Trump administration bars Harvard from future research grants

US Education Department Secretary McMahon halts funding in escalation of dispute centred around anti-Semitism claims.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced that Harvard University will no longer receive public funding for research in a sharp escalation of its dispute with the top university.

In a letter to Harvard on Monday, US Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon said the elite university had made a “mockery” of higher education and should no longer seek federal grants, “since no 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,” McMahon wrote in the letter.

The move comes after the Trump administration last month froze nearly $2.3bn in federal funding to Harvard over what it claimed was its failure to tackle rampant anti-Semitism on campus.

The administration announced the freeze after Harvard rejected a series of demands that it said would subject the university to undue government control, including that it accede to external audits of faculty and students to ensure “viewpoint diversity”.