This photo taken on May 24, 2025 shows a view of the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the United States. Photo:Xinhua

 
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a recent interview with CNBC, said that a potential settlement between the Trump administration and Harvard University could require the college to invest about $500 million to build vocational schools, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

"If Harvard settles with Donald Trump, you know what he's going to do with the $500 million? He's going to have Harvard build vocational schools. The Harvard vocational school, because that's what America needs," Lutnick said.

Harvard University has not commented.

Bloomberg noted that before Lutnick's remarks, little progress had been made toward a settlement. The White House has previously alleged Harvard did not do enough to address antisemitism on campus and has fostered political bias, while Harvard argued the government is overreaching.

Trump had earlier stated that he wanted Harvard to commit "nothing less than $500 million," while Harvard said it was willing to invest that amount in workforce programs as part of an eventual deal to restore more than $2 billion in federal funding.
 
The report added that in April, Trump signed an executive order to "refocus young Americans on career preparation" instead of "an economically unproductive postsecondary system." In May, he said on social media that he was considering slashing funding for Harvard and redirecting it to trade schools instead.

On September 3, Allison Burroughs, a federal judge in Massachusetts, wrote in an 84-page ruling that the federal government "used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities." She argued that the Trump administration's actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act, infringed upon the free speech rights guaranteed to Harvard by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, and ran afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has demanded that several top universities revise their policies, eradicate antisemitism, and end admissions practices favoring minority groups, or risk funding cuts. In July, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Brown University said they had reached agreements with the federal government.