The Trump administration is still optimistic about the possibility of reaching a deal with Harvard University after it announced a $200 million settlement with Columbia University on Wednesday.
“While there’s a lawsuit pending with Harvard, and I’m sure that lawsuit will play out, I do hope that Harvard will continue to come to the table with negotiations. Those talks are continuing, and we’d like to have a resolution there, outside of the courts,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a phone interview with CNN on Thursday.
Harvard faced off with the Trump administration in court on Monday, arguing that the administration’s $2 billion freeze in federal funding for research was in violation of the school’s First Amendment rights. The case has become a flashpoint in a major clash over academic freedom, campus oversight and federal funding. The judge has not made a final ruling in the case, but Harvard has asked for a decision to be made no later than September 3, when it says some of the funding cuts could become more permanent.
McMahon pointed to some recent actions taken by Harvard as positive steps, including the departure of the heads of the Middle Eastern Studies center. She described the current state of talks with the university as “ongoing” but declined to provide additional details. She also declined to provide information about the scale of any settlement the administration hopes to achieve with Harvard, which has a larger endowment than Columbia.
In a statement shortly after the Columbia deal was announced, McMahon described the move as a “seismic shift” for higher education that could serve as a “roadmap” for other schools. She said that “other universities are already looking at” the template provided by the Columbia agreement.
“Colleges and universities are understanding at this particular point that they have some issues they need to address, and I think that they are coming to the table to do that,” she said.
McMahon added that there are “other investigations that are going on” and that the Trump administration has sent letters to some other universities “letting them know that we are investigating … but I would prefer that we will not go public with those right now.”
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