President To Speak At Commencements For 2 Trump-Approved Schools

It looks like President Donald Trump is exempting two colleges from his bitter battle with higher education. In a brief Monday night post on Truth Social , he announced that he’s “agreed to do the Commencement Address at two really GREAT places.” The lucky schools? The University of Alabama and the prestigious military academy West Point .

Word of Trump’s graduation gigs comes amid his attempts to purge what he sees as leftist ideology from American colleges and universities. Since taking office, the Trump administration has threatened to cut billions of dollars in federal funding from schools he accuses of failing to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests last year. Some colleges have yielded to the intimidation tactics.



Facing $400 million in cuts to federal funding, New York City’s Columbia University folded to White House demands last month, agreeing to curtail on-campus protests and install new oversight on the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies program, among other concessions. Other institutions have fought back. Last week, Harvard rejected the Trump administration’s demands that it overhaul its hiring, admissions and governance processes or risk losing $9 billion in government funding.

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” the university’s president, Alan M. Garber, wrote in a statement early last week. The White House swiftly retaliated by freezing $2.

2 billion in multiyear grants and reportedly ordering the IRS to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status . Harvard’s decision to stand its ground appears to have emboldened many of its peers. On Tuesday, over 220 leaders from within America’s higher education system condemned “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education” in a joint statement .

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