Education Secretary Linda McMahon told Harvard University in a letter on Monday that it would no longer be eligible for new federal grants, saying that it has systematically violated federal law.
McMahon’s letter to Harvard President Alan Garber comes after the Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal dollars to the university over DEI and its handling of anti-Israel protests. President Donald Trump last week said that Harvard would lose its tax-exempt status.
“Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus,” McMahon wrote. “In every way, Harvard has failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”
Dear @Harvard: pic.twitter.com/XmMimXfkX0
— Secretary Linda McMahon (@EDSecMcMahon) May 5, 2025
“Harvard University, despite amassing a largely tax-free $53.2 billion endowment (larger than the GDP of 100 countries), receives billions of dollars of taxpayer largess each year. Receiving such taxpayer funds is a privilege, not a right. Yet instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students. Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law,” she added.
She called for Harvard to institute “common sense” reforms, including merit-based hiring, ending programs that promote “crude identity stereotypes,” disciplinary reform, cooperation with law enforcement, and reporting compliance with directives from the Trump administration.
McMahon said the letter served as notice that Harvard should no longer apply for federal grants because “none would 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 a 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,” she wrote.
McMahon said that the primary issue the administration had with the university was its response to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action.
“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,” she said. 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.”
Trump has been sharply critical of Harvard, calling it a “threat to democracy” and “far left institution.”
