Three hours ago, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told Harvard to forget about applying for future grant money from the federal government: it won’t be forthcoming. This is an obvious sequel to battles the administration has been fighting with Harvard and other universities. Those fights involve the administration’s efforts to block or retrieve funding that had already been committed by the Biden administration. Whatever the legal merits of those efforts may be, they raise the obvious question: what about funding going forward? McMahon’s letter answers that question.
Dear @Harvard: pic.twitter.com/XmMimXfkX0
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) May 5, 2025
McMahon’s letter launches a broad-based attack on Harvard, recalling various scandals of the last few years. This is probably the most important language:
Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court’s ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans.
The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard’s consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided. Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni. You have an approximately $53 Billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.
Emphasis added. The most salient point is that the Supreme Court has specifically found that Harvard engages in race discrimination. I don’t think Harvard has yet internalized this reality. Everything Harvard says suggests that it continues to regard race discrimination as one of its most cherished values. As long as this is true, I agree with the administration that it should send our tax dollars somewhere else. If Harvard issues a sincere mea culpa and makes a credible effort to leave race discrimination behind, I think the administration should rethink its position. But that certainly hasn’t happened yet.
