It is America’s oldest college, is often ranked the best university on the planet, boasts 57 miles of bookcases in its biggest library, and is sheltered by a colossal $53 billion endowment.

But Harvard University faces perhaps the greatest threat in its 389-year history, with a US president who’s cutting funding and student visas to pressure professors to change their ‘woke’ ways.

President Donald Trump has frozen some $2.6 billion in federal funding, revoked the visas of foreign students, and is poised to axe Harvard’s tax-free perks.

The Ivy League school in Cambridge is getting its ‘ass kicked,’ the Republican says.

Trump says the college’s liberal leaders must stop antisemitism on campus, halt their diversity equity and inclusion schemes, and admit more US-born students.

He increasingly appears alarmed by Harvard’s opaque links to America’s main competitor, China, and a web of financial, scholarly and military work that ultimately connects to its communist leaders.

Under the radar, Harvard has trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group, partnered with its military universities, and maybe even helped a forced organ harvesting program, House Republicans say. 

On Wednesday, Trump urged the school to cut its population of foreign students — a fifth of whom are Chinese — from nearly 30 percent to 15 percent.

Then, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration would ‘aggressively revoke’ the visas of Chinese students with links to its communist government at all US colleges.

‘For too long, Harvard has let the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exploit it,’ a White House official told Reuters

The school has ‘turned a blind eye to vigilante CCP-directed harassment on-campus,’ they added.

Harvard did not answer our request for comment. The school says it will ‘stand firm’ against pressure from the administration.

China’s embassy in Washington said educational cooperation was ‘mutually beneficial and should not be stigmatized.’ Experts say the administration is undermining the research that makes America a world leader.

Here, the Daily Mail takes a look at the ties to China that have hurt Harvard’s reputation.

JUNKETS FOR KILLERS

Perhaps the most shocking of Harvard’s ties to China are its links to a state-run paramilitary group that’s rounded up Uyghurs and other minorities and caged them in China’s forced labor camps.

Officials from the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), have since 2020 attended training sessions on public health run by Harvard’s China Health Partnership.

The XPCC was that year slapped with US sanctions for its role in alleged human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Still, Harvard kept holding workshops until last year, says the Department of Homeland Security.

Elise Stefanik and other Trump loyalists on the Hill this month launched a probe into Harvard’s support for the XPCC and other schemes, and detailed their findings in a 14-page letter demanding answers from Harvard.

The training sessions ‘could have been deployed by XPCC to further repress the Uyghur people,’ Stefanik and her colleagues on a House committee wrote.

China denies claims of wrongdoing in Xinjiang, but both the Trump and Biden administrations have described Beijing’s policies in the western province as ‘genocide.’

FORCED ORGAN HARVESTING

The lawmakers also queried Harvard’s links to organ harvesting in China, where religious minorities have allegedly been executed on a massive scale to collect body parts for transplant.

They highlight seven research projects between 2022 and 2024 when Harvard and Chinese researchers cooperated on studies about transplanting kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs.

This is worrying, they wrote, because of Beijing’s alarming ‘record of human rights abuses in harvesting organs from religious and ethnic minorities.’

Experts have since 2014 warned of large numbers of jailed dissidents, particularly Muslim Uyghurs, Falun Gong members, and Christians, being executed for their body parts.

There are even reports that some victims are alive when their organs are removed.

ARMING THE ENEMY

Harvard also finds itself in the middle of an arms race between two of the world’s biggest military powers.

The college has taken funding from the Pentagon and spent it on research projects with China-based academics who could well be stealing America’s military secrets, the lawmakers wrote.

Harvard scholars have teamed up with Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and Huazhong University — which all undertake defense work for China’s military, says the letter.

Projects have covered materials for artificial intelligence (AI), polymers and alloys used in warplanes, and microelectronics — which could all benefit China’s armed forces, it adds.

‘Harvard researchers should not be contributing to the military capabilities of a potential adversary, says the letter from the House Select Committee on China.

ROGUE SCHOLARS

Shady dealings between Harvard scholars and Beijing were spotlighted by the case of Charles Lieber, who previously led its department of chemistry and chemical biology.

Lieber was in 2021 convicted of lying to federal investigators about his ties to a Chinese-run science recruitment program and dodging taxes on his payouts from a Chinese university.

Lieber, an expert in nanotechnology, in April started a cushy job at the state-funded Tsinghua University in Shenzhen. He praised his host city’s ‘dynamism and innovative spirit.’

His conviction was part of a crackdown under the first Trump administration of intellectual property theft by China.

The prosecutions were later halted under the Biden administration. Critics said they had led to racial profiling and a culture of fear that chilled scientific collaboration.

MUZZLED SPEECH

In its pressure campaign against Harvard, the Trump administration asked the school to provide details about its foreign students.

When Harvard refused, the Department of Homeland Security revoked its ability to enroll international students.

This follows mounting concerns over which Chinese students Harvard is helping admit into the US, and whether they have ties to the communist party.

Harvard was rattled in April 2024, when a student activist there was physically ejected from an event by a Chinese exchange student — not a member of college security — when she heckled a speech by a visiting Chinese diplomat.

A video of the event shows the Chinese exchange student dragging the heckler out of the room.

Harvard disciplined the student protestor, but not the student who dragged her out of the room.

John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, at the time slammed ‘another example of Harvard’s appallingly unequal treatment of protestors based on the speech they support.’

‘Harvard is punishing brave students who spoke out against the CCP’s human rights abuses while not only letting the student who assaulted them off scot-free but also handing him an apology,’ he added.