Oct. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said the Department of Education has reached a potential deal to settle a months-long battle with Harvard University over federal funding.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon “is finishing up the final details” of the plan, Trump said during an unrelated executive order signing Tuesday in the Oval Office.
She has “a good chance of getting that closed,” he said.
The plan would have Harvard University pay $500 million and require the school to open trade schools and teach artificial intelligence.
“They’ll be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things, engines, lots of things,” Trump said, adding that the school would run a “series of trade schools.”
Harvard did not immediately respond to Politico and CNN‘s requests for a comment on the matter.
Trump and Harvard have been locked in a legal battle after the president attempted to withhold more than $2 billion in funding and block Harvard from admitting international students after taking issue with students’ anti-Israel protests over the war in Gaza. The administration accused Harvard of failing to crack down on anti-Semitism.
Earlier this month, U.S. Judge Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts restored the funding — in the form of grants and contracts — in response to a lawsuit brought by the university and employee groups. The lawsuit accused Trump of leveraging the funding “to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard.”
Among the programs affected by the block in funding were research in science and medicine, including on radiation exposure, ALS diagnostics and tuberculosis treatment.
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights launched a process that could see Harvard ineligible for federal funding on Title VI grounds.