U.S. President Donald Trump has said he is considering redirecting the $3 billion grant money for scientific and engineering research previously granted to Harvard University towards trade schools.
Trump insinuated this on Monday in comments on his social media platform, less than a week after his administration sought to block the school from enrolling foreign students.
Harvard Funding Cuts
Trump recently cut $3 billion in federal grants to Harvard, complaining that the institution hired Democrats, “Radical Left idiots and ‘bird brains'” as professors. Harvard has, however, sued to restore the funding, saying the cuts are an unconstitutional attack on its free speech rights and are unlawful.
Most of that grant money is appropriated by Congress for the National Institutes of Health to disburse to fund biomedical research after a lengthy application process by individual scientists, work that is not typically done at trade schools. Harvard authorities said it was told earlier in May that virtually all of its federal grant awards were revoked in a series of letters by the NIH, the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other agencies.
