Interagency task force terminated additional ~$450M in Harvard research grants after president publicly defied administration demands

On May 13, 2025, the interagency Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the termination of approximately $450 million in additional federal research grants to Harvard University, spanning multiple agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and others. The announcement came one week after Harvard President Alan Garber publicly stated the university would not comply with the administration's April 11 demands — which had called for changes to university governance, admissions policies, hiring practices, and student conduct programs. The task force statement accused Harvard of "prioritizing appeasement over accountability" and declared that the university had "forfeited the school's claim to taxpayer support." The new terminations compounded the $2.2 billion in federal research funding already frozen on April 14, 2025, bringing the administration's total financial action against Harvard past $2.6 billion.

The escalation followed a clear pattern: Harvard was subjected to increasing financial pressure each time university leadership publicly refused administration demands. The administration's pretext was antisemitism enforcement, but the task force's own statement tied the terminations directly to Harvard's refusal to comply with demands that a federal court later found were political in nature. In September 2025, a federal court ruled that the Harvard funding campaign constituted unlawful retaliation for First Amendment-protected activity — finding that the administration had used federal grant authority as a coercive lever against an institution for its protected speech. The May 13 escalation is a distinct government act: a formal interagency decision to terminate, not merely freeze, an additional tranche of funding in direct response to Harvard's public refusal to submit to White House policy demands.