NEW YORK: The US government will review $9 billion of funding for Harvard University over alleged anti-Semitism on campus, authorities said Monday, after it cut millions from Columbia University, which has also seen fierce pro-Palestinian student protests.
President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted prestigious universities that saw bitter protests sparked by Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, stripping their federal funds and directing immigration officers to deport foreign student demonstrators, including those with green cards.
Officials would look at $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard and the government, as well as $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to the prestigious Ivy League institution, the General Services Administration said in a statement.
Critics argue that the Trump administration’s campaign is retributive and will have a chilling effect on free speech, while its supporters insist it is necessary to restore order to campuses and to protect Jewish students.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy.”
“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,” she added.
Trump has also targeted New York’s Columbia University, initially putting $400 million of funding under review, detaining for deportation a graduate student linked to the protests, and seeking to arrest others.
Columbia then announced a package of concessions to the government around defining anti-Semitism, policing protests and oversight for specific academic departments.
They stopped short, however, of meeting some of the more strident demands of the Trump administration, which nonetheless welcomed the Ivy League college’s proposals.
“Today’s actions by the Task Force follow a similar ongoing review of Columbia University,” said Monday’s official statement.
“That review led to Columbia agreeing to comply with nine preconditions for further negotiations regarding a return of canceled federal funds.”
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MANDALAY: A massive earthquake that rocked Myanmar could exacerbate hunger and disease outbreaks in a country already wracked by food shortages, mass displacement and civil war, aid groups and the United Nations warned Monday. The official death toll climbed past 1,700, but the true figure is feared to be much higher.
Meanwhile, hundreds of patients, including babies, the elderly and Buddhist monks, lay on gurneys in a hospital car park in the sweltering heat of Mandalay, a city still living in fear of aftershocks.
Mandalay General Hospital — the city’s main medical facility — has around 1,000 beds but despite high heat and humidity, most patients were being treated outside in the wake of the massive earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people in Myanmar and neighboring Thailand.
Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake was followed by repeated aftershocks that rattled Mandalay over the weekend, and patients were being kept outside in case more tremors cause damage inside.
“This is a very, very imperfect condition for everyone,” one medic said. “We’re trying to do what we can here,” he added. “We are trying our best.”
As temperatures soared to 39 degrees Celsius, patients sheltered under a thin tarpaulin rigged up to protect them from the fierce tropical sun.
Relatives took the hands of their loved ones, trying to comfort them, or wafted them with bamboo fans.
Small children with scrapes cried amid the miserable conditions, while an injured monk lay on a gurney, hooked up to a drip.
It is not only the patients that are suffering. Medics sat cross-legged on the ground, trying to recuperate during breaks in their exhausting shifts.
Although the hospital building itself has not been visibly affected, only a handful of patients who need intensive care, and the doctors who look after them, remain inside.
The rest crammed themselves under the tarpaulin, or a shelter close by with a corrugated iron roof surrounded by motorbikes.
Fear of aftershocks is widespread across the city, with many people sleeping out in the streets since the quake, either unable to return home or too nervous to do so.

Some have tents but many, including young children, have simply bedded down on blankets in the middle of the roads, trying to keep as far from buildings as possible for fear of falling masonry.