Trump says Harvard deal is close, university will pay 0 million

WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration was close to a deal with Harvard University that would include a $500 million payment by the Ivy League institution, after months of negotiations over school policies.

The administration has been wrangling with several prestigious universities, threatening to withhold federal funds over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, campus diversity and transgender policies.

A deal with Harvard University is close, Trump says | PBS News

“We are in the process of getting very close,” Trump told reporters at an event in the Oval Office. “Linda is finishing up the final details,” he said, referring to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

“And they’ll be paying about $500 million and they’ll be operating trade schools. They’re going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things, engines, lots of things,” he said. He offered no further details on the deal.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard had no immediate comment on Trump’s remarks.

Rights advocates have raised free speech, privacy and academic freedom concerns over the Trump administration’s probes into universities.

Trump has said that Harvard and other universities allowed displays of antisemitism during pro-Palestinian protests.

Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the government wrongly equates criticism of Israel’s assault on Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with antisemitism, and advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism. The government has not announced probes into Islamophobia.

Harvard task forces said in late April that the school’s Jewish and Muslim students faced bigotry and abuse during the course of Israel’s war in Gaza after the October 2023 Hamas attack.

Trump: Harvard is near a deal to end standoff with White House

ACTIONS AGAINST HARVARD, OTHER IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS

Several other Ivy League schools have made deals with the Trump administration in recent months, including Columbia University and Brown University, which accepted certain government demands. Columbia agreed to pay more than $220 million to the government and Brown said it will pay $50 million to support local workforce development.

The Trump administration zeroed in on the pro-Palestinian protest movement that roiled Harvard’s campus, moving to terminate more than $2 billion in research grant funding to the university.

It also sought to bar international students from attending the school, threatened Harvard’s accreditation status, and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.

Harvard President Alan Garber has said that the various federal actions since Trump returned to office in January could strip the school of nearly $1 billion annually, forcing it to lay off staff and freeze hiring.

Harvard challenged some of those actions in court, arguing the Trump administration was retaliating against it in violation of its free-speech rights after it refused to meet officials’ demands that it overhaul its governance, hiring and academic programs to align with their ideological agenda.

Harvard beats Trump as judge orders US to restore $2.6 billion in funding - Ars Technica

Its two lawsuits were assigned to U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, a Boston-based appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, who blocked the Trump administration from closing the door to international students and on September 3 barred it from continuing to cut off Harvard’s research funding.

But the administration in the days since the ruling has continued to escalate its fight with Harvard. A day before Trump’s latest comments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that it would start a process that could lead to the school being barred from contracts with all government agencies or receiving funding.

The government has faced other legal setbacks, opens new tab in its attempts to freeze federal funding to universities. Last week, a federal judge ordered Trump’s administration to restore more than $500 million of frozen federal grants to the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reporting by Nandita Bose, Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward in Washington, Nate Raymond in Boston and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Donna Bryson, Daniel Wallis and Edmund Klamann

Trump: America Will Be ‘Insulted’ If He Doesn’t Win Nobel Peace Prize

Mr. Trump believes that if the Nobel Peace Prize is not awarded to him after he helped end many conflicts around the world, it would be an “insult” to the United States.

“If the fighting in Gaza ends, we will have resolved 8 conflicts within 8 months. That’s a pretty good track record. Nobody has ever done anything like that. Will you win the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They will give it to someone who hasn’t done a darn thing,” US President Donald Trump said before hundreds of generals at a meeting in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has strived to build an image as the “President of Peace,” claiming to have helped prevent many wars and sees himself as worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. The recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 10.

Mr. Trump suggested that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be given to “a writer who specializes in writing books about Donald Trump’s mindset and what needs to be done to end a war.”

“Let’s wait and see what happens, but I think if that’s true, it will be a grave insult to our country. I don’t want to win that award, but I want America to win it. America deserves to be awarded, because nothing like this has ever happened before,” President Trump emphasized.

The Trump administration recently listed 7 conflicts that the President has helped end since returning to the White House, including Cambodia–Thailand, Kosovo–Serbia, Democratic Republic of Congo–Rwanda, Pakistan–India, Israel–Iran, Egypt–Ethiopia, and Armenia–Azerbaijan.

However, in Oslo, Norway, where the Nobel Prize ceremony is held, many observers believe that the possibility of Mr. Trump winning this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is “almost zero.”

“It is completely unimaginable,” said Oeivind Stenersen, a historian who has researched and co-authored a book on the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee also affirmed that they will not be influenced by external factors. “Of course we notice that the media pays a lot of attention to the candidates. But that does not affect the ongoing discussion within the committee,” said Secretary Kristian Berg Harpviken.

Mr. Trump currently faces two major obstacles to his Nobel Peace Prize aspiration: resolving the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Paul Stares, a senior fellow for conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said the US President’s efforts are commendable, but definitively resolving conflicts is not easy.

“Mediating ceasefires is not the same as building long-term peace. Establishing peace usually requires more sustained and meticulous diplomatic efforts,” Stares said.

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