Defense Official Warned Pentagon of ‘Grave Risk’ to National Security Over Harvard Cuts

A Pentagon director pleaded with Defense Department chiefs to save a Harvard-led project designed to boost warfighting.

The official warned that the Trump administration’s cuts would pose “grave and immediate harm to national security.”

The bombshell details were revealed in internal White House documents reviewed by Harvard’s lawyers, who have accused the administration of taking a “shoot first, aim never” approach driven by retribution.

“The message from the Government is clear: Fight, and you will suffer,” Harvard wrote.

According to the university’s latest court filing, more than 950 research projects at Harvard have received termination letters, including projects that combat AIDS, prevent breast cancer, support veterans, and assist NASA astronauts.

In the case of the Defense Department, a director of contracting was seemingly “taken unaware” by a White House directive to slash a $12 million Harvard-led program aimed at detecting emerging biological threats.

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“Harvard is currently the top performing team on the… program,” she explained to her supervisors. “Inadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security.”

Despite the warning, Harvard says, “nothing in the Government’s administrative record indicates that the Secretary of Defense yielded to the contracting official’s plea.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Pentagon for comment. The disclosure is contained in a 62-page court filing issued by Harvard on Monday night, which has accused the White House of violating federal law as it seeks to free more than $2 billion in federal funds.

Since taking office, Trump has taken aim at “woke” colleges, including Harvard, claiming that they have failed to address antisemitism on campus in the wake of anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war.

But tensions escalated in April when Harvard sued the administration over its funding freeze and refused to adhere to a list of wide-ranging demands.

Since then, the Trump administration has escalated its cuts and upped the ante by seeking to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll students from overseas.

Speaking in the Oval Office with SpaceX boss Elon Musk last Friday, Trump accused Harvard of “not acting nicely” and was therefore suffering the consequences.

“Harvard is trying to be a big shot, and all that happens is every three days we find another $100 million that was given,” he said.

“Money is given to them like gravy. I’d like to see the money go to trade schools where people learn how to fix motors and engines, where people learn how to build rocket ships.”

However, Harvard argued in its filing that “the Government did not engage with or even acknowledge the many reforms and commitments Harvard had already made” to combat anti-semitism.

This included cracking down on protests with new disciplinary measures, pledging to launch a university-wide initiative on “viewpoint diversity”, and releasing a major report from the presidential task force on antisemitism.

“The Government rushed to terminate Harvard’s funding not because it concluded after careful assessment that federal financial support for certain programs at certain of Harvard’s 12 different schools suborned antisemitism, but because the White House demanded across-the-board terminations of funding to Harvard university-wide solely to inflict maximum punishment upon Harvard,” lawyers wrote.