Trump Says Admin is Nearing $500 Million Deal With Harvard

President Donald Trump said Harvard University would agree to open trade schools to provide instruction on artificial intelligence, engines, and other vocational programs as part of a proposed $500 million settlement for past events of anti-Semitism and discrimination.

“Because we’re going to need employees. We’re going to need people with skill,” he said during a media briefing in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “This would be a giant series of trade schools. It would be run by Harvard.”

Trump said Harvard’s $500 million payment would be earmarked for that trade school program that would provide instruction in artificial intelligence, engines, and other vocations.

“It’s a big investment in trade school done by very smart people, and their sins are forgiven,” he added.

This is the third time in four months that Trump has announced being very close to a deal with Harvard.

A legal battle between the two sides began after Trump froze billions of dollars in federal funding, much of it for medical research, after a federal investigation found that America’s oldest university failed to address campus anti-Semitism and allowed diversity, equity, and inclusion practices (DEI) that violate federal civil rights laws.

Harvard called the move unconstitutional and a violation of free speech. Its April 21 lawsuit states that its federally funded research grants, which were frozen, have no connection to the harassment of Jewish students. It also says the First Amendment free speech protections do not permit the government to “interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its vision of ideological balance.”

Trump also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and moved to end the university’s visa program for international students, which prompted another lawsuit from the university. A federal court blocked that executive action.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Harvard University.

The expansion of trade schools and vocational programs to include partnerships between community colleges and local employers, in addition to the creation of certificate-level training programs and apprenticeships, has been a regular and somewhat bipartisan topic at House and Senate committee meetings in recent months.

By contrast, most of the committee meetings involving witnesses from universities and prestigious four-year schools have been about campus anti-Semitism.

Investigations into Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, and the University of California–Los Angeles, where the federal government is pursuing a $1 billion settlement, have already taken place.

Similar to the deals other institutions have made with the federal government, UCLA is also being asked to prohibit males identifying as females from competing against women in sports or using women’s facilities on campus, provide more oversight of administrative practices that promote discrimination by race or religion, and discontinue scholarships that are limited to applicants of certain races or ethnicities.