The Trump administration has upped the ante in its fight with Harvard University, threatening to ban the enrolment of international students. The US government says the actions are aimed at addressing antisemitism, but the institution says the orders threaten its independence.
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00:00The oldest and richest university in America is in a legal and moral battle against the
00:07Trump administration after refusing the president's demands to make sweeping changes to its hiring
00:13and admission policies.
00:14The US government says the changes are to address anti-Semitism, but Harvard says it
00:19has already made many steps to address the issue and the request threatens its intellectual
00:24independence and is unconstitutional.
00:26Harvard has rejected the orders and a group of its law professors has filed a lawsuit
00:31leading to the Trump administration freezing billions of dollars in funding, threatening
00:35to remove the university's tax exemption status and ban it from enrolling students from overseas.
00:41Harvard law professor Andrew Crespo says the move from the government is overreach.
00:46Those bullets have so many things that are demands that have nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
00:51He wants to appoint a federal overseer for Harvard University to audit all of our courses, to
00:57audit all of our departments, to see if they meet his definition of ideological balance and
01:03ideological preferences.
01:04In other words, he wants to see what we're teaching and he wants to change what we're
01:07teaching.
01:08He wants to see what we're researching and he wants to make sure we're only asking the
01:11questions that he wants asked and giving the answers that he wants to be given.
01:15That is not about anti-Semitism.
01:17That's about authoritarianism.
01:19Harvard is not alone.
01:20Some 60 universities are being reviewed by the administration.
01:24Columbia University had its funding threatened and agreed to make several changes in line
01:28with the government's request, but Harvard is the first to publicly fight back and students
01:33seem to be supportive.
01:35I think I and everybody feel pretty alarmed right now, but we're like cautiously optimistic
01:40that through our collective activism and those around the country and the world, really,
01:44things will hopefully look up soon.
01:46I mean, it's insulting.
01:48I mean, I can't say that the people who are taking the money away have ever saved a life
01:52in their lives.
01:53It's scary times, but I'm proud of what the administration is doing and I think we should
01:56continue to do it and fight even harder.
01:59Harvard staff and students say they're hopeful other institutions will now follow and file their
02:04own lawsuits to fight back.