President Donald Trump threatened Monday to divert billions of dollars in endowment funds from Harvard University and give them to vocational schools across the U.S., escalating his feud with the elite institution.

"I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Endowment Funds from the highly anti-Semitic Harvard, and giving them to STRUGGLE SCHOOLS across our country," Trump said in a social media post. "What a great investment that would be for the U.S., and much needed!!!"

Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has moved to freeze funding and block Harvard's ability to admit international students in an intensifying battle over what the president has characterized as the Ivy League university and others' failure to crack down on antisemitism.

Harvard is the oldest and richest U.S. university with a $53 billion endowment. Administration officials have used that as a pretext to pressure the school to institute sweeping policy changes that university officials say violate its free speech and academic mission. Harvard has been at the center of Trump's campaign, with the administration suspending more than $2.6 billion in federal research funding and saying the school would not be able to receive new funding.

The administration has demanded a series of changes as a condition for continuing its financial relationship with the university: It must overhaul its governance, change its admissions and faculty hiring policies, which the administration has called discriminatory, and stop accepting international students who officials say are hostile to American values. The administration also says Harvard must ensure a greater diversity of viewpoints on a campus it says is too liberal. Harvard sued in April. The administration has also moved to bar Harvard from admitting foreign students, but the university won a temporary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing the ban.

Read More: Harvard Wins Temporary Blockade of Trump's Foreign Student Ban

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said last week that Harvard's response to the administration's request for information about abuses committed by foreign students was inadequate.

To regain its program's certification, Harvard has 72 hours to provide six categories of information about foreign students over the past five years, including disciplinary records and videos of them taking part in protests.

Harvard has yet to turn over information on foreign students, with Trump calling the university "very slow in turning over these documents." The information is needed, Trump said in a second post on Monday, the Memorial Day holiday, to determine "how many radicalized lunatics, all troublemakers, should not be allowed back into our Country."

At Harvard, nearly 6,800 students — 27% of the student body — are from other countries, up from 19.6% in 2006, according to university data. Harvard says its international population on campus is more than 10,000, which includes students or others who come for non-degree programs and their dependents. (alg)

Source: Bloomberg