Blog

The US Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that it was terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University saying the Ivy League institution failed to address antisemitic harassment and ethnic discrimination on campus.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has frozen or ended federal grants and contracts for the university worth nearly $3 billion in recent weeks.

Since taking office in January, the Republican president has sought to use federal research funding to overhaul US academia, which he says has been gripped by anti-American, Marxist and “radical left” ideologies.

The administration has accused Harvard of continuing to consider ethnicity when reviewing student applications and of allowing discrimination against Jews as a result of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled American campuses last year.

New York’s Columbia University has also been targeted over alleged antisemitism.

“Due to Harvard University’s continued failure to address antisemitic harassment and race discrimination, HHS is terminating multiple multi-year grant awards … over their full duration,” the health department said in a post on X on Monday.

Harvard University did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based institution has previously said that it “cannot absorb the entire cost” of the frozen grants, and that it was working with researchers to help them find alternative funding. It is also suing the Trump administration over its decision to cut grants.

Earlier this month, the university settled a high-profile lawsuit by an Orthodox Jewish student who said Harvard was ignoring antisemitism on campus.

The settlement came four months after Harvard promised additional protections for Jewish students, as it resolved two lawsuits claiming it was a hotbed of antisemitism.

Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal issued an expletive-laced call for Hollywood to resist political pressure in the United States on Saturday while admitting it is “scary” to speak out against President Donald Trump.

Asked about Trump’s immigration policies, ‘The Last of Us’ star told reporters: “It’s very scary for an actor participating in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this.”

“I’m an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US after asylum in Denmark… I stand by those protections,” the 50-year-old told a news conference in Cannes.

He was at the Cannes film festival alongside Joaquin Phoenix to premiere “Eddington”, an intense and darkly satirical examination of America’s toxic politics set in New Mexico during the Covid pandemic.

Directed by horror specialist Ari Aster, it earned praise for its vaulting ambition, but Time magazine’s critic was one of several who found it “overstuffed with ideas”.

Echoing a message from Robert De Niro on the opening night of Cannes, Pascal insisted that the film industry needed to find the courage to be political.

“So keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,” he said. “Fuck the people that try to make you scared. And fight back.

“This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. Don’t let them win.”

Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is to be given a lifetime’s achievement award by a charity on the fringes of the Cannes film festival Tuesday despite being hit by a new sexual misconduct case.

The Better World Fund told AFP that the actor will be recognised “for his decades of artistic brilliance” at a charity gala, another step in the controversial rehabilitation of the scandal-plagued star.

The charity told AFP Monday that it invited Spacey to the French Rivera resort because he had been cleared by the courts.

The invitation to Cannes — where Spacey has not been seen on the red carpet since 2016 — comes as the main festival has been enforcing a new no-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct, under pressure from lawmakers and #MeToo anti-abuse activists.

A festival spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Spacey was acquitted of nine cases of alleged sex offences in Britain in 2023 and a New York court dismissed a USD 40 million civil sexual misconduct lawsuit against the “Usual Suspects” actor in 2022.

But last May new claims of inappropriate sexual behaviour emerged in a British television documentary, “Spacey Unmasked”.

In it, 10 men not involved in the UK court case involving Spacey accused him of behaving inappropriately towards them.

But the 65-year-old, whose stellar career was derailed by the earlier claims, denied any wrongdoing.

In February, lawyers for former actor Ruari Cannon told AFP that he was taking a case to Britain’s High Court against Spacey and London’s Old Vic Theatre, where the actor was artistic director between 2003 and 2015.

In the documentary, Cannon accused Spacey of having touched him inappropriately in London when he was 21 years old and the American star was 53.

#MeToo policy

Cannes — once the hunting ground of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein whose arrest sparked the #MeToo movement — has been dogged for years by claims that it was too soft on celebrity abusers.

This year’s festival opened just as French screen legend Gerard Depardieu was handed an 18-month suspended sentence for sexually assaulting two women on a film set in 2021.

With jury president, French actor Juliette Binoche, speaking out about harassment she experienced on set, Cannes has been swift to implement its new rules.

French actor Theo Navarro-Mussy — who denies rape allegations made by three women against him — was barred last week from the premiere of “Dossier 137”, one of the films in the running for the Palme d’Or top prize.

The festival justified its decision by saying an appeal was under way.

And on Thursday, a vice president of the avant garde parallel film section at Cannes, ACID, was suspended after being publicly accused of sexual violence during an event.

Scarlett Johansson won praise from veteran filmmaker Wes Anderson as she nervously prepared to unveil her debut feature as a director at the Cannes film festival on Tuesday.

Actors behind the camera are something of a trend in Cannes this year, with ‘Twilight’ star Kristen Stewart and British actor Harris Dickinson both unveiling their first features.

Johansson’s film ‘Eleanor the Great’ recounts the story of a grief-stricken elderly woman who moves to New York after the death of her best friend and will be screened on Tuesday evening.

One of Hollywood’s most bankable stars missed the red carpet premiere of ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ on Sunday evening, in which she has a cameo, but she won enthusiastic backing from director Anderson.

“I saw the movie, which I loved,” Anderson said of Johansson’s debut. He added that he had not offered any tips to the actor who has appeared in three of his films, including ‘Isle of Dogs’ and ‘Asteroid City’.

“I don’t think Scarlett even said anything to me (about her film),” the 56-year-old said. “Scarlett’s been doing movies possibly longer than I have. She’s about 20 years younger, but I think she was in a movie when she was around nine.”

Nonetheless, the Oscar-nominated star of ‘Lost in Translation’, 40, admitted to some nerves while bringing a script to life that made her cry when she first read it.

She spoke to Deadline magazine in the run-up to Cannes about how the spotlight on the director’s seat is brighter than the one beamed on the actors when it comes to finally unveiling a movie.

“It’s different. When you’re acting in something, it’s out of your hands,” she said.

In competition

Cannes tends to draw sympathetic audiences, with film lovers and industry insiders enthusiastically giving films standing ovations that can last for minutes.

But the competition is fierce. And Johansson’s movie is in the running for prizes in the “Certain Regard” secondary section for up-and-coming directors that also includes Stewart’s and Dickinson’s films this year.

Dickinson, the 28-year-old star of ‘Babygirl’, asked the press to be “gentle” as he unveiled ‘Urchin’, a touching film about a rough sleeper in London.

“It’s my first film so if you don’t like it, break it to me nicely,” he said before the premiere. Initial reviews have been positive.

Film bible Variety said that “you can learn a lot about an actor when they make their directorial debut. For better or worse, it reveals how they see themselves as an artist.”

In Dickinson’s case, his social-realist debut that has echoes of veteran British director Mike Leigh’s work was “starkly effective”, Variety said.

Hollywood has a long record of A-list male actors turning to directing from Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood to Mel Gibson and George Clooney.

Greta Gerwig, who broke through as an actress before hitting the directorial big time with 2023 hit ‘Barbie’, is one of relatively few women actors to make the transition, however.

Australian screen great Nicole Kidman lamented on Sunday how the number of women directing major box office successes is still “incredibly low”.

Speaking to Variety, Stewart was honest about her struggles to find financing for her film ‘The Chronology of Water’, which is a searing examination of child sex abuse.

She said it was “near impossible” to raise money for a movie that was an original idea and not based on a proven genre or an existing franchise.