Tag: US Secretary of Education

Harvard Explores New Center for Conservative Scholarship Amid Trump Attacks
Harvard University is considering launching a major Center for Conservative Scholarship, a move many see as a strategic effort to counter escalating pressure from the Trump administration over allegations of liberal bias and campus antisemitism. The proposal, under discussion among top university leadership and potential donors, aims to bolster “viewpoint diversity” without becoming overtly partisan.
What’s Being Proposed
The envisioned center, modeled on Stanford’s Hoover Institution, could cost between $500 million and $1 billion. Harvard officials—including President Alan Garber and Provost John Manning—have discussed the initiative with major donors, emphasizing that it would prioritize evidence-based, rigorous debate and showcase a spectrum of perspectives. The center is intended to address growing concerns that students and faculty are self-censoring; a 2024 Harvard survey revealed just one-third of graduates felt comfortable engaging controversial topics, and a separate poll showed only 3% of professors identified as conservative.
The move comes amid rising tensions with the Trump administration, which has frozen over $2.2 billion in federal research grants and threatened to revoke tax-exempt status, citing alleged antisemitism and discriminatory institutional practices. Harvard is suing the government to contest funding freezes; a court hearing is set for later this month. White House officials contend that a conservative center represents little more than symbolic appeasement and not a solution to deeper ideological concerns .
The dispute has drawn national attention to academic stewardship and ideological balance in elite institutions.
While there’s no direct market reaction, the freeze on federal funding may affect Harvard’s capacity to finance research and student aid.
If established, Harvard’s center would mark a notable expansion in conservative academic infrastructure, potentially influencing curricula and hiring patterns—not unlike Stanford’s Hoover Institution, but distinct in its explicitly nonpartisan intent .
Policy analysts and scholars view Harvard’s effort as part of a broader movement to institutionalize intellectual pluralism on campuses:
“This is a national reform movement,” noted Paul Carrese of Arizona State University, speaking on similar programs at public universities.
However, critics warn that such initiatives risk tokenism, unless they’re accompanied by measurable shifts in faculty diversity and academic culture .
Harvard’s exploration of a Conservative Scholarship Center reflects mounting pressures at the intersection of education, politics, and funding. As it braces for federal scrutiny and internal debate, the university may redefine how academic openness is operationalized—not through compliance alone, but via concrete institutional commitments to viewpoint diversity.
July 11, 2025
Judge Halts Trump Administration’s Attempt to End Harvard’s Enrollment of Foreign Students
A federal judge on Friday granted Harvard University’s emergency motion to block the Trump administration from revoking its ability to enroll international students, as litigation on the matter continues.
In her order, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said Harvard showed “it will sustain immediate and irreparable injury” if the Trump administration is allowed to implement its revocation notice before “there is an opportunity to hear from all parties.”
The order allows Harvard to maintain its “status quo” in enrolling international students for now. Burroughs has scheduled another hearing for May 27.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem notified Harvard a day earlier that the government would be terminating its student visa program, marking a major escalation in the administration’s pressure campaign against the Ivy League university.
This development is extraordinary, but it does not appear out of the blue: In mid-April, while canceling nearly $3 million in DHS grants to Harvard, Noem simultaneously demanded that the university turn over records on foreign students alleged to have engaged in “illegal and violent activities.” Failure to cooperate would jeopardize Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification — which allows schools to admit international students. Evidently, Noem has now followed through on that threat.
Harvard sued the Trump administration less than 24 hours after Noem’s revocation notice was issued.
“The government’s action is unlawful,” the university said in a statement on Thursday, adding: “This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”
Roughly 7,000 students across Harvard’s 13 schools are student visa holders, according to the university.
May 23, 2025
The Trump Administration extended its dispute with Harvard to include the university’s hiring practices
In a dramatic expansion of its long-running conflict with elite academic institutions, the Trump administration—through ongoing legal proxies and influence networks—has extended its scrutiny of Harvard University, moving beyond affirmative action in admissions to now challenge the university’s faculty hiring practices. The escalation signals a broader campaign to reshape how elite schools approach diversity, equity, and institutional autonomy.
The development stems from a complaint filed in late April with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which alleges that Harvard’s faculty recruitment and hiring decisions discriminate against white and Asian-American applicants in favor of candidates from underrepresented racial groups. The complaint is backed by conservative legal advocacy group America First Legal, co-founded by former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller.
The Trump administration first took aim at Harvard in 2018, when the Department of Justice intervened in a lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), accusing the university of discriminating against Asian-American students in its undergraduate admissions process. That case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2023 that race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unconstitutional.
Now, conservative legal forces are leveraging that precedent to argue that similar race-based considerations are influencing faculty selection—an area traditionally shielded by broader academic freedom protections.
“The Supreme Court has made clear that racial balancing has no place in American institutions,” said Gene Hamilton, general counsel at America First Legal. “That includes who teaches our students—not just who gets admitted.”
According to internal documents reviewed by New York Budget, the complaint singles out hiring patterns in Harvard’s humanities and social science departments, where over the past five years, approximately 60% of tenure-track hires were individuals identifying as Black, Hispanic, or Native American—groups that represent less than 15% of PhD graduates nationally in those fields.
In a statement, Harvard strongly rejected the allegations, stating its hiring practices are “guided by academic excellence, scholarly potential, and a commitment to advancing knowledge and pedagogy—not by racial quotas.”
“We are proud of our faculty’s diversity, which enhances the quality of teaching, learning, and research,” said university spokesperson Jonathan Swain. “Harvard follows all applicable laws in its employment practices and will vigorously defend itself against any unfounded legal claims.”
University officials also noted that faculty search committees conduct holistic evaluations and often include external peer reviewers, with final decisions approved by a faculty council and the president’s office.
While President Biden’s Department of Justice has officially distanced itself from the latest probe, legal experts say the infrastructure built under Trump—particularly within OCR and other regulatory bodies—continues to influence investigations under conservative pressure.
“This is a textbook example of regulatory capture through the courts and complaints process,” said Professor Lorraine Feldman, a constitutional law scholar at NYU. “It’s not technically the Trump administration anymore, but the ecosystem it built is alive and well.”
Several Republican-led states—including Florida, Texas, and Missouri—have joined the legal pressure campaign, with their attorneys general filing amici curiae briefs supporting a formal investigation into Harvard’s faculty diversity programs.
The hiring probe is part of a larger effort by conservative groups to challenge diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across sectors. Since 2023, more than 25 states have proposed or passed legislation banning DEI offices in public universities, and private institutions are increasingly targeted through litigation.
In a public appearance on Newsmax, former President Donald Trump praised the latest development, calling it a “patriotic effort to save American education from the radical left.”
“It’s not about race—it’s about merit,” Trump said. “Harvard should be hiring the best people, not the most ‘woke’ candidates.”
Higher education advocates worry that the probe could have a chilling effect on university hiring and threaten the principle of institutional autonomy.
“This isn’t just about Harvard,” warned Irene Bautista, director of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “It’s about whether colleges and universities can make independent decisions to build faculties that reflect the world we live in.”
Others note that the increased legal scrutiny may discourage qualified scholars of color from entering the academic job market, further narrowing pipelines that are already under strain.
As Harvard braces for another protracted legal fight, the battle over race in higher education is shifting from lecture halls to hiring committees. For conservative activists, it’s an extension of a broader cultural war. For universities, it’s an existential challenge to their autonomy, values, and ability to define excellence on their own terms.
The Department of Education has not confirmed whether it has formally opened an investigation, but internal sources suggest preliminary inquiries are underway.
Whether this new front will result in significant legal action—or a Supreme Court ruling on faculty hiring—remains to be seen. But what’s clear is that in the post-affirmative action era, the conflict over diversity in higher education is far from over.
May 13, 2025
The Trump administration will garnish wages of 5.3 million defaulted student loan borrowers this summer
The Trump administration resumed collection efforts on defaulted student loans Monday after a roughly five-year hiatus — and affected borrowers could begin feeling the financial consequences sooner than experts expected.
The U.S. Department of Education released new details on what actions it plans to take, when.
Here’s what to know.
Federal benefits could be garnished by June
The Education Department said it began this week alerting around 195,000 student loan borrowers in default that their federal benefits will be subject to garnishment in 30 days.
Borrowers could have their benefits, including Social Security retirement checks, seized by the government as soon as June, the Education Department said.
Wages at risk over the summer
The Treasury Department will send notices to 5.3 million defaulted borrowers about the collection activity of their wages “later this summer,” the Education Department wrote in the Monday press release.
How student loan collection efforts have changed
Since the pandemic began in March 2020, collection activity on federal student loans has mostly been paused. The Biden administration focused on extending relief measures to struggling borrowers in the wake of the Covid pandemic and helping them to get current.
The Trump administration’s aggressive collection activity is a sharp turn away from that strategy, experts say.
“Borrowers should pay back the debts they take on,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a video posted on X on April 22.
The U.S. government has extraordinary collection powers on federal debts and it can seize borrowers’ federal tax refunds, wages, and Social Security retirement and disability benefits.
But in the past, student loan borrowers were usually given 65 days’ notice before the garnishment of their federal benefits, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
“Odd that they say a 30-day notice,” Kantrowitz said.
Historically, the offsets to people’s retirement and disability benefits were also “a last resort,” Kantrowitz said, “occurring a year after wage garnishment and other attempts at collection had failed.”
“Given the timing, it sounds like they are not pursuing the normal due diligence schedule for collecting defaulted federal student loans,” Kantrowitz added.
The Education Department provided borrowers with federal student loans in default the required notice, a spokesperson for the agency said in an emailed statement.
“Before an offset begins, a notice of intent to offset is sent to borrowers last known address to inform them their offset is scheduled to begin in 65 days,” they told CNBC. “The notice may be sent only once, and borrowers may have received this notice before COVID.”
Social Security garnishments may hurt retirees
Carolina Rodriguez, director of the Education Debt Consumer Assistance Program in New York, recently told CNBC that she was especially concerned about the consequences of resumed collections on retirees.
“Losing a portion of their Social Security benefits to repay student loans could mean not having enough for food, transportation to medical appointments or other basic necessities,” Rodriguez said in an April interview.
There are some 2.9 million people ages 62 and older with federal student loans, as of the first quarter of 2025, according to Education Department data. That’s a 71% increase from 2017, when there were 1.7 million such borrowers.
How to avoid collection activity
Borrowers in default will receive emails making them aware of the new policy, the Education Department said. You can contact the government’s Default Resolution Group and pursue a number of different avenues to get current on your loans, including enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan or signing up for loan rehabilitation.
Some borrowers may also be eligible for deferments or a forbearance, which are different ways to pause your payments, Rodriguez said.
“We’re advising clients to request a retroactive forbearance to cover missed payments, and a temporary forbearance until they can get enrolled in an income-driven repayment plan,” she said.
May 6, 2025