Trump suspends Penn’s security clearances — but it’s not clear that the school has any
Trump was targeting Miles Taylor, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official who criticized him. The order called Penn an associate of Taylor's and suspended its security clearances, too
President Donald Trump in one of his latest executive orders has suspended all active security clearances for individuals at the University of Pennsylvania — though it’s not clear the school even has any.
Penn was not the target of the order. It was Miles Taylor, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official who criticized Trump in an anonymous 2018 op-ed in the New York Times and as an anonymous source in a book before revealing his identity and endorsing former President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Trump has been striking back at his opponents, as he vowed to do in his second term.
The order, signed Wednesday, suspended Taylor’s security clearance and that of his associates, and named Penn as an associate. The only apparent link is that Taylor is listed as a political science lecturer in Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences, where he is the named instructor for a 2023 class on the “future of conservatism,” though it is not clear if he is currently teaching.
Penn declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
A White House fact sheet on the order states that the clearance for the university will be suspended “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with national interest.”
Penn does not conduct classified research, according to its website.
“The University does not possess a government security clearance and cannot as a corporate entity possess classified material,” the website states. “It is the policy of the university not to accept agreements which require access to classified data, require university employees to obtain security clearances, or restrict the dissemination of the results.”
Former Penn president Amy Gutmann, who had been U.S. ambassador to Germany under Biden, would have had security clearance for her ambassador’s job. Gutmann is now a distinguished professor of political science and a professor of communication at the university.
The order against Taylor also instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, Trump’s homeland security secretary, to investigate Taylor and another former official, Christopher Krebs, a senior cybersecurity official who oversaw the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
In a statement posted Wednesday on social media, Taylor said he had expected retaliation from the president.
“Dissent isn’t unlawful,” Taylor wrote on X. “It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”