Trump Announces $500 Million Settlement with Harvard University to Establish Trade Schools

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration is nearing completion of a $500 million settlement with Harvard University, which would require the prestigious institution to establish and operate trade schools.

This development represents the latest chapter in Trump's unprecedented confrontation with Harvard over allegations of anti-Semitism and bias—accusations that Harvard firmly denies. The university contends that the federal government's true aim is to control its hiring practices, admissions policies, and curriculum content.

"Well, we're in the process of getting very close," Trump stated during a White House briefing. "They'd be paying about $500 million and they'll be operating trade schools."

Trump elaborated on the planned trade schools' focus, saying, "They're going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things, engines, lots of things. You know, it's a big investment in trade school done by very smart people, and then their sins are forgiven."

Harvard officials did not provide an immediate response when asked to comment on Trump's statements.

The Trump administration has accused Harvard and several other educational institutions of promoting what they term "woke" ideology while allegedly failing to adequately protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

In early September, a federal judge in Boston ordered the administration to lift its freeze on approximately $2.6 billion in federal funding for Harvard. The judge wrote that Trump's Department of Education had "used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country's premier universities."

Two weeks following that ruling, the administration imposed new restrictions on Harvard's access to government funding, requiring the university to use its own financial resources to fulfill student financial aid packages that federal officials had previously committed to.

In July, Columbia University agreed to a $200 million settlement with the administration and committed to following guidelines prohibiting consideration of race in its admissions and hiring processes.

The University of Pennsylvania, another Ivy League institution, also yielded to Trump administration pressures by announcing a ban on transgender women's participation in women's sports.