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    John Oliver on Trump’s attack on higher education: ‘No capitulation will be enough’

    On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into the Trump administration’s assault on higher education in the US. “Trump has long held a grudge against higher education, and now that he’s in power, he’s acting on it,” Oliver explained. Among other things, Donald Trump has targeted the billions of dollars granted to universities for scientific research “in order to bend them to his will”.Trump’s “war on higher education” continues a long tradition of conservative distrust of universities. Back in 1972, Richard Nixon said “the professors are the enemy,” and as Oliver noted, Republicans have railed for years against higher education for supposedly wasteful spending on scientific research – think the Fox News fixation on the alleged “shrimp on a treadmill” study – and for being supposed bastions of liberal indoctrination. “Conservatives have long sought to orient universities sharply to the right,” he said. “And in recent years, they’ve seized upon a new justification for doing this – specifically, to ‘combat antisemitism’ in the wake of student protests over Gaza.”Of those protests, Oliver noted: “Multiple things can be true. You can think some critics of the protests were conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and that some are pointing out actual instances of antisemitism. You can also acknowledge that some Jewish students did feel unsafe because of the actions of some protesters and that some protesters were made unsafe by universities calling the police on them. You can also argue that many universities did themselves no favors by failing to figure out a coherent, consistent response.“But none of that nuance has been present in the White House’s response, which has been to suggest the wholesale destruction of certain universities.” Soon after taking office, Trump convened a “Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” backed by Stephen Miller with the goal of targeting certain schools with large protest movements and, to quote its lead Leo Terrell, “taking away their money”.“Look, if colleges were spending all of their federal money on inventing a big automatic antisemitism generator, then yeah, it would make sense to take their money away,” said Oliver. “But the thing is, they’re not doing that, partly because it seems to be Elon Musk’s project.“Instead, the money being taken away is largely going to research studies, and cutting those has nothing to do with antisemitism.”As Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, put it on Face the Nation: “The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities, I think is a complete charade. It’s just an excuse for getting universities to conform.”“Right, it’s obviously bullshit,” Oliver confirmed. “The very idea that Trump’s actions are part of some great effort to defend the Jewish people is, as charades go, slightly less convincing than a toddler playing hide-and-seek.”Oliver considered a non-exhaustive list of “telltale signs that this isn’t really about antisemitism concerns”, including but not limited to the fact that Trump reportedly kept a book of Hitler’s speeches next to his bed, dined with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes this summer, brought people into his administration with records of antisemitic comments, reportedly said during his first term that “Hitler did a lot of good things”, and was endorsed in his first campaign by both David Duke and the KKK. “Hearing that Trump is suddenly waging war against antisemites is like hearing that Billy Joel is waging war against dads from Long Island,” he joked.Oliver then looked into exactly what the administration is doing, such as cancelling Columbia’s grants until the school stopped considering race in admissions, paid $200m in fines and reformed their Middle Eastern studies department, among other requirements. The university “caved in about five seconds”, Oliver noted, “officially solidifying Columbia’s reputation as the Little Bitch University, rather than what it was known for before: being the place that Timothée Chalamet went to for five minutes before realizing he didn’t need it”.The capitulation didn’t change anything, either; weeks later, the administration froze all of the university’s remaining funding from the National Institutes of Health, about $700m in total, and threatened the school’s accreditation. “There’s no guarantee the administration is going to stop making demands from Columbia, and why would they when they keep getting met?” said Oliver.The situation, which has caused a chilling effect on campus, “goes much further than Harvard and Columbia”, Oliver explained, as the administration has frozen hundreds of millions in research funds at several other private institutions, and slashed studies at several public universities. Even Northwestern, a school that tried pre-capitulating to the administration by releasing public steps taken to combat antisemitism, was targeted anyway, with over $790m in grants frozen. Those funds have still not been unfrozen, even though the university’s president, Michael Schill, the Jewish descendant of Holocaust survivors, stepped down amid forced layoffs.That case, in particular, highlighted for Oliver what the government’s assault on universities was really about. He pointed to a clip of JD Vance from 2021: “We go to the universities, we use the hundreds of billions of dollars that we send to them as leverage and we say: ‘Unless you stop indoctrinating our children, unless you stop indoctrinating our entire society, you don’t get another dime of our money.’”“That is the exact same plan as now, just hastily remodeled to be about ‘fighting antisemitism’, expecting no one to notice,” said Oliver. “It’s basically the rhetorical equivalent of when a random business clearly used to be a Pizza Hut.”The end result, as one researcher put it, is that the “science in this country is going to be destroyed”, which is bad for future innovations as well as for the private sector. One study found that every dollar of medical research funded by the NIH delivered $2.56 in economic activity. “So even if you are someone who hates learning and loves money – and yes, I am talking to one guy in particular here – publicly funded research is just a no-brainer,” said Oliver. “But obviously that is not what this is really about. This is about the right being willing to sacrifice everything, up to and including a generation’s worth of scientific progress, to get what it wants.”“And it is not hard to see what that is. Because when the administration is launching investigations like ‘why aren’t there more white men teaching at Harvard?’, you know what they’re up to,” he continued. “Just like you know what the plan was when they suddenly canceled diversity grants awarded to PhD students who were members of certain racial or ethnic groups, disabled, or from disadvantaged backgrounds.”Where do things go from here? “I don’t really know, and I’m not sure this administration does either,” said Oliver. But “even if there is not a fixed destination, there is a clear direction. And that is they want to turn back a clock that, quite honestly, had taken way too long to move forward, and restore all of academia to being a training ground for those looking to uphold old systems of power instead of questioning them.”In conclusion, he added: “You can have problems with academia. You can think it’s too cloistered or too liberal. You can think it’s becoming too expensive or that its resources are misallocated. But the notion of the state suddenly executing a sweeping takeover of higher education to this degree is chilling.”Based on everything that has happened so far, “no capitulation will be enough, and they will never stop demanding more.” Given that, Oliver argued, universities should “stop yielding, stand firm and fight back” because although it is tempting to think one more capitulation will safeguard your independence, “it’s worth asking at what point have you compromised so much that the thing you’re supposed to be defending is gone.” More

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    President of Northwestern University quits amid layoffs forced by Trump cuts

    The president of Northwestern University said Thursday that he was stepping down amid a turbulent period marked by clashes with Republican lawmakers and steep federal funding cuts under the Trump administration that forced widespread layoffs.Michael H Schill, who has led the institution for three years, has been under heavy scrutiny in conservative circles this year. The Trump administration slashed nearly $800m in research funding after sustained criticism from Republicans.“Over the past three years, it has been my profound honor to serve as president of Northwestern University,” Schill wrote in a message to students, faculty and staff. “In that time, our community has made significant progress while simultaneously facing extraordinary challenges. Together, we have made decisions that strengthened the institution and helped safeguard its future.”The university’s handling of campus protests over the war in Gaza placed Schill under fire by conservatives. During a congressional hearing last year, Republicans accused Northwestern of failing to adequately address antisemitism, with some Jewish advocacy groups even demanding his resignation.Schill acknowledged the difficulties in his resignation statement, pointing to the freeze on federal research funds among other challenges.“As I reflect on the progress we have made and what lies ahead, I believe now is the right time for new leadership to guide Northwestern into its next chapter,” he said. “Therefore, I have decided, in consultation with the leadership of the Board of Trustees, that I will step down as President.”The funding freeze, announced in April, was a major financial blow that led Northwestern to announce the elimination of about 425 jobs in July, about half of which were unfilled positions. Administrators conceded that the layoffs were “a drastic step” and “the most painful measure we have had to take”.Michael Blake, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) vice-chair and a graduate of Northwestern, posted a strong objection on social media.“Northwestern Alum. Don’t be silent. Our President is resigning b/c of GOP pressure in accusing our Alma mater of being Antisemitic (which NU is not) while the Federal govt withholds funds for Black causes (Racist). Stand up for the current Cats and those who come behind us,” he posted, referring to the wildcats nickname of Northwestern students and alumni.Others were pleased with Schill’s resignation. Republican congressman Tim Walberg of Michigan, who also serves as chairman of the House education and workforce committee, said in a statement: “President Schill will leave behind a legacy of not only failing to deter antisemitism on campus but worsening it. These students not only deserve better, but the law requires it. Northwestern’s next president must take prompt and effective action to protect Jewish students from the scourge of antisemitism.”Schill’s departure comes amid a broader Republican campaign targeting elite universities, part of an effort launched in response to student protests over the Gaza conflict. Since then, Republican lawmakers and Trump officials have escalated pressure on higher education institutions, accusing them of failing Jewish students.The administration has increasingly relied on freezing federal research dollars, sometimes in the billions, to push universities toward its policy preferences. These moves have forced several institutions to reach settlements with the Trump administration in order to resume their funding. More

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    Trump unlawfully cancelled $2.2bn in Harvard research grants, judge rules

    A federal judge on Wednesday ruled Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2bn in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the Ivy League school.The decision by US district judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House’s multi-front conflict with the country’s oldest and richest university.The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school became a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at US universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies.Three other Ivy League schools stuck deals with the administration, including Columbia University, which in July agreed to pay $220m to restore federal research money that had been nixed because of allegations the university allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.As with Columbia, the Trump administration took actions against Harvard related to the pro-Palestinian protest movement that roiled its campus and other universities after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza.Trump during a 26 August cabinet meeting demanded Harvard pay “nothing less than $500 million” as part of a settlement. “They’ve been very bad,” he told education secretary, Linda McMahon. “Don’t negotiate.“Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was the cancellation of hundreds of grants awarded to researchers on the grounds that the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.The Trump administration has since sought to bar international students from attending the school; threatened Harvard’s accreditation status; and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.Harvard has said it has taken steps to ensure its campus is welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students, who it acknowledges experienced “vicious and reprehensible” treatment following the onset of Israel’s war in Gaza.But Harvard president Alan Garber has said the administration’s demands went far beyond addressing antisemitism and unlawfully sought to regulate the “intellectual conditions” on its campus by controlling who it hires and who it teaches.Those demands, which came in an 11 April letter from an administration task force, included calls for the private university to restructure its governance, alter its hiring and admissions practices to ensure an ideological balance of viewpoints and end certain academic programs.After Harvard rejected those demands, it said the administration began retaliating against it in violation of the free speech protections of the US constitution’s first amendment by abruptly cutting funding the school says is vital to supporting scientific and medical research.Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, in a separate case has already barred the administration from halting its ability to host international students, who comprise about a quarter of Harvard’s student body. More

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    Trump says he wants ‘nothing less than $500m’ from Harvard as feud continues

    Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration “wants nothing less than $500m from Harvard” as a condition for restoring billions of dollars in federal funding to the Ivy League university.“Don’t negotiate with them, they’ve been very bad,” Trump told his education secretary, Linda McMahon, in a cabinet meeting.Trump’s comments came amid reports that his administration and Harvard are moving toward a potential settlement that could bring an end to their months-long battle over the government’s allegations that Harvard has not done enough to crack down on antisemitism tied to pro-Palestinian protests.In April, Harvard became the first – and so far only – university to sue the Trump administration over the funding cuts. It sued again the following month over the government’s efforts to block the school from enrolling international students.The university has argued that the administration unlawfully slashed $2.6bn in research funding from the university in retaliation for the school’s refusal to comply with a series of demands laid out in an 11 April letter from a federal antisemitism task force. Those demands related to campus protests, academic policies and admissions practices.A US district judge heard arguments from both Harvard and the Department of Justice last month.The Department of Justice has argued that the federal government has the authority to cancel grants when institutions violate presidential directives, and have cited Trump’s executive order purporting to combat antisemitism.The New York Times and the Associated Press have both reported that Harvard and the White House had made substantial progress toward a deal. Under the proposed agreement, according to the Times, Harvard would pay $500m in exchange for the restoration of billions in frozen federal research funds. However, key terms reportedly remain unresolved, with negotiations still continuing.The Harvard president, Alan Garber, has disputed the Times report, reportedly telling faculty that the article was inaccurate and alleged that the information had been leaked to the press by White House officials.According to Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, Garber said the university remains committed to resolving the matter through the courts and that academic freedom was nonnegotiable in any deal.In July, it was also reported that Harvard agreed to comply with federal demands to turn over employment records for thousands of staff members.Since taking office in January, Trump and his administration have made unprecedented efforts to reshape higher education, targeting elite universities over their handling of the pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, DEI programs and more.Several other universities that have faced federal funding cuts – including Columbia, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania – have reached settlement agreements with the administration to restore research funding.Columbia University agreed to pay more than $220m and implement a series of reforms to settle allegations that it was not doing enough to combat antisemitism. However, some education advocates decried that deal as a blow to academic freedom. More

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    Burner phones, wiped socials: the extreme precautions for visitors to Trump’s America

    Keith Serry was set to bring a show to New York City’s Fringe festival this year, but pulled the plug a few weeks out. After 35 years of traveling to the United States, he says he no longer feels safe making the trip.“The fact that we’re being evaluated for our opinions entering a country that, at least until very recently, purported to be an example of democracy. Yeah, these are things that make me highly uncomfortable,” said Serry, a Canadian performer and attorney.“You’re left thinking that you don’t want to leave evidence of ‘bad opinions’ on your person.”Serry is among a substantial cohort of foreign nationals reconsidering travel to the US under the Trump administration, after troubling reports of visitors facing intense scrutiny and detention on arrival.In March, a French scientist who had been critical of Donald Trump was refused entry to the US after his phone was searched. An Australian writer who was detained and denied entry in June said he was initially grilled about his articles on pro-Palestinian protests, and then watched as a border agent probed even the most personal images on his phone. He was told the search uncovered evidence of past drug use, which he had not acknowledged on his visa waiver application, leading to his rejection. German, British and other European tourists have also been detained and sent home.More than a dozen countries have updated their travel guidance to the US. In Australia and Canada, government advisories were changed to specifically mention the potential for electronic device searches.On the advice of various experts, people are locking down social media, deleting photos and private messages, removing facial recognition, or even traveling with “burner” phones to protect themselves.In Canada, multiple public institutions have urged employees to avoid travel to the US, and at least one reportedly told staff to leave their usual devices at home and bring a second device with limited personal information instead.“Everybody feels guilty, but they don’t know exactly what they’re guilty of,” said Heather Segal, founding partner of Segal Immigration Law in Toronto, describing the influx of concerns she’s been hearing.“‘Did I do something wrong? Is there something on me? Did I say something that’s going to be a problem?’”She advised travelers to assess their risk appetite by reviewing both the private data stored on their devices and any information about them that’s publicly accessible, and to consider what measures to take accordingly.US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has broad powers to search devices with minimal justification. Travelers can refuse to comply, but non-citizens risk being denied entry. CBP data shows such searches are rare; last year, just over 47,000 out of 420 million international travelers had their devices examined. This year’s figures show a significant increase, with the third quarter of 2025 reflecting an uptick in electronic device searches higher than any single quarter since 2018, when available data begins.“Anecdotally, it seems like these searches have been increasing, and I think the reason why that’s true is, undoubtedly, I think they are more targeted than before,” said Tom McBrien, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.“It seems like they are targeting people who they just don’t generally like politically.”Travelers who are concerned about their privacy should consider minimizing the amount of data they carry, McBrien said.“The less data you have on you, the less there is to search, and the less there is to collect,” he said. Beyond using a secondary device, he suggested securely deleting data, moving it to a hard drive or storing it in a password-protected cloud account.A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson rejected claims that CBP had stepped up device searches under the new administration or singled out travelers over their political views.“These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security,” the spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement.“Allegations that political beliefs trigger inspections or removals are baseless and irresponsible.”The statement acknowledged, however, that there had been heightened vetting under Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Under the leadership of the Trump Administration and Secretary Noem, we have the most secure border in American history,” it said. “This has allowed CBP to focus to actually vet and interview the people attempting to come into our country.”Alistair Kitchen, the Australian writer who was denied entry to the US in June, said the DHS’s denial of political targeting directly contradicts what he was told on arrival.Border officials “bragged actively that the reason for my targeting, for my being pulled out of line for my detainment, was explicitly because of what I’d written online about the protests at Columbia University”, he told the Guardian.While he doesn’t plan to return to the US under the Trump administration, Kitchen said that if he ever did, he would either not take a phone or bring a burner.“Under no conditions would I ever hand over the passcode to that phone,” he added. “I would accept immediate deportation rather than hand over the passcode. People should think seriously before booking travel, especially if they are journalists or writers or activists.”Various foreign nationals told the Guardian they are rethinking travel plans for tourism, family visits, academic events and work.Donald Rothwell, a professor who teaches international law at the Australian National University, says he no longer plans to accept speaking invitations to the US over fears of being detained or denied entry – which, he noted, could also trigger red flags on his record for future travel.He’s even considered traveling without a device at all, but is concerned his academic commentary in the media could be used against him regardless.“I might be commenting on matters that could be quite critical of the United States,” he said. “For example, I was very critical of the legal or lack of legal justification for the US military strikes on Iran in June.”Kate, a Canadian whose name has been withheld due to privacy concerns, said she has wrestled with complicated decisions about whether to travel across the border to see American relatives, including for an upcoming wedding. During a trip earlier this year, she deleted her social media apps before going through customs.Despite DHS assurances that travelers are not flagged for political beliefs, she said “it’s hard to believe things that this government is saying”.“It would be really nice to have trust that those kinds of things were true, and that these kinds of stories that you hear, while absolutely horrific, are isolated incidents,” she said.“But I do feel like in many ways, the United States has sort of lost its goodwill.” More

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    ‘Censorship’: over 115 scholars condemn cancellation of Harvard journal issue on Palestine

    More than 115 education scholars have condemned the cancellation of an entire issue of an academic journal dedicated to Palestine by a Harvard University publisher as “censorship”.In an open letter published on Thursday, the scholars denounced the abrupt scrapping of a special issue of the Harvard Educational Review – which was first revealed by the Guardian in July – as an “attempt to silence the academic examination of the genocide, starvation and dehumanisation of Palestinian people by the state of Israel and its allies.”The writers note that the issue’s censorship is also an example of “anti-Palestinian discrimination, obstructing the dissemination of knowledge on Palestine at the height of the genocide in Gaza”.The special issue of the prestigious education journal was planned six months into Israel’s war in Gaza to tackle questions about the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US, as the Guardian previously reported.“The field of education has an important role to play in supporting students, educators, and policymakers in contextualizing what has been happening in Gaza,” the journal’s editors wrote in their call for abstracts – which came against the backdrop of the devastation of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, including the shuttering of hundreds of schools and destruction of all of the territory’s universities.More than a year later, the special issue was just about ready – all articles had been edited, contracts with most authors had been finalized, and the issue had been advertised at academic conferences and on the back cover of the previous one. But late in the process, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, a division of the Harvard Graduate School of Education which publishes the journal, demanded that all articles be submitted to a “risk assessment” review by Harvard’s general counsel – an unprecedented demand.When the authors protested, the publisher responded by abruptly cancelling the issue altogether. In an email obtained by the Guardian, the group’s executive director, Jessica Fiorillo, cited what she described as an inadequate review process and the need for “considerable copy editing” as well as a “lack of internal alignment” about the special issue. She said that the decision was not “due to censorship of a particular viewpoint nor does it connect to matters of academic freedom”.The authors and editors flatly rejected that characterization, telling the Guardian that the cancellation set a dangerous precedent and was an example of what many scholars have come to refer to as the “Palestine exception” to academic freedom.“The decision by HEPG to abandon their own institutional mission – as well as the responsibilities that their world-leading stature demands – is scholasticide in action,” the dozens of scholars who signed the recent letter also wrote, using a term coined by Palestinian scholars to describe Israel’s “deliberate and systematic destruction” of Palestine’s educational system.“It is unconscionable that HEPG have chosen to publicly frame their cancellation of the special issue as a matter of academic quality, while omitting key publicly-reported facts that point to censorship.”Arathi Sriprakash, a professor of sociology and education at the University of Oxford and one of the letter’s signatories, told the Guardian that the special issue’s cancellation has mobilised so many education scholars “precisely because we recognise the grave consequences of such threats to academic freedom and academic integrity”.“The ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza has involved the physical destruction of the entire higher education system there, and now in many education institutions around the world there are active attempts to shut down learning about what’s happening altogether. As educationalists, we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to the pursuit of knowledge and learning without fear or threat.”‘Assault on academic freedom’The ordeal around the special Palestine issue played out against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s crackdown on US higher education institutions’ autonomy on the basis of combating alleged antisemitism on campuses.Harvard is the only university that has sued the administration in response to it cutting billions of dollars in federal funds and other punishing measures it has unleashed on universities. But internally, Harvard has pre-empted many of the administration’s demands, including by demoting scholars, scrapping initiatives giving space to Palestinian narratives and adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism that critics say is antithetical to academic inquiry.In conversations with the Harvard Educational Review editors, the journal’s publisher acknowledged that it was seeking legal review of the articles out of fears that their publication would prompt antisemitism claims, an editor at the journal said.Harvard is reportedly close to finalizing a settlement with the Trump administration along the lines of those reached by other top universities.Thea Abu El-Haj, a Palestinian-American anthropologist of education at Barnard College and one of 21 contributors to the cancelled special issue, criticized the university’s handling of the matter as yet another sign of institutional capitulation.“If the universities – or in this case a university press – are not willing to stand up for what is core to their mission, I don’t know what they’re doing,” she told the Guardian last month. “What’s the point?”A spokesperson for the Harvard Graduate School of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest letter but in an earlier statement to the Guardian wrote that the publisher “remains deeply committed to our robust editorial process”.Last month, the free speech group PEN America also condemned the special issue’s cancellation as a “blatant assault on academic freedom”.“Canceling an entire issue so close to publication is highly unusual, virtually unheard of,” Kristen Shahverdian, the program director for the group’s Campus Free Speech initiative, said in a statement.“Silencing these scholarly voices robs academics, students, and the public of the opportunity to engage with their insights. It also sends a chilling message in the context of the Trump administration’s unrelenting pressure on Harvard University and mounting political interference in higher education, including efforts that target scholarship on Palestine.” More

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    Trump administration threatens to strip Harvard University of lucrative patents

    The latest phase of the Trump administration’s offensive against Harvard University is a comprehensive review of the university’s federally funded research programs, and the threat to strip the school’s lucrative portfolio of patents.In a letter to the Harvard president, Alan Garber, posted online on Friday, Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, accused Harvard of breaching its legal and contractual requirements tied to federally funded research programs and patents.Lutnick also said the commerce department has begun a “march-in” process under the federal Bayh-Dole Act that could let the government take ownership of the patents or grant licenses.“The Department places immense value on the groundbreaking scientific and technological advancements that emerge from the Government’s partnerships with institutions like Harvard,” Lutnick wrote.He said that carried a “critical responsibility” for Harvard to ensure that its intellectual property derived from federal funding is used to maximize benefits to the American people.Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Friday’s letter ratchets up White House pressure on Harvard, which it has accused of civil rights violations for failing to take steps dictated by the administration in response to accusations that student protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza were antisemitic.Harvard sued in April after the administration began stripping or freezing billions of dollars of federal research money.In his letter, Lutnick demanded that Harvard provide within four weeks a list of all patents stemming from federally funded research grants, including how the patents are used and whether any licensing requires “substantial US manufacturing”.As of 1 July 2024, Harvard held more than 5,800 patents, and had more than 900 technology licenses with over 650 industry partners, according to the Harvard Office of Technology Development.Other universities faced with federal research funding losses have signed settlement agreements with the government, including Columbia University, which agreed to pay more than $220m, and Brown University, which agreed to pay $50m.Harvard’s president reportedly told faculty that a New York Times report that the university was open to spending up to $500m to settle with the government was inaccurate and had been leaked to reporters by White House officials.The bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act was sponsored by senators Birch Bayh of Indiana and Bob Dole of Kansas and signed into law by Jimmy Carter near the end of his term.Carter said at the time it was important that industrial innovation promote US economic health, and the legislation “goes far toward strengthening the effectiveness of the patent incentive in stimulating innovation in the United States”.Many civil rights experts, faculty and White House critics believe the Trump administration’s targeting of schools for supposedly failing to address antisemitism is a pretext to assert federal control and threaten academic freedom and free speech. More

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    Trump administration demands $1bn from UCLA to restore federal funding

    The Trump administration is seeking a $1bn settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said on Friday.The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.The Trump administration has suspended $584m in federal research funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and other agencies, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in a message to UCLA staff and students this week.Last week, the justice department notified the university that an investigation by the department’s civil right division had “concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” in violation of federal anti-discrimination law.“This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system”, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in a statement.UCLA is the first public university whose federal grants have been targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations related to antisemitism and affirmative action. The Trump administration has frozen or paused federal funding over similar allegations against private colleges.The new University of California president, James B Milliken, who oversees a university system of 10 campuses, six academic health centers and three affiliated national laboratories, confirmed on Friday that the university had received notice from the justice department and was reviewing it.“Earlier this week, we offered to engage in good faith dialogue with the Department to protect the University and its critical research mission,” Milliken said. “As a public university, we are stewards of taxpayer resources and a payment of this scale would completely devastate our country’s greatest public university system as well as inflict great harm on our students and all Californians.“Americans across this great nation rely on the vital work of UCLA and the UC system for technologies and medical therapies that save lives, grow the US economy, and protect our national security,” he added.UCLA recently reached a $6m settlement with three Jewish students and a Jewish professor who sued the university, arguing it violated their civil rights by allowing pro-Palestinian protesters in 2024 to block their access to classes and other areas on campus.The university has said it is committed to campus safety and inclusivity and will continue to implement recommendations. More