Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Friday defended President Donald Trump's attacks on elite universities like Harvard and Columbia, while saying that she is seeing “progress” from the institutions on the administration's demands.
“I have seen progress. And you know why I think we’re seeing progress? Because we are putting these measures in place, and we’re saying we’re putting teeth behind what we’re looking at,” McMahon said in an interview with NBC News at her office in Washington.
Still, McMahon said Harvard needs to do more to combat antisemitism on campus and vet international students.
“It’s very important that we are making sure that the students who are coming in and being on these campuses aren’t activists, that they’re not causing these activities,” the education secretary said.
“Students should not come on campus and be afraid to be there and not feel safe to be on campus,” McMahon added.
The secretary acknowledged that the universities have taken positive steps to combat what she said was growing antisemitism on campus, but credited Trump for pushing them to do so.
“I'm really happy to see what Harvard did, but I wonder if maybe they didn't get a little spur from our action, because they talk a lot about it, but I think we really started to see a lot of their actions once we were taking action,” McMahon said.
Her comments came after Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation that aims to deny visas for foreign students seeking to study at Harvard. A federal judge in May blocked Trump from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students.
Asked directly whether international students already enrolled at Harvard would have to leave the U.S. due to Trump's proclamation, McMahon demurred, saying, “Well, that's actually more up to the State Department than it is to Department of Education,” and reiterating that “we have to do more careful vetting.”
She echoed comments Trump made Thursday in the Oval Office, when he told reporters that he had no problem with Harvard enrolling foreign students, as long as their names were disclosed to the federal government.
“We want to have foreign students come. We’re very honored by it, but we want to see their list,” Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“Harvard didn’t want to give us the list. They’re going to be giving us the list now. I think they’re starting to behave, actually, if you want to know the truth,” the president added.
The Trump administration has also accused Harvard and Columbia of fomenting antisemitism on campus, with the federal government in April canceling $2 billion in grants to Harvard and in March canceling $400 million in grants to Columbia. Each grant cancellation came alongside a statement from the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism accusing the universities of not doing enough to combat antisemitism on campus.
The cancellation of Harvard’s federal grants came after several members of the Trump administration wrote to Harvard’s leadership with 10 demands that included a requirement to screen admissions of foreign students “to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
The letter also included demands that Harvard audit its student body, faculty and staff for “viewpoint diversity,” to discontinue all diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus and to root out what the Trump administration labeled as antisemitism in certain programs and schools on campus.
On Friday, McMahon defended the contents of the letter, saying that “only 3% of [Harvard's] faculty were conservatives.”
“Do you think that's a diversity of viewpoint on campus? Because those — you can't possibly believe that,” she added. “And I do think that that's one of the things that Harvard and Columbia and other universities are taking a serious look at, is, what is that balance?”
Asked directly what a diversity of viewpoints would practically look like on campus, McMahon called for “balancing what the curriculum is going to be.”
“I think Harvard and other universities need to do a better job in that,” she added.
The Trump administration in recent months has also targeted individual students who it says are advocating for terrorism and antisemitism by participating in pro-Palestinian speech or protests.
In March, the administration drew national outrage after federal authorities arrested Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and graduate student. A federal judge last month ruled that the effort to deport Khalil was likely unconstitutional.
And in early May, Tufts University student Rumeysa Öztürk was freed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after she had been detained by federal law enforcement agents in Massachusetts in March.
McMahon on Friday painted the international students facing arrest and detention as “students at Columbia and Harvard en masse attacking other students, yelling hate crimes at those students, making them afraid to walk across their campus, and driving them even underground.”
“I think the American public is looking at that, is saying, ‘I want my kids to go to college and be safe. They shouldn’t have to worry going from class. That’s not why — that is not why I sent them to campus,’” the education secretary added.
McMahon also said that any foreign students arrested over violence or antisemitism will have the chance to prove whether the detention is “unjust.”
“If there’s a false arrest made, and that person shows that, that that was an unjust [arrest] and that person is released, OK,” she said. “But how many others are not being arrested because we don’t have the proper vetting in place?”
McMahon also spoke favorably about the Trump administration’s decision earlier Friday to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to continue with mass layoff plans at the Department of Education after a federal judge blocked the move. The layoffs were part of a broader Trump plan to dismantle the department.
“The president made it very clear to me, when he asked me to serve in this job, that he believed that I would be successful in my job once the Department of Education was dismantled, and that the agencies, other agencies, would continue the work of the Department of Education. So I have known what that mandate was from the very beginning,” McMahon said.
The Department of Education, in its budget proposal this week, is also seeking to cut its funding to the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is tasked with investigating claims of discrimination, from $140 million to $91 million. There is currently a backlog of cases.
“We haven’t missed any statutory deadlines and are performing our tasks because we’re operating more efficiently,” McMahon said. “We have streamlined that department.”
This comes as the administration has also targeted efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government and at elite universities and has targeted transgender students across the country.
On Friday, McMahon defended Trump's efforts to eliminate DEI programs on college campuses, saying that she favored merit-based admissions instead.
“What we found when we admit students through merit and meritocracy and, and their studies, that diversity comes on campuses by itself,” McMahon said. “You don't need to have a particular program that says we have to have diversity, equity, inclusion.”
McMahon also said she agreed with the Trump administration's assertion that allowing transgender girls to participate in girls sports was a violation of the federal Title IX anti-discrimination law.
“What the president has said in his executive order [is] men are men and women are women, and so women should participate in women’s sports and men should participate in men’s sports. Otherwise it’s not a level playing field,” McMahon said, referring to athletes by their sex at birth.
Asked directly whether she thought the Trump administration's decision to sue Maine over federal funds was a proportional response to the issue of transgender girls participating in girls sports, the education secretary simply said, “To uphold the laws of the United States, we have to take action.”
