Dive Brief:

• The Trump administration is moving to sever Harvard University’s remaining federal contracts.
• A top official at the U.S. General Services Administration advised federal agencies to review their contracts with Harvard and report back by June 6, according to a Tuesday letter first obtained by The New York Times and verified by Higher Ed Dive. The guidance covers 30 federal contracts worth approximately $100 million, a GSA spokesperson said Wednesday.
• Federal officials should “terminate for convenience” any Harvard contracts they find fail to meet agency standards, the letter said. They should also “seek alternative vendors for future services where you had previously considered Harvard,” it said. Harvard did not respond to questions Wednesday.

Dive Insight:

In his May 27 letter, Josh Gruenbaum, federal acquisition service commissioner at the GSA and a recent Trump administration appointee, invoked a regulation requiring Harvard and other recipients of federal contracts to "promote an organizational culture that encourages ethical conduct and commitment to compliance with the law."

Harvard has repeatedly failed to clear that bar, he argued.

Gruenbaum cited the academic advancement of two Harvard students who were charged with assaulting an Israeli student at an October 2023 pro-Palestinian demonstration.

In a video that went viral, Ibrahim Bharmal and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo blocked fellow student Yoav Segev from filming and escorted him away from the protest. Segev says “Don’t grab me," in the video. However, the lawyers representing Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal argue neither touched him, The Harvard Crimson reported. 

In the year and a half since the video, the Harvard Law Review selected Bharmal as a fellow, and Harvard's divinity school chose Tettey-Tamaklo as the class commencement marshal, according to media reports. Gruenbaum decried the selections without mentioning either student by name.

"At best, this sort of leadership suggests staggering incompetence. At worst, it's deliberate malice disguised as ignorance," he wrote.

Gruenbaum further argued that "Harvard has shown no indication of reforming their admissions process," despite the U.S. Supreme Court banning all race-conscious admissions practices in 2023.

He cited an introductory math class at the university as evidence, describing it as a remedial course, which typically wouldn’t award credit toward a degree. Harvard introduced the math class — a four-credit course that covers algebra concepts and foundational calculus — in 2024 to address pandemic-era learning loss.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon similarly criticized the course earlier this month when she said the Trump administration would cut Harvard off from all federal research funding. 

It will fall to each federal agency to determine which of its contracts with Harvard are critical to its mission, a GSA spokesperson said Wednesday. Those that are should be transitioned to alternative contractors in a way that would minimize any disruption, the spokesperson said. 

Since mid-April, the federal government has cut off roughly $2.8 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to the university.

Harvard President Alan Garber addressed the effects of research cuts in a university release the same day news of GSA's effort to eliminate its remaining contracts became public.

"The research advances at Harvard and other universities that have led to the scientific pre-eminence of the United States would not have been possible without federal research support," he said in a May 27 university release. 

Two weeks ago, top university officials announced that Harvard put $250 million of its own funds to cover some affected research.

"It cannot sustain our research operations for the long term, so we are taking a close look at ways to further lower the costs of conducting research and to diversify the sources of funding," Garber said in the Tuesday release.

He added that Harvard's roughly $53 billion endowment — the largest in the U.S. — is a "critical asset" but noted that 80% of the fund is restricted and cannot be used as a "rainy-day account."

Garber also acknowledged that Harvard has to address the climate on its campus.

"We should all be concerned that colleges and universities have increasingly come under attack," he said. "But we should not dismiss the criticisms even when they are based on distortions or inaccuracies — we need to look for the underlying concerns that can be embedded in them."

On April 29, Harvard published two campus climate reports that found Jewish, Israeli, Zionist, Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students and employees reported feeling shunned or harassed at times during the 2023-24 academic year.

The Trump administration has invoked Harvard’s report focused on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias but has yet to publicly address the findings of the one focused on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias.