Harvard plans to borrow $750m after federal funding threats

Harvard University plans to borrow $750 million from Wall Street as part of contingency preparations, it said on Monday, days after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced a review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to the Ivy League university in a crackdown on alleged anti-Semitism on campuses, Reuters has reported.

In a letter to Harvard last week, the administration listed conditions that the university must meet to receive federal money, including a ban on campus protesters wearing masks to hide their identities and other restrictions. Harvard acknowledged receiving the letter but did not comment further.

“As part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances, Harvard is evaluating resources needed to advance its academic and research priorities,” said the university in Monday’s statement.

Harvard’s plans come less than a week after Princeton University said in a notice dated 1 April that it was also considering the sale of about $320m of taxable bonds later this month. Princeton said last week that the US government had frozen several dozen research grants to the university.

Harvard intends to issue up to $750m of taxable bonds for “general corporate purposes,” explained a spokesperson. The university had $7.1bn of debt outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2024, and anticipated about $8.2bn after the proposed bond issue.

The university most recently issued $434m in tax-exempt bonds in March and $735m in tax-exempt bonds in spring last year, added the spokesperson, adding that it also issued bonds in 2022.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard has a $53bn endowment, the largest of any US university. Advocates, students and several faculty members have called on the university leadership to resist the demands from the Trump administration.

Trump has threatened to slash federal funding for US universities that his administration alleges have tolerated anti-Semitism on their campuses. Such allegations have grown out of a wave of pro-Palestinian protests at Harvard and other universities against Israel’s brutal offensive on Gaza that has killed over 50,700 Palestinians, and led to genocide and war crimes allegations that Israel denies.

The Israeli onslaught followed the 7 October, 2023, Hamas-led cross-border incursion during which 1,200 Israelis were killed, many of them by the Israel Defence Forces carrying out the controversial Hannibal Directive.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say that the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism and support for Hamas. Nevertheless, some Jewish students on some campuses have said that they have felt threatened by protesters, and claimed that some academic courses are biased against Israel.

Rights advocates have also raised concerns about Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias in the media and political circles during the Israel-Gaza war. The Trump administration has not announced any steps in response.

Last month, the government warned 60 universities that it could bring enforcement actions if a review determined that they had failed to stop anti-Semitism.

Harvard’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, reported recently that two leaders of Harvard University’s Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Director Cemal Kafadar and Associate Director Rosie Bsheer, were dismissed from their positions.

The Trump administration also planned to freeze grants to Brown University. Moreover, last month it cancelled $400m in federal funding for Columbia University, the epicentre of last year’s campus protests.

Columbia agreed to some significant changes that Trump’s administration demanded as a precondition for talks about restoring the funding.

Federal agents have detained some foreign student protesters in recent weeks from different campuses and are working to deport them. Complaints have been made that the agents made the arrests while wearing plain clothes and face masks, but without showing formal identification badges. The government has revoked the visas of many foreign students.

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