Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Friday defended President Donald Trump's attacks on elite universities like Harvard and Columbia, while saying that she is seeing "progress" from the institutions on the administration's demands.
"I have seen progress. And you know why I think we’re seeing progress? Because we are putting these measures in place, and we’re saying we’re putting teeth behind what we’re looking at," McMahon said in an interview with NBC News at her office in Washington.
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WATCH HEREStill, McMahon said Harvard still needs to do more to combat antisemitism on campus and a better job vetting international students.
“It’s very important that we are making sure that the students who are coming in and being on these these campuses aren’t activists, that they’re not causing these activities,” the education secretary said.
“Students should not come on campus and be afraid to be there and not feel safe to be on campus," McMahon added.
The secretary acknowledged that the universities have taken positive steps to combat what she said was growing antisemitism on campus, but credited Trump for pushing them to do so.
"I'm really happy to see what Harvard did, but I wonder if maybe they didn't get a little spur from our action, because they talk a lot about it, but I think we really started to see a lot of their actions once we were taking action," McMahon said.
Her comments came after Trump on Wednesday signed a proclamation that aims to deny visas for foreign students seeking to study at Harvard. A federal judge in May had blocked Trump from revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students.
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Asked directly about whether international students already enrolled at Harvard would have to leave the U.S. due to Trump's proclamation, McMahon demurred, saying, "Well, that's actually more up to the State Department than it is to Department of Education," and reiterating that, "we have to do more careful vetting."
She echoed Trump's comments in the Oval Office on Thursday, when he told reporters that he had no problem with Harvard enrolling foreign students, as long as their names were disclosed to the federal government.
"We want to have foreign students come. We’re very honored by it, but we want to see their list," Trump said during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
"Harvard didn’t want to give us the list. They’re going to be giving us the list now. I think they’re starting to behave, actually, if you want to know the truth," the president added.
The Trump administration has also accused Harvard and Columbia of fomenting antisemitism on campus, with the federal government in April cancelling $2 billion in grants to Harvard and in March cancelling $400 million in grants to Columbia. Each grant cancellation came alongside a statement from the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism accusing the universities of not doing enough to combat anti-semitism on their respective campuses.
The cancellation of Harvard’s federal grants came after several members of the Trump administration wrote to Harvard’s leadership with 10 demands that included a requirement for Harvard to screen their admissions of foreign students “to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
The letter also included demands requiring Harvard to audit their student body, faculty and staff for “viewpoint diversity,” to discontinue all diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus and to root out what the Trump administration labeled as anti-semitism in certain programs and schools on campus.
On Friday, McMahon defended the contents of the letter, saying that "only three percent of [Harvard's] faculty were conservatives."
"Do you think that's a diversity of viewpoint on campus? Because those — you can't possibly believe that," she added. "And I do think that that's one of the things that Harvard and Columbia and other universities are taking a serious look at, is, what is that balance?"
Asked directly what a diversity of viewpoints would practically look like on campus, McMahon called for "balancing what the curriculum is going to be."
"I think Harvard and other universities need to do a better job in that," she added.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News:
