President Donald Trump called for Harvard University to pay a sweeping $500 million settlement to restore its federal funding, saying the elite university has been “very bad.”
“We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard. Don’t negotiate, Linda,” Trump said to Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
He continued, “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate.”
Harvard has been one of the Trump administration’s biggest targets, and an agreement between the two parties has so far proven elusive.
Harvard did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The administration has argued it’s cracking down on antisemitism on campus amid the Israel-Hamas war. But Harvard, the only school to take on the White House directly in court, has become the epicenter of a broader clash over academic freedom, federal funding and campus oversight. And there’s a belief inside the White House that targeting the country’s most elite academic institutions is a winning political issue for the president.
Trump’s comments come as a federal judge is expected to soon rule in the school’s funding case against the Trump administration. Harvard had asked for an expedited final decision from US District Judge Allison Burroughs before September 3, which the school said was the first date it would be required to submit paperwork to close out grant funding.
The administration has previously reached agreements with fellow Ivy League institutions Columbia University and Brown University.
Columbia agreed to pay the US Treasury $200 million over three years and an additional $21 million to settle US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigations. An independent monitor will oversee implementation of various provisions of the deal.
Days later, Brown agreed to pay $50 million in grants over 10 years to Rhode Island workforce development organizations, avoiding direct payments to the federal government. And Brown’s resolution agreement specified that no provision “shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate Brown’s curriculum or the content of academic speech.”
The White House continues negotiations with Cornell University and Northwestern University. CNN reported earlier this month that the administration is seeking a staggering $1 billion settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, something the school’s leadership has cast as a nonstarter that would “devastate” the public university.
At the same Tuesday Cabinet meeting, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump administration is “having fun” working across agencies to pressure higher education institutions.
As an example, he pointed to recent administration actions to try to address university ownership of patents for research that federal funding has paid for.
“So we are going to make a deal with them all, which is: if we give them the money, don’t you think it’s fair that the United States of America and the taxpayers who fund it get a piece of that, right?” Lutnick said.
The administration targeted Harvard’s patents last month, with Lutnick writing a letter to President Alan Garber issuing an “immediate comprehensive review” of the school’s federally funded research programs. The administration is also initiating an arcane process under the Bayh-Dole Act that means that if Harvard doesn’t disclose or patent its inventions, the federal government can take ownership of them or grant third-party licenses.
“I mean, we just have a blast, you know? Because Linda’s hitting Harvard, and she says, ‘What can we do now?’ We send them a patent letter and hit them again. So we’re having fun together,” Lutnick said.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
