(Reuters) -The U.S. State Department has opened an investigation into Harvard University’s eligibility as a sponsor in the exchange visitor program, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, as the Trump administration takes aim at the country’s oldest and richest university.
“To maintain their privilege to sponsor exchange visitors, sponsors must comply with all regulations, including conducting their programs in a manner that does not undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United States,” Rubio said.
“The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation’s interests,” he added.
Harvard has become a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at U.S. universities, which President Donald Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies.
Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was the cancellation of hundreds of grants awarded to researchers on the grounds that the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
The Trump administration has since 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.
The Department of Education separately on Wednesday said it opened national origin discrimination investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, and Western Michigan University.
The investigations will determine if the universities are granting scholarships only for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or “undocumented” students, according to the statement.
The moves come as the Trump administration has pursued wide-ranging efforts to fulfill the president’s hardline immigration agenda.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Brendan O’Brien and Bhargav Acharya, )
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