“They wanted to do a convoluted job training concept, but it was turned down in that it was wholly inadequate and would not have been, in our opinion, successful,” Trump said in his post late on Monday evening.
“It was merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed,” he added, without specifying what laws Harvard has allegedly broken.
“This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event,” he added, without specifying the basis for criminal action or charges he envisaged could be involved.
TARGETING UNIVERSITIES
The Trump administration’s pressure on universities has sparked some academics, including Harvard’s former president, to raise concerns about the possibility of eroding academic freedom.
“The truth here is that our government, the American government, is attacking higher education and universities,” former Harvard president Claudine Gay said in September at an event in the Netherlands.
“The agenda here is about destroying knowledge institutions because they are centres of independent thought and information,” added the political professor, who stepped down as president in 2024.
Trump had previously sought to cut more than US$2.6 billion of funding to Harvard, and has moved to block the entry of international students – a quarter of its student body.
Fellow Ivy League institution Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration US$200 million last summer and pledged to obey rules that bar it from taking race into consideration in admissions or hiring.
The University of Pennsylvania, another Ivy League institution, also bowed to Trump administration concerns last year, announcing it would ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports.