Harvard, Trump administration face off in court over canceled funding

USA Today

6 days ago

The court hearing in Boston marked a crucial moment in the White House's escalating conflict with Harvard.
BOSTON – Harvard University urged a federal judge to order the Trump administration to restore about $2.5 billion in canceled federal grants and cease efforts to cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.
The court hearing before U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs on July 21 marked a crucial moment in the White House's escalating conflict with Harvard, which has been in the administration's crosshairs after it rejected a list of demands to make changes to its governance, hiring and admissions practices in April.
The university, in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that hundreds of research projects, including some related to cancer treatment, infectious diseases and Parkinson's would be in jeopardy unless the judge declares the grant cancellations unlawful.
The country's oldest and richest university has become a central focus of the administration's broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and "radical left" ideologies.
"The Trump administration's proposition is simple and commonsense: Don't allow antisemitism and DEI to run your campus, don't break the law, and protect the civil liberties of all students," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement.
Read more: Can Harvard's alumni save it from Trump?
Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was canceling hundreds of grants awarded to researchers on the grounds that the school had not done enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
The Trump administration has since sought to bar international students from attending the school, threatened Harvard's accreditation status and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.
As part of Trump's spending and tax bill, the Republican-led Congress increased the federal excise tax on Harvard's income from its $53 billion endowment to 8% from 1.4%. Income from the endowment covers 40% of Harvard's operating budget.
Harvard President Alan Garber said last week that the various federal actions since Trump returned to office in January could strip the school of nearly $1 billion annually, forcing it to lay off staff and freeze hiring.
Read more: Judge halts Trump administration action barring Harvard from enrolling foreign students
Harvard has said it has taken steps to ensure its campus is welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students, who it acknowledges experienced "vicious and reprehensible" treatment following the onset of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023.
But, Garber has said the administration's demands have gone far beyond addressing antisemitism and unlawfully seek to regulate the "intellectual conditions" on its campus by controlling who it hires and who it teaches.
Those demands, outlined in an April 11 letter from an administration task force, included calls for the private university to restructure its governance, alter its hiring and admissions practices to ensure an ideological balance of viewpoints and end certain academic programs.
After Harvard rejected those demands, university officials say the administration began retaliating against the campus in violation of free speech protections under the First Amendment by abruptly cutting funding that officials say is vital to supporting scientific and medical research.
Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, has already barred the administration from halting its ability to host international students, in a separate case.
Trump has expressed optimism that Harvard will eventually settle with his administration. Fields on Friday said a good deal was more than possible and that the administration is "confident that Harvard will eventually come around and support the president's vision."
In court, the administration has argued that Burroughs lacks jurisdiction to hear the challenge and that the grant contracts made clear they could be canceled if the funded projects do not carry out federal government policy objectives.