For the past couple months, the Trump administration has been targeting higher education,

homing in on some of the nation's top universities.

The Trump administration making good on its threat to cancel $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University.

The federal funding freeze at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Trump administration is pausing nearly $200 million in funds.

The Trump administration freezes $1 billion in funding for Cornell University

and $790 million for Northwestern University.

And now, the administration has set its sights on its most high-profile target yet, Harvard.

The Trump administration is threatening to withhold $9 billion in funding to Harvard, one of America's most prestigious universities.

Why does it matter that it's Harvard University?

Harvard is the wealthiest university in the nation with endowment of about $53 billion.

So if anybody has the wherewithal to stand up and fight the Trump administration is going to be Harvard University.

That's my colleague Doug Belkin, who covers higher education.

The forces that are at play here are a university system across the country that has moved to the left, and the president is attempting

essentially a course correction by what the university sees an invasion of their independence.

So this is the culmination of forces that have been heading toward each other, toward a collision

for two generations.

This is sort of the most dramatic moment in higher education, probably in my lifetime.

It's been building and building.

And this is really a perfect storm of politics, finance, power, coming together and crashing,

and it's all being manifest between Trump and Harvard.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

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