The former president of the United States, Barack Obama, came out in the last hours in defense of Harvard University in his pulse with the Trump administration, which on Monday night froze 2,200 million dollars of federal funds for the academic institution after it refused to fold the government’s demands on diversity or anti -Semitism programs.
In his X account, Obama replied a message from Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, who said that “no government, of the party, can dictate to private universities what to teach, who to admit, to whom to hire and what matters of investigation to follow.”
For Obama, Harvard “has given an example for other higher educational institutions: rejecting clumsy and illegal attempts to quell academic freedom,” and instead has preferred to guarantee its students “an environment of intellectual curiosity, rigorous debate and mutual respect.”
And he concludes: “Hopefully other institutions follow their example”, a barely veiled allusion to other universities also threatened with withdrawal of federal funds and that, in some cases striking with that of the University of Columbia in New York, they have adopted a much more complicating attitude with the demands of the Trump government.
Find: Trump freezes 2,200 MDD Federal Financing to Harvard after refusing to meet their demands
Harvard University assured the Trump administration on Monday that it will continue to fight anti -Semitism in its campus as it has claimed but will not accept its demands to avoid the cut of funds, that “they invade university freedoms recognized for a long time by the Supreme Court”.
University Lawyers yesterday sent a letter to the members of the “Federal Working Group to combat anti -Semitism”, created by President Donald Trump through executive order, in which they describe the University is willing to eradicate anti -Semitism but “it is not prepared to accept demands that go beyond the legal authority of any administration”.
The Trump government has universities to tolerate the protests against the Gaza War last year, which systematically calls anti -Semitic -although the presence of left -wing Jewish groups was usual -, as well as for their consolidated policies for decades of ‘positive discrimination’ to give entry into their fields to people of racial minorities according to the criteria ofi (diversity, equity, inclusion, inclusion).
With EFE information
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