{"id":2023,"date":"2025-06-03T20:46:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T20:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/?p=2023"},"modified":"2025-06-09T10:20:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T10:20:20","slug":"pentagon-official-cutting-off-harvard-project-endangers-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/03\/pentagon-official-cutting-off-harvard-project-endangers-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon official: Cutting off Harvard project endangers national security"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Pentagon official begged her bosses not to cancel a Harvard University grant aimed at curtailing biological threats, arguing that pulling it would pose \u201cgrave and immediate harm to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency\u2019s (DARPA) director of contracting said the grant funded a Harvard research team that had reached a \u201cpivotal juncture\u201d in a project addressing the \u201cbiological threat landscape,\u201d according to Monday court filings in the university\u2019s lawsuit against the Trump administration, first reported by\u00a0The Boston Globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The official was unnamed in the filings.<\/p>\n

Harvard, which is suing the administration over roughly $2.5 billion in frozen funding, has declared the cuts to be illegal and haphazard and obtained government records to prove their case.<\/p>\n

In the filing, the lawyers\u00a0detail the risk<\/a>\u00a0of cutting off funding to projects related to public health and national security concerns.<\/p>\n

In one instance, Harvard researchers were working on a military project known as the AMPHORA program, aimed at increasing awareness of emerging biological threats, when the Department of Defense (DOD) on May 12 informed the university it had terminated the grant funding the effort, according to\u00a0a memorandum<\/a>\u00a0filed by Harvard\u2019s lawyers in federal court.<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the cancellation of that military grant, as well as others, the filing notes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After learning the DOD grant was terminated by senior officials, the DARPA contracting official \u201cpleaded to save it, noting that Harvard was the \u2018critical\u2019 and \u2018top performing team\u2019 on the program, and that \u2018[i]nadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security\u2019 and threatens military servicemember safety,\u201d the memo states.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Government\u2019s thoughtless and retaliatory strategy meant that contracting officers and policy experts took a back seat in deciding whether to terminate grants that continued to benefit the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill as to whether the Harvard grant for the AMPHORA program remains terminated.<\/p>\n

The White House has frozen the funding after Harvard would not acquiesce to demands such as changing its hiring and admissions process and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Trump administration accuses the university of being \u201cdeliberately indifferent\u201d to antisemitic harassment on campus, favoring others over white people and men in its hiring and admissions processes and creating a culture intolerant of conservative viewpoints.<\/p>\n

Harvard\u2019s lawyers, meanwhile, say the administration has failed to acknowledge \u201cthe dozens of steps Harvard has taken and committed to take to address antisemitism and bias.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Pentagon official begged her bosses not to cancel a Harvard University grant aimed at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2024,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions\/2024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetoptenwebhosts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}