President Donald Trump said “we are now seeking one billion dollars in damages” from after the New York Times reported that his administration had backed off on demands for $200 million to satisfy accusations of wrongdoing by the Ivy League institution.
“This case will continue until justice is served,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform late Monday night. He asserted that Harvard had been “feeding a lot of ‘nonsense’ to the failing New York Times.”
In an article earlier Monday, the Times reported that administration officials had dropped their demands for the $200 million “amid sagging approval ratings for Mr. Trump, and as he faces outrage over immigration enforcement tactics and the shooting deaths of two Americans by federal agents in Minnesota.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump not specify under what authority he would seek the $1 billion. Harvard didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a later post after midnight Tuesday, Trump called the Times article “completely wrong” and demanded that it be changed.
Since the beginning of his second administration, Trump and his administration have waged an aggressive campaign against Harvard and other universities over accusations of antisemitism linked in part to campus protests against Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Conservatives have also long contended that they and their ideas have largely been frozen out of American academia by a liberal establishment, and they now have allies in the Trump administration.
Harvard sued the government twice and won a court victory in September when a federal judge ruled that the US illegally halted research funding and said the administration “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
The administration said it would appeal that ruling, but the frozen funds have been largely restored. Unlike other Ivy League universities such as Columbia and Brown, Harvard hasn’t reached a settlement with the White House.
In December, Harvard announced that its president, Alan Garber, had agreed to stay on for “an indefinite time beyond” mid-2027, extending his leadership of the oldest and richest US university.