By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday his administration has been working with Harvard University and could announce a deal “over the next week or so” to resolve the White House’s campaign against the country’s oldest and richest university.
Trump in a post on his social media platform Truth Social raised the prospect of a deal with the Ivy League school, which has sued after his administration terminated billions of dollars in grants awarded to Harvard and moved to bar the school from admitting international students.
The Republican president’s administration has said its actions against Harvard are justified based on a litany of allegations, including that the school was not doing enough to combat antisemitic harassment on campus.
Trump said his administration is addressing “improprieties” at Harvard. He said individuals at Harvard “have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations, and appear to be committed to doing what is right.”
“If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country,” Trump wrote.
He made the statement shortly after a federal judge in Boston issued an injunction blocking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from immediately revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.
That injunction prevents the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program without first going through a months-long administrative process, which it now plans to do.
Harvard had no immediate comment on Trump’s post, but in a statement it welcomed U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs’ order, adding it “will continue to defend its rights—and the rights of its students and scholars.”
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard has filed two lawsuits seeking to unfreeze around $2.5 billion in funding and to prevent the administration from blocking the ability of international students to attend the university.
Harvard alleges that Trump has been retaliating against it, violating its free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, because it refused to accede to the administration’s demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
Burroughs is expected to rule in the coming days on Harvard’s related request that she continue blocking implementation of a proclamation Trump signed barring foreign nationals from entering the U.S. to study at the university.
International students comprise about a quarter of its student body.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Christian Martinez; editing by Bhargav Acharya and David Gregorio)
