The Trump administration is set to cancel the federal government’s remaining federal contracts with Harvard University — worth an estimated $100 million, according to a letter that is being sent to federal agencies on Tuesday. The letter also instructs agencies to “find alternative vendors” for future services.
The additional planned cuts, outlined in a draft of the letter obtained by The New York Times, represented what an administration official called a complete severance of the government’s longstanding business relationship with Harvard.
The letter is the latest example of the Trump administration’s determination to bring Harvard — arguably the country’s most elite and culturally dominant university — to its knees, by undermining its financial health and global influence. Since last month, the administration has frozen about $3.2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard. And it has tried to halt the university’s ability to enroll international students.
The latest letter, dated May 27 from the U.S. General Services Administration, is expected to be delivered Tuesday morning to federal agencies, according to an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official had not been authorized to discuss internal communications.
The letter instructs agencies to respond by June 6 with a list of contract cancellations. Any contracts for services deemed critical would not be immediately canceled but would be transitioned to other vendors, according to the letter, signed by Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the G.S.A.’s federal acquisition service, which is responsible for procuring government goods and services.
Contracts with about nine agencies would be affected, according to the administration official.
Examples of contracts that would be affected, according to a federal database, include a $49,858 National Institutes of Health contract to investigate the effects of coffee drinking and a $25,800 Homeland Security Department contract for senior executive training. Some of the Harvard contracts under review may have already been subject to “stop work” orders.
“Going forward, we also encourage your agency to seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard,” the letter said.
The administration has cast its actions against Harvard as a fight for civil rights. It has accused the university of liberal bias, of continuing to use racial considerations in its admissions policies despite a Supreme Court ban, and of allowing antisemitic behavior on campus.
The university in Cambridge, Mass., has cast the fight as one over its First Amendment rights and accuses the Trump administration of trying to control its personnel, curriculum and enrollment.
Faced with government demands that included a ban on students “hostile to the American values,” an audit of the political ideology of students and faculty to ensure “viewpoint diversity,” and quarterly status updates to the administration, Harvard has vigorously pushed back in federal court.
In one lawsuit, filed last month, Harvard seeks the restoration of more than $3 billion in federal funding. In another, filed last week, it has asked a federal court to reinstate its right to enroll international students.
Last week, Judge Allison D. Burroughs temporarily reinstated Harvard’s right to enroll international students, and a hearing on Thursday will determine whether that order should be extended.
During his campaign for a second term, President Trump attacked elite universities as controlled by “Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” and vowed to increase taxes on the investment returns of university endowments, a plan approved this month by the House of Representatives. The tax provision, which still needs Senate approval, would cost Harvard, which has an endowment of $53 billion, an estimated $850 million a year.
Harvard has borne the brunt of the White House’s assault on higher education, and administrators and faculty on campus have watched with growing fear as the federal government has handed down edict after edict, cutting away at the financial foundation of the school.
The university has about 6,800 international students, making up 27 percent of its total enrollment. Harvard’s president, Alan M. Garber, characterized the cancellation of its ability to enroll international students as a potentially devastating blow.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” Dr. Garber wrote in a statement last week, adding that it “imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The Trump administration letter cited what it called a pattern in which Harvard had shown a “lack of commitment to nondiscrimination and our national values and priorities.”
As evidence, the letter said that The Harvard Law Review, an independent student-run publication, had recently given a fellowship to a law student who had been accused of assaulting a Jewish student during a 2023 pro-Palestinian campus protest.
The student avoided criminal prosecution on misdemeanor assault charges in that case and agreed to perform community service, but did not admit wrongdoing.
The letter also claimed that Harvard had not complied with the 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned the use of race as a deciding factor in admissions.
But the percentage of Black first-year students declined to 14 percent in fall 2024 after that decision, from 18 percent a year earlier. In the same period, Black enrollment in Harvard Law School’s first-year class dropped to 3.4 percent, the lowest it had been since the 1960s.
The letter did not provide statistical evidence for its claim about admissions, but cited the university’s addition of a remedial math course. It said the course was the result “of employing discriminatory factors, instead of merit, in admission decisions.”
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
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