suit, in federal court in Massachusetts, saying the government's punitive actions show it's trying to wield "leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard."
