特朗普政府称削减哈佛大学资金是对“种族歧视”的惩罚
【中美创新时报2025 年 5 月 28 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）在特朗普总统周末的威胁和批评之后，联邦政府于周二切断了与哈佛大学的最后一点商业联系。《波士顿环球报》记者迈克·达米亚诺和希拉里·伯恩斯对此作了下述报道。
美国总务管理局高级官员乔希·格鲁恩鲍姆指示所有联邦机构终止与哈佛大学的任何合同或将其转让给其他供应商。他还在周二发给联邦采购官员的一封信中表示，政府机构今后应避免与哈佛大学签订任何新合同。
这封信实际上结束了美国政府与哈佛大学长达数十年的商业关系。此前几个月，哈佛大学数十亿美元的研究经费已被终止，这标志着特朗普政府对哈佛大学施加非同寻常压力的最新升级。
政府还展开了一系列调查，试图禁止哈佛大学招收外国学生，并采取行动取消该大学的免税地位，这可能会给学校造成数亿美元的损失。
尽管特朗普政府最初针对哈佛的理由是校园反犹太主义，但格伦鲍姆周二的信函更多地关注了政府对哈佛大学招生和聘用行为违反反歧视法的指控。因此，他表示，哈佛大学不应该被允许获得联邦资助。
这封信中提到的联邦合同价值约1亿美元，其中包括国防部的管理培训合同和卫生与公众服务部的能量饮料研究合同。此前，美国政府已经终止了与哈佛大学签订的超过27亿美元的合同和拨款，其中大部分用于生物医学研究。
哈佛大学发言人杰森·牛顿表示：“这些解雇行为不仅会阻止拯救生命的研究，在某些情况下，还会使联邦政府在国会拨款时已指定为优先事项的多年重要工作付诸东流。我们将继续打击非法解雇行为。”
尽管麻省总医院布莱根分院和波士顿儿童医院等哈佛附属医院最初是政府审查哈佛资助的对象，但它们已获得豁免，不受削减影响。
格伦鲍姆的信中详细阐述了政府针对哈佛大学的种种理由。 联邦政府指控哈佛大学系统性地歧视白人、男性、异性恋者，在某些情况下，甚至歧视亚裔美国人。
格鲁恩鲍姆写道：“作为纳税人的受托人，政府有责任确保采购资金流向那些促进和拥护非歧视原则和国家利益的供应商和承包商。”
哈佛大学否认了政府的指控，并起诉了特朗普政府。在波士顿联邦法院审理的两起案件中，哈佛大学的律师辩称，特朗普政府的策略违反了联邦法律和宪法，构成非法报复。许多律师，包括一些赞同特朗普对大学批评的保守派人士，都认为特朗普政府的一些策略似乎是非法的。
哈佛大学政府周二的信函指控其招生和聘用行为以及《哈佛法律评论》存在歧视。联邦机构已对所有这些问题展开调查。
美国司法部正在调查哈佛大学的招生实践是否违反了最高法院禁止大学招生中采取平权行动的禁令。教育部和平等就业机会委员会已启动调查，调查哈佛大学在招聘和晋升方面涉嫌歧视白人、亚裔美国人、男性和异性恋者。
教育部和卫生与公众服务部正在调查《哈佛法律评论》在遴选作者时考虑种族和性别因素而违反民权法的指控。（《哈佛法律评论》是哈佛大学学生运营的独立刊物。）
特朗普政府官员表示，这些调查是其根除全社会多元化、公平和包容性做法运动的一部分。格伦鲍姆的信中还称，哈佛大学未能打击校园反犹太主义，这是一种歧视。
哈佛大学否认存在歧视行为。特朗普政府及其盟友批评的一些招聘做法是联邦法规规定的合法要求，但特朗普在本届任期的第一天就撤销了这些法规。两年前平权行动禁令颁布后，招生办公室修改了招生流程，使招生官员无法看到申请人的种族和民族信息。
去年，即禁令实施的第一年，哈佛大学新生中黑人学生的比例下降了4 个百分点。
哈佛大学发言人牛顿表示：“正如我们反复声明的那样，哈佛大学在招生和聘用过程中遵守法律，包括在 2023 年 6 月美国最高法院就 SFFA 诉哈佛大学一案作出裁决后对我们的招生政策做出的改变。”
贯穿这些调查和其他调查的都是哈佛大学官员面临刑事起诉的威胁。
据《纽约时报》报道，针对哈佛大学招生行为的调查是根据《虚假申报法案》展开的，该法案旨在惩罚欺骗政府的个人和机构。司法部要求哈佛大学派出一名官员就学校的招生程序作证——如果政府认定其陈述不准确，该官员可能会面临刑事责任。
美国国土安全部部长克里斯蒂·诺姆在致哈佛大学国际办公室主任的一封信中要求哈佛大学提供有关外国学生的全面记录，信中写道：“请注意，提供重大虚假、虚构或欺诈信息可能会使您受到刑事起诉。”
正在普林斯顿大学休假的哈佛大学访问学者哈利勒·纪伯伦·穆罕默德 (Khalil Gibran Muhammad) 表示，特朗普政府对 DEI 的关注是对精英日益多元化的强烈反对。
他说：“从 2016 年首次竞选公职到现在，特朗普一直在全面攻击美国有色人种的知名度和日益增长的人口结构，尤其是担任领导职务的有色人种。”
“改变谁可以在哈佛工作、哪些学生可以就读、哈佛教授什么内容，有可能扭转这个国家在过去一代人中发生的重大社会变革。”
曼哈顿研究所高级研究员兼宪法研究主任伊利亚·夏皮罗表示，特朗普政府对歧视问题的关注是对多年来大学做法的必要纠正。
他说：“我认为，各大学，特别是精英大学，在招聘和录取过程中都会采用这些不正当的考虑因素，这已经不是什么秘密了。”
他说，基于种族或性别给予求职者特殊待遇是违法的。“这就是《民权法案》的规定：在做出招聘决定时，你不能考虑这些受保护的群体。”
特朗普政府的批评者指责白宫针对哈佛大学是为了恐吓其他机构，使其认同特朗普的世界观。
在周二晚上举行的一场有数千名哈佛校友参加的在线活动中，1992 年毕业并曾是女子篮球队队员的哈佛州长莫拉·希利 (Maura Healey) 表示，特朗普对学校的攻击将“对美国的竞争力产生毁灭性的影响”。
希利说：“这不仅仅关乎哈佛。”
白宫没有回应置评请求。
《波士顿环球报》员工丹尼·麦克唐纳对本文亦有贡献。
附原英文报道：
Trump administration says Harvard funding cuts are punishment for ‘race discrimination’
By Mike Damiano and Hilary Burns Globe Staff,Updated May 28, 2025
The John Harvard statue is a focal point at Harvard Yard.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
After a weekend of threats and criticism from President Trump, the federal government on Tuesday severed the last of its remaining business ties to Harvard University.
Josh Gruenbaum, a top official at the US General Services Administration, instructed all federal agencies to terminate any contracts with Harvard or transfer them to other vendors. He also said in a letter sent to federal procurement officials Tuesday that government agencies should refrain from awarding any new contracts to Harvard in the future.
Related: Read the letter instructing federal agencies to end contracts with Harvard
The letter effectively ends the government’s decades-long business relationship with Harvard. It follows the termination of billions of dollars in research grants in recent months and represents the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s extraordinary pressure campaign against the school.
The government has also launched an array of investigations, attempted to bar Harvard from enrolling foreign students, and moved to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status, which could cost the school hundreds of millions of dollars.
Although the Trump administration’s original rationale for targeting Harvard was campus antisemitism, Gruenbaum’s letter Tuesday focused more on the government’s allegations that Harvard’s admissions and hiring practices violate antidiscrimination laws. For that reason, he said, Harvard should not be allowed to receive federal funding.
The federal contracts targeted in the letter are worth about $100 million, including one from the Department of Defense for management training and another from Health and Human Services for research on energy drinks. The government had already terminated more than $2.7 billion in contracts and grants to Harvard, much of it destined for biomedical research.
“These terminations are putting a stop to lifesaving research and, in some cases, losing years of important work that the federal government has previously designated as a priority when the funding was appropriated by Congress,” Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said. “We will continue to fight against unlawful terminations.”
Although Harvard-affiliated hospitals, such as Mass General Brigham and Boston Children’s Hospital, were initially targeted in the government review of Harvard’s funding, they have been exempted from the cuts.
Gruenbaum’s letter laid out the government’s expanded justification for targeting Harvard. The university, the federal government alleges, systematically discriminates against white people, men, straight people, and, in some cases, Asian Americans.
“As fiduciaries to the taxpayer, the government has a duty to ensure that procurement dollars are directed to vendors and contractors who promote and champion principles of nondiscrimination and the national interest,” Gruenbaum wrote.
Harvard has denied the government’s allegations and sued the Trump administration. In two cases in federal court in Boston, Harvard’s lawyers argued the administration’s tactics violate federal laws and the Constitution and amount to illegal retaliation. Many lawyers, including some conservatives who share Trump’s critiques of universities, have agreed some of the Trump administration’s tactics appear to be illegal.
The administration’s letter on Tuesday accuses Harvard of discrimination in its admissions and hiring practices, as well as at the Harvard Law Review. Federal agencies have launched investigations on all of those subjects.
The Department of Justice is investigating whether Harvard’s admissions practices run afoul of a Supreme Court ban on affirmative action in college admissions. And the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have launched an inquiry into alleged discrimination by Harvard against white people, Asian Americans, men, and heterosexuals in hiring and promotions.
Both the education and health and human services departments are investigating allegations the Harvard Law Review violated civil rights law by taking race and sex into account when it selected authors. (The law review is an independent student-run publication housed at Harvard.)
Trump administration officials have said the investigations are part of its campaign to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion practices throughout society. The Gruenbaum letter also said that Harvard’s alleged failure to combat campus antisemitism was a form of discrimination.
Harvard has denied engaging in discrimination. Some of the hiring practices criticized by the Trump administration and its allies were legally required under federal rules that Trump revoked on the first full day of his current term. The admissions office revamped its practices after the affirmative action ban two years ago so that admissions officers cannot see the race and ethnicity of applicants.
The share of Black students in Harvard’s freshman class fell by 4 percentage points last year, the first year the ban was in effect.
“As we have stated repeatedly, Harvard complies with the law in its admissions and hiring practices, including through changes made to our admissions polices following the US Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA vs Harvard in June 2023,” Newton, the Harvard spokesperson, said.
Running through these investigations and others is the specter of criminal prosecution of Harvard officials.
The investigation into Harvard’s admissions practices was opened under the False Claims Act, a law designed to punish people and institutions that defraud the government, The New York Times reported. The Justice Department told Harvard to put forward an official to testify about the school’s admissions procedures — potentially exposing that person to criminal liability if the government determined their statements to be inaccurate.
In a letter to the head of the Harvard International Office, demanding sweeping records about foreign students, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote: “Please be advised that providing materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent information may subject you to criminal prosecution.”
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a visiting scholar at Harvard who is on sabbatical from Princeton University, said the Trump administration’s focus on DEI is a backlash against the increasing diversity of the elite.
“What is consistent from Trump’s first run for office in 2016 to this very moment has been a full-scale assault on the visibility and increasing demographics of people of color in America, and more particularly, people of color in leadership roles,” he said.
“Changing who gets to work at Harvard, what students get to attend Harvard, what gets taught at Harvard has the potential to reverse significant social changes that have occurred in this country over the past generation.”
Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said the Trump administration’s focus on discrimination was a necessary corrective to years of university practices.
“I think it’s an open not-so-secret that universities across the board, particularly the elite ones, use these improper considerations in hiring and admissions,” he said.
Giving preferential treatment to job candidates based on race or sex is illegal, he said. “That’s what the Civil Rights Act says: you can’t take these certain protected categories into account when making hiring decisions.”
Critics of the Trump administration have accused the White House of targeting Harvard to intimidate other institutions into aligning themselves with Trump’s worldview.
At an online event Tuesday evening attended by thousands of Harvard alumni, Governor Maura Healey, a 1992 graduate who played on the women’s basketball team, said Trump’s attacks on the school will have a “devastating effect on American competitiveness.”
“This is about more than Harvard,” said Healey.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Danny McDonald of the Globe staff contributed to this story.
