America's Talking - Trump Administration Moves to Cut Federal Contracts With Harvard

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

(The Center Square) – In another blow to Harvard University, the Trump administration has moved to cancel federal contracts with the Ivy League school. The General Services Administration announced that it is working with various federal agencies to “review” government contracts with the university in preparation to “terminate” or “transition” the contracts. The move by the independent federal government agency, funded only about 1% through congressional appropriation, comes at the behest of President Donald Trump.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_3fd7bf25-7786-4020-8b87-d8138de6b470.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Aliana Kernodal. Today we're talking about the Trump administration's move to cancel federal contracts with Harvard University. Joining me to tell us more about this is the Center Square's regional editor, Sarah Roderick Fitch. Sarah, what are these contracts and why are they being canceled? Well, there are various contracts. So I think some of them, I mean, there's a lot of back and forth. There's been a lot of actually not just sort of contracts, but then they, Trump administration has said, hey, we're going to revoke certain funding and grants and whatnot. And just by looking at it, I mean, some of it's like, you know, a lot of it's like research based, some of it's medical stuff, but a lot of it's research based. A lot of people have questions like, why is, why is, you know, the federal government giving Harvard, you know, federal funding when they have billions of dollars in an endowment, which is really actually a very excellent question in itself?

And yeah, so a lot of it is based back, it's like is basically research. A lot of them are mostly research based on what I, you know, my, my reporting and whatnot. But yeah, there's been back and forth. The Trump administration has accused the university of not really complying with, of course, like basically saying, hey, they're not, they're not really doing enough to stamp out sort of the anti-Semitism that they're really sort of fostering that. And then they're also tying it in. They're saying, hey, the university has close ties with the Chinese Communist Party. And so that's where it's kind of stemming from. But it's really just sort of, and then the university saying, hey, we're not going to bend to you what you want us to do.

You're violating our First Amendment rights. And it's just, it's constant, it's been a constant back and forth, really, between the Trump administration and Harvard for what seems like since Trump took office, really. So you mentioned there's research that's being funded by this. Has there been concerns about how that might impact any kind of important projects? Do we know? Don't really know specifics, but yes. I mean, that has been raised. I mean, there's different people saying, I mean, I think, you know, it varies.

I haven't heard any sort of necessarily specifics. But, I mean, the federal government, it, you know, it funds billions and billions. of dollars of research all across the country. There's no telling. I mean, I think the Trump administrations is kind of like, well, I mean, you have, again, you have billions of dollars in an endowment. Why can't you be, you know, using this? And one of the other problems where they're kind of hitting them on both ends is recently with the visa. They're trying to the Secretary of State, not Secretary of State, I'm sorry, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christine Noam saying, hey, we want we're going to revoke their visa privileges for their foreign students saying,

hey, none of them can, they can't enroll. They need to either transfer or disenroll from the university. And that would actually impact them significantly from an economic standpoint because that's about, it's almost 30% of their student populations. It's over 27%. And at the rate that has been going over the years, I would say probably in the next couple of the next year or two, they would probably hit that 30 year, that 30 percent mark for foreign students just based on the past 20 years where it has grown considerably because foreign

students pay, they pay full price, they pay more. So it's a lot more. That's that they can, you know, they can receive a lot more money from, you know, from foreign students. So that's definitely an issue too. And Trump did say something about possibly like shifting this kind of funding towards trade schools. Is that like a definite policy or just something that's been said? I think it's just that sort of right now is just sort of up in the air. I mean, he's just kind of throwing that out there. Of course, I think that there would be a lot of, you know, certainly Trump's base would definitely be, you know, fall in line with that. They would probably support that. Kind of goes along with his sort of, he's trying to sort of go after sort of the

elites and the elite schools and these Ivy League schools and everything like that and sort of focus. and shift on these trade schools. I mean, that's sort of in one of his administration's funds is, hey, you know, hey, we can, you know, we should be supporting these trade schools. He says, he basically says that trade schools are a better investment instead of, you know, paying all this money for some degrees. And really, that's sort of his administration. That's one of their plans as to real in cost for some of these universities. It's not just Harvard, but most universities across, you know, the United States, tuition has just skyrocketed. And it's almost, you know, it's just basically unaffordable.

People are saddled with years and years of student debt that some of them can never really recover from, receiving degrees that really don't parlay into much into, you know, the working world. It's really hard to find those jobs. And basically, the return investment is not there. And so this is, you know, part of their plan is saying, hey, holding, schools more accountable for the degrees that they offer and saying, hey, the jobs prospects, the job market. So basically that they really feel like that these universities should be gearing the students

more towards what is in demand, what they can, where they can work and where they can get jobs and everything like that, you know, less away from, you know, subjects like gender studies or philosophy or along those lines where those are really difficult kind of, you know, to find jobs. I mean, really, and otherwise, if you're just teaching, I mean, you go there, you agree, and you're just going to be teaching. And so they're looking at the trade schools. Yes, it's just they see it as a better return on investment that, hey, there are all these jobs that need to be filled. And obviously, it's less than going to these Ivy League schools or one of these four-year institutions. You can do trade schools in, you know, one to two years.

So, yeah, you'll be interesting to see what happens. And an interesting piece of this rather complex puzzle right now. is earlier this year, Harvard did announce that it was going to offer free tuition to certain students. Do we know kind of is that still happening? That is an excellent question. I've reached out to the university. I haven't received any response yet from them. But I think that is a very interesting question.

So they opened it up. They expanded. They kind of had this whole PR blitz about, hey, if you're, if a family, makes, $200,000 or less, you know, we're going to offer free tuition and not just free tuition. There were some other, you know, there are other incentives to some like room and board books. There's other things that, you know, they could qualify for. So it sort of make them look like, hey, they're doing that. But we said at the same time, what is that, yes, again, as you can see, the foreign student

population has continued to grow. and was that sort of in a way to make up for that cost? You know, this cost of the free tuition. And right now, the whole thing with the visa stuff, that's like everything else that the Trump's administration is doing. That's tied up in the courts. There was an injunction. As soon as the Trump administration said,

hey, we're going to terminate this visa program. Harvard filed suit immediately the next day. There was an injunction. So it was like, okay, no, you can. do that. So if that does go through, I can't imagine that's not going to impact them. And that might impact that. I think it would be interesting to see. But it definitely is a lingering question on what may happen. And as well as not just those foreign, not just from the foreign visas from the international students. But I think also it's, you know, would it impact, you know, these other contracts,

the grants and whatever the university receives from the federal government and they have been, you know, cut. Again, it's back and forth and there's, you know, a lot of legal issues going on. But would those impact that? Would that impact the universities kind of like, you know, their philanthropy in a way, you know, working with these students, I guess you could say that philanthropy. And it's just really interesting. And they're also, you know, the floating idea of also taxing these schools endowments. Because like I said, Harvard has a very massive endowment.

And so that could be a huge tax revenue also. Actually, there's been legislation proposed to do that as well. Not just for Harvard, but many of these Ivy League schools, these big schools that have these huge endowments. Well, it'll be very interesting to see as more of this actually plays out and gets finalized where things go.

Thank you for your insights on this story. And you can continue to follow this story at the center square.com.